[Editor’s note: Kandit mistakenly published the first draft of Ms. Luhan’s opinion on July 29, 2024. We apologize to our readers and provide this updated article as of 6:48 p.m., July 30, 2024.]
By Mabel Doge Luhan
Is HANMI paying the Variety by the caterwaul? Besides HANMI getting the front-page propaganda spot in the July 29th Variety (MVA had to settle for Page Nine, though I’d always imagined seeing Chris on Page Six), it got lots of Zaldy Dandan’s caterwauls in his latest opinion column. At least this one wasn’t written by Wordstar macros 1-3 on his Best Editorial Writer Keyboard — “taxes bad,” “politicians always lie,” “government doesn’t do anything useful” — and instead by macros 4-5: “Palacios bad,” “economy bad because Palacios because Chinese tourists something something,” and “miss u rafet.”
We start Zaldy’s column with a screenshot of the HIGHLY FACTUAL AND REPUTABLE Kolkota-based tourism journal “Travel and Tour World.” It’s good to see that our resident Editor In Chief, Best Editorial Writer, and Economic Development Expert only reads the best sources. The screenshot purports to show Brand USA (supposedly analogous to our very own MVA) meeting with someone from the PRC government.
If anyone at the Variety had any ability to distinguish their kop from their tuchis, they certainly didn’t put that talent into practice when slapping together this editorial — because the person in the photo is Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Who has nothing to do with Brand USA. And the photo was taken not in May 2024 at a Brand USA meeting but in August 2023, at an event unrelated to Brand USA.
See, the Marianas Variety isn’t the only newspaper to not even know what’s in the photo they just plagiarized!
Here’s the CCP propaganda rag the original image came from:
https://www.guancha.cn/
But what’s ten months, a Chinese ministry, and a US cabinet department between friends? The big point Zaldy is making that we should do like the mainland US (except for being so soft on the minorities, of course), and send our own Brand CNMI over to China to beg for Chinese tourists (which isn’t what the US delegation is actually doing in the photo, but let’s just suspend disbelief; it’s the Variety after all!)
Brand USA, by the by, receives no taxpayer money (except for a one-time bailout in 2022). I wish Orville were so self-sufficient! Brand USA is funded by industry contributions. Imagine HANMI paying for its own advertising! Those industry contributions to Brand USA are matched by ESTA fee collections. Here’s the real kicker though: Brand USA, the travel authority for the entire United States, has about sixty employees, and an annual budget of about $160 million.
The US economy is 20,000 times bigger than the CNMI economy. Yet the federal US tourism authority, for the entire US, gets only about 11 times as much money (and none of it from taxpayers) as the CNMI’s tourism authority. And Brand USA has only sixty employees. Has there ever been a CNMI government department with only sixty employees?
Put differently: the CNMI’s economy is 1/20,000th the size of the US economy. And MVA wants a budget only 1/11th the size of the US travel authority’s budget. (Not even to mention that the US travel authority’s budget doesn’t come from taxpayer funds.)
Put differently still: If we set MVA’s budget based on Brand USA’s budget, proportional to GDP, then MVA should get a total annual budget of…. $7,700. Why, they might have to cancel a few of their Australian voyages! (And again: Brand USA, unlike MVA, is mostly funded by private businesses.)
And say, why doesn’t MVA connect with Brand USA and make sure Brand USA is promoting the CNMI, in China or wherever? Which wouldn’t cost us anything? Is it because that might cut down on the opportunities for CNMI government-paid MILES AND POINTS AND ELITE STATUS? Or because MVA fears that Brand USA might actually do a better job of it than MVA has been doing, and without demanding a yearly infusion of twelve million dollars’ worth of delicious buttery thermidor?
The recent MVA propaganda piece on Page 9 (printed edition) of the July 29th Variety — overlook that page’s layout resembling my latest Papanicolaou — doesn’t even seem to know what MVA’s Japan campaign is called. It starts out being “Marianas Blues,” then becomes “Shh Between You and I.”
Shouldn’t MVA kind of know?
Yo MVA. Fam. If you are spending your government-paid work day WRITING PROPAGANDA AIMED AT PEOPLE IN SAIPAN AND NOT THE TOURISTS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING TO, can’t you at least proofread to make sure it makes sense? Oh, right. Proofread. The unapologetically illiterate “Shh Between You and I” had been a shoo-in as the worst possible slogan for this campaign. But the campaign name newly mentioned in this article — the downright pejorative “Marianas Blues” — might be actually, amazingly, even worse.
Does anyone working at MVA or UltraSuperNew know what “blues” means?
Is this some kind of trendy reverse-psychology avant-garde advertising experiment?
Or is it just the usual carelessness, fecklessness, and shamelessness?
I WOULD LIKE TO PROPOSE FOLLOW-UP CAMPAIGNS:
Sad Saipan
Regrettable Rota
Tragic Tinian
ALL WITH FROWN EMOJIS!!!
How much are we paying MVA and UltraSuperHigh? And why does the Variety keep printing this stuff, without even commenting on how ridiculous it is? MVA could’ve had high-school students come up with better slogans than this.
Now, as for the constant cry of “annex exemption economy China tourism” blaring loudly enough from the Variety’s offices to drown out the fap-fap-fap when Tucker is on-camera, you still haven’t convinced anybody of your assertion.
Your four implicit premises: 1) The CNMI’s economy is bad (by your definition) because of a lack of Chinese tourists, 2) This lack of Chinese tourists is primarily caused by a lack of an exemption from a federal law that limits nonstop flights to the US from China (but doesn’t limit connecting flights) and the lack of nonstop flights is the only thing preventing Chinese tourists from coming here, 3) If Governor Palacios just asked for such an exemption from federal law, his wish would be granted, 4) If we just give MVA more money, we’ll get those Chinese tourists.
You — meaning not just Zaldy, but the entire “Pick me, China, pick me!” crowd — have not shown any even mildly persuasive evidence in support of any of these arguments. The closest you get to it is begging the question — which, listen up Variety, doesn’t mean “suggesting the question,” but means “answering the question in a way that assumes your answer is right.”
Point 1: What’s your proof that our economic decline, by whatever measure, is caused by a lack of Chinese tourists? Citing an interview Governor Palacios gave to the VOA isn’t proof, unless you believe Si Arnold is omniscient. I thought only Rafet was that smart!
Point 2: The entire world is talking about Chinese tourists no longer traveling abroad, for a range of domestic Chinese reasons. Meanwhile, the Marianas Variety, where apparently there is no connection to information sources from the outside world — oh wait, there is! — continues to trumpet “Palacios ruined Chinese tourism” or better yet “Chinese tourists are incapable of taking connecting flights to take their dream vacation to Saipan.” All tourists, including Chinese tourists, take connecting flights all the time. You’re saying they’re scuttling their entire dream vacation plans because of a connecting flight? While you absolutely refuse to read or acknowledge what the whole world outside the CNMI knows: that Chinese tourists just aren’t traveling abroad now, not anywhere. But no. It’s not because of the extremely well documented cutback in Chinese people’s foreign travel. It’s, instead, because we’re not exempt from a federal regulation on nonstop flights. Guess that’s what happens when you get your information about the world from Fox News, Facebook, and the Global Times.
Point 3: Governor Palacios has said that the feds told him the exemption can’t happen. Do you think he’s lying, or do you just refuse to hear? You do understand that an exemption from federal law is a very big thing, right, and not something you just “apply” for? And federal laws, unlike CNMI laws, are generally taken pretty seriously and enforced.
Point 4: This, again, is begging the question. You act as if MVA is guaranteed to fix our tourism situation if we just throw more money at it. But that is what MVA, or somebody, needs to prove — and not something you can assume to be true. Answering a criticism of MVA funding with “But we need more tourists!” assumes that funding MVA has anything to do with more tourists arriving. (Which is pretty funny, given the right-wing garbage you usually print that claims that school funding doesn’t help educational outcomes.)
So look. If you want to make this argument, you’re going to have to show us 1) How it is that our economic decline is caused by a lack of Chinese tourists (a quote from some hotel manager won’t cut it, nor will a snide dismissal), 2) How it is that a lack of nonstop flights (what you think), and not secular economic trends in China (what the rest of the entire world thinks), is causing a lack of Chinese tourists, 3) How it is that we just have to ask for this exemption and it will happen, when the Governor has told us that it can’t happen, 4) How we know that throwing more money at the MVA boondoggle (which wants just one tenth as much money as the tourism authority for the entire United States) would help anything.
And since you’re the ones demanding (on behalf of your Chinese paymasters) a change in policy, an exemption from federal law, and millions of dollars in public funds, the burden of proof is on you. Funny how that works in a democracy. It might take some time getting used to.
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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.
1 Comments
CNMI Lawyer
07/29/2024 at 9:14 PM
Let us pray that Zaldy Dandan will read and be capable of understanding this analysis, which is worthy of a Wall Street Journal editorial.