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TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (148)

By Colin Samuels

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Daily Mail (from Monday, December 31; link good at time of posting):

It was a moment to make angry wives applaud and two-timing husbands ? and the Chinese government ? squirm.

With eight months to go to the Beijing Olympics, Zhang Bin . . . one of the most famous faces on the nation's television, was proudly relaunching its main sports network, CCTV-5, as the Olympics Channel.

As Zhang talked enthusiastically into the cameras before a studio audience, a small woman in a brown duffel coat clambered on stage, bore down on him and grabbed his microphone.

Onlookers immediately recognised Zhang's wife, Hu Ziwei, herself a well-known sports anchor.

But what came next surprised everyone as Mrs Hu launched into a blistering attack on her husband for having an affair with another woman. Only two hours earlier, she said, she'd discovered his "improper relationship."

And as Zhang stood open-mouthed, uncertain what to do, she bravely coupled his infidelity with her country's poor human rights record.

. . . .

Zhang thought he might avoid public embarrassment because as usual in a nation always anxious to censor out any unwanted disclosures, the show was being pre-recorded.

His wife's outburst could be edited out, he thought. But, as has happened in the past, the authorities underestimated the power of the Internet and the mischief of its enthusiastic devotees. Within hours a renegade tape of the three-minute confrontation was posted on the Chinese websites tudou.com and Sina.com.

As Chinese authorities scrambled to remove it from those, it was switched to YouTube and other international sites they could not control - and they reported that hundreds of thousands of people were watching it.

. . . .

The nation's leaders, always eager to paint a picture of a perfect society, were said to be deeply embarrassed.

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Full post as published by Infamy or Praise on January 04, 2008 (boomark / email).