Learned from Rocky's Bru that the New Straits Times has pulled the plug on Amir Muhammad's wonderfully satirical Thursday column. No reason given.The last time this happened to him at the NST was in 1999, and also just before a general election.
Amir, you must be doing something right!
You can still read Amir's previous columns (including those the NST didn't want to publish) on his blog and his book Politicians say the Darndest Things is due out soon. (It's being serialised in Off The Edge, starting this month.)
Amir's most recent column highlights Malaysia's award winning filmmakers. Congrats to James Lee, Deepak Kumaran Menon and Woo Ming Jin who suceeded despite having only limited budgets to work with. Amir describes a panel discussion on the topic of "cooperative filmmaking" at the new Delhi Film Festival:
Along the way, we dished on how certain segments of our media have labelled these films as being “an insult to national sovereignty” for their choices of language, and therefore “for failing to portray the correct image of Malaysia.” As if all the ghosts movies we are now being served are a correct image of our reality!Which just shows the warped mentality of the bigots. Luckily Amir and friends find it amusing rather than otherwise.
(Pic of Amir (left) and Datuk Shan in Silverfish during the litfest, taken by Shahril Nizam)
10 comments:
thank God for blogs!
What a shame! Amir's column is the reason why I still read the New Straits Times!
I miss the days when the NST was still a broadsheet (my family stopped reading it since 1998) and newspapers in general had more integrity.
Hey sharon, do you have any idea when the Silverfish New Writings will be published? Am awaiting news, but haven't heard anything.
anon - none at all. these things take a bit of time because quite a lot of work has to go into the selection and editing process. will keep my ear to the ground though and drop by silverfish for a gossip soon!
How come everyone's gone anon? I will miss the column. It was funny, irreverant and simply Malaysian.
The last time I got sacked, it made me go into filmmaking simply to become more internationally famous than everyone at NST. Now that this mission has been accomplished, I will go into book-writing and book-publishing :-)
good for you.
and silly of them!
I used to miss Amir's columns because I couldn't bring myself to spend RM 1.20 on the NST (or however much it costs)... much better to just go for two glasses of kopi. I understand Amir and NST go way back (Crazy Horse, Perforated Sheets) but their days of thoughtful editorials and a few great literary subsections are long gone... Now I think the NST is only fit to bungkus packets of nasi lemak. Really BAD nasi lemak.
So I'm glad Amir's decided to blog. Regularly. :)
Can someone confirm this? Is Amir Muhammad Crazy Horse? Amir, can shed some lite on this tak?
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