So far, reaction to the "RK House - No Pork" pseudo-video has fallen into 2 broad categories: those predictably jumping on the "racism" bandwagon and expressing outrage and those who think it's very funny (personally I find it stupid, but not offensive). Those with more serious blogs mostly fall into the former category, and the more light-hearted blogs belong to the latter.

Sample: Singapore Angle, Xiaxue comments box, Singapore Patriot, Hear ye! Hear ye!, 我的心聲---留住記憶，分享回憶 - not funny, Wan's Site, Sakura-Sake 3.9 Feat. HAMASAKI AYUMI :: Secret, various people on Young Republic

But then, someone who frequents RK Eating House comments: "that RK video..all bullshit la! its funny but got no such person there who talks like that.. All fake one. All stage themselves. That RK eating house is in serangoon gardens there..i got go there eat so many times.. no pork la.. but there's no such person working there who talks like that.. I find it really really lame. LOL.", and one comment in Xiaxue's comments box is: "dat recording was done by my bf and his grp of frenz at the "indian" guy's house...but actually the ah neh is a chi...haha"

Amid all the furore, what is forgotten is that there's actually a Part 1, made by the same jokers. In Part 1 they go to some coffeeshop and disturb an Ah Beng waiter. Some choice bits (despite my near non-existent knowledge of dialect): asking for free samples of kopi peng, asking if the tea leaves in teh peng come from Cameron Highlands (and if they're ISO-certified), asking if they buy their Horlicks powder from NTUC, and ordering first teh peng, milo peng, horlicks peng and then changing it to some impossible order (ice kosong or something)

Essentially, the mode of amusement is the same - guai lan-ing someone, except that there's no religious element here. But since the guy's not Indian (Muslim?), no one says anything.

If you want to put anyone in jail under the Sedition Act, you should target the thousands who laughed at it rather than those who made it, since at least the latter were consistent in their attempts at humour. In other words, the people who made it did an Ah Beng version so they weren't targetting Muslims in general, but the people who laughed at it didn't laugh at the Ah Beng version, and therefore they're racist!!!11~OMGWTHBBQ!!~!

If Sacha Baron Cohen pretends to be anti-Semitic, he's a brilliant satirist.
If a non-Jew pretends to be anti-Semitic, he's racist and supports the Holocaust.

Damn, we need some Jewish comedians over here. Or at least a black guy - except that he'd be able to insult everyone except Jews.

[Addendum: The two jokers only asked the fake waiter for pork - they didn't throw it at him, force him to eat it or smear him with lard. The fact that so many Malays are waiters in Haram establishments suggests that there might be nothing inherently offensive about *serving* pork - one might compare it to driving a vehicle in which non-Halal materials travel.]


guojun: If they wanted to charge people for breaching the Sedition Act, they can go into any SAF camp and detain almost everyone.

Aaron, it is terrifying to be a minority - i am the sole Singaporean in my part of germany. But being the minority means being able, even forced, to go out, to see more, and to be more tolerant. I have endured jokes against me too by schoolchildren who didn’t know better.

So what was i going to do - charge them under the sedition act? I laughed it off, and joked with them. Intolerance only goes so far, and sometimes it is wiser and more gracious to take things with a pinch of salt.


got pork: i’m muslim and i’m not at all offended. People really need to have a sense of humour and stop acting like some self-righteous guardians of this and that.

lbandit: Looking (or rather listening) through the No Pok video, i truly could not detect any hint of racism. At most, i would say the video was about public mischief rather than racism. Gerald claims that the video was extremely insensitive to Indians and Muslims and downright racist. Mildly insensitive, perhaps. But racism? Seems like racism is invoked to make things sound more serious than it actually is.


As quoted about racism in Slavery: It couldn’t happen during my time 30+ years ago. We would not shoot each other but the muds from mudland.

We all made racist jokes in good humour and all laugh it off in good humour. Everyone understood that it wasn’t meant to be racist.

I remember my indian friends calling me cina kui or ah tee ah at times and I called them bayii, bangali, tambi, mamak but I don’t remember calling any keling. Malays were called mud. We poked fun at the bayii for their reputed tua kee. We poked fun at a short chinese for being well endowed “small boy big cock”. Even the bayii envied him, first time he saw in toilet, he exclaimed “wah lau! BIG FAT WORM!”. We openly envied the bayii for not having to wear that heavy stell helmet, the indians for not requiring to put on night camouflage. We always reminded them not to show their teeth during night training. Everyone laughed when one bayii sang “bengali one so long, mat salleh one so strong, melayu kenna potong, cina one macham sotong”.


Scott Adams: I decide when it’s time to move some group of people off the “protected list” and onto the firing range with the other legitimate humor targets. If I jump the gun, all hell breaks loose because it looks as if I’m kicking the weak. But if I time it right, it signals an important step in our collective enlightenment about the value of our fellow humans. And it means some group has demonstrated its value to the point where they can no longer be considered victims. You haven’t achieved equality until you’re a legitimate target for humor.