alternative media performs a harakiri?

The naysayers have done it again.

The best use of that YOG budget is not in organising the event itself, but somehow perpetuating the chain of events that leads to a great PR defense. We now have concerned global citizens bashing the alternative media and its subversive, dangerous, humiliating, biased messages.

The Olympics was never about the much-heralded Olympic Values (who's willing to fork out millions or billions for a giant Sports Day?). It's the monetary benefits, and I have no qualms about that aim since it kills two birds with one stone. The greatness of the Olympics, however, is that organisers can easily conjure the Olympic defense against political meddling. Add to that the youth x-factor of YOG. No one's going to debate such a deadly mix. That would be suicidal. Who wants to deprive our cute kids, leaders of the future, their chance to feel good about themselves, come together, and sing 'we are the world'?

Has alternative media become so delusional, so caught up in its own web, that it fails to position its arguments correctly?

Well, both yes and no.

The main strawmen that most detractors bring up are Temasek Review and TheOnlineCitizen. I wouldn't quite classify TOC as being at the same level as TR, since TR is undoubtedly crass and extreme in its words. It runs the danger of preaching to the choir. But that is just a problem regarding its use of language, and the absence of the so-called constructive criticism (which I suspect is one legacy of Feedback Units and friends - a barrier to entry for critics).

Yet, this holier-than-thou attitude stinks of elite-speak. As if to say that if you don't pass your GCE 'O' Levels (with perfect grammar and spelling), aren't capable of positioning 'whines and gripes' as healthy criticism, then somehow your points carry less weight. So a sizeable segment of the population is silenced quickly, because these are the ones who perceive themselves (and probably are) the ones who get shortchanged the most by a system of meritocracy.

And to add insult upon injury, we then condescend on their less-than-intelligent arguments, resigning them to the rabblepile.

Haven't the media literates like us the adequate sense to sieve apart fact from fiction, agenda from point? If the alternative media did not exist to cover the YOG, readers are left to the whim and fancies of the mainstream papers and channels. And that means no 'dogfood' scandal, no poorly attended fringe events, no floods, no distasteful letters that demand compulsory attendance (some white-office bastardisation of conscription).

In a parallel universe not far from here (actually, just beyond our shores), the gripes and complaints would be glorified as whistle-blowers who thoughtfully released pertinent issues that would have demanded more media coverage.

There is a reason why alternative media is named so. And should they be co-opted into doing things the same fashion as the mainstream, then they have really sold out, and we're truly kaput.