“And lately, by the tavern door agape,

Came stealing through the dusk an angel shape,

Bearing a vessel on his shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and ‘twas the Grape!”

- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1048- 1131)

COMMENT | Our politicians often take us for fools. But who among us doesn’t think the venom and vitriol heaped upon Sarawak’s Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Tiong King Sing, has gone too far this time?

Decent folks know it has as much to do with alcohol as with putting the “other” in their place.

And alcohol, when weaponised, is indeed potent stuff. Ask the Finns who first came up with the idea of sealing a glass bottle full of alcohol (or petrol) with a cloth wick to act as a fuse before turning it into a hand-thrown incendiary weapon against the invading Russians, the pejorative “Molotov cocktail”.

It is now the weapon of choice of...