While I expected Helen Ang to respond to my rebuttal of her criticism of Lim Kit Siang’s ‘Malaysian First’ concept, I have to admit I was somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of her letter, where she used two very serious words ‘mischievous’ and ‘malicious’, implying my letter had baleful and sinister intent.

Those are words I was reluctant to use in my previous letter to describe her so-called word map where she alleged reflected DAP’s Malaysian First attempts in hope of gaining privileges as first-class citizens - a materialistic objective she presumptuous created for and attributed to Lim’s Malaysian First, and which in reality exists only in her prejudiced mind.

I believe I do not even need to draw on her questionable inclusion of 'Lim Guan Eng photoshopped slaughtering cow in Islamic ritual', where Ang then had to utilize one-fifth of her letter to explain and define what ‘photoshop’ means. That by itself is an indication of her

indirect acknowledgment that not many people know what is implied by ‘photoshop’.

But even assuming they do know, why include a known forgery as part of her word map of the alleged DAP’s Malaysian First campaigns? Methinks the relatively unknown term ‘photoshop’ plus the fact she deliberately included it to criticize the Malaysian First concept would now merit the use of the words mischievous’ and ‘malicious’.

Be that as it may, I shall only touch on three aspects of her letter.

The first surely has to be about her condemnation of Malaysian First, where we see Ang’s obsessive determination to fit Kit Siang’s unifying doctrine, no matter what its shape (say, round), into the square box she has decided for it.

Thus, according to the gospel by Ang, there is one and only one avenue for a Chinese to become a Malaysian First, and that is via the Ridhuan Tee model, meaning complete conversion from Chinese to Muslim Malay with the process concretized when the converted starts spewing anti-Chinese demagoguery or perhaps like Uztaz Ann Wan Seng, ridiculing his previous religious belief for the entertainment of his new embraced ummah . It would appear she hasn't allowed for nor would countenance any other avenues, especially the visionary, unifying objective Lim Kit Siang is promoting.

Her 'square box' is of course her b ê te noire , Dr Ridhuan Tee Abdullah. Yes, it’s well-known that Ang and Ridhuan have sparred on a number of occasions, alas, with Ridhuan Tee getting the better of her in the majority of cases. Perhaps her subconscious has compelled her to conjoin hated Ridhuan with the Malaysian First concept she dislikes.

She continued on her square box-ed mentality when she argued in the silliest fashion that if Barack Obama had spoken in Swahili, the language of his Kenyan father, or was a Muslim, he was hardly likely to win the US presidential election. It’s like arguing that Nicolas Sarkozy wouldn’t have been the French president if he speaks in Hungarian, his father’s native language or worships Elizabeth Bathory instead of the Virgin Mary.

Then, of course, Julia Guillard too wouldn’t have been prime minister of Australia if she speaks in her mother tongue Welsh and declares she is a Druidess, a pagan to most Christian Australians. Quite frankly, I was tempted to drop this issue out of my letter because her arguments had descended to the very nadir of absurdity.

Then ungraciously Ang described Obama (now also in her square box?) as ascending successfully on the shoulders of giants like Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks. However in doing so, she has unwittingly supported my point that like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr ‘Lim Kit Siang … knows he would still need many like-minded successors to chip away at the vested interests of Malaysian racism before his dream can come true that all Malaysians 'will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character'.’

Who knows, maybe one day a descendant of Ang will ascend successfully on the shoulders of giants like Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh and Lim Guan Eng.

Secondly, I am pleased that Ang brought out the two articles by blogger Shuzheng and me, because they clearly illustrated our totally different ideological beliefs, where I advocated being Malaysian First while Shuzheng was against. But Ang was rather disingenuous in stating she didn’t want to be caught in the middle between ‘two guys flexing their blog muscles’, when the next sentence she wrote was ‘Shuzheng makes more sense with his analysis’ (sigh and smile).

Furthermore, on Sept 17 when Shuzheng wrote a letter offering his views in ‘'Malaysian First' requires doing a Ridhuan Tee’, virtually the same square box as Ang’s, and attracted severe adverse comments, Ang swiftly dashed out a letter ‘Does Shuzheng look like a windmill to you?’, obviously to valiantly shore up and defend the lucky blogger,

She condemned the unfriendly commentators as mindless readers making outrageous comments when Shuzheng’s piece should have been a catalyst for a modicum of intelligent thinking (wow). Ang eulogized Shuzheng as a ‘writer, more than anyone I've read on the topic, (who) managed to

debunk the Malaysian First naivete with an unparalleled and incisive finesse.’ (double wow!)

I treasure such ardent support even if they were not for me. God knows in today’s world how little loyalty and faithfulness (to an idea of course) remain.

Finally, Ang was again determined to score points against DAP Teo Nie Ching and vicariously Lim Kit Siang’s Malaysian First by lambasting her for wearing a selendang so soon after the mentioned faux pas . She sneered at Teo’s use of the shawl as an overeager 'hop, skip and jump

to her next surau visit'. Obviously Teo was not conforming to the standards of Ang’s square box.

To answer Ang, let’s go back to October 2008 when a young Chinese female blogger, in a moment of anger at the theft of her mobile telephone by an Indian boy, made an intemperate and most hurtful racist remark against the ethnicity of the thief, and then made things worse for herself by posting the entire racist rant on her blog .

When Hindraf lodged a police report on Samy’s bigotry, she realized too late she had overstepped the boundaries of civil decency, and sought to quell the growing anger against her by stating (words to the effect): ‘If I hate Indians, I would not have worn a saree on my Indian friend's birthday party because that would be ridiculous.’

Needless to say, it drew howls of derision; some unkind comments labeled her saree-wearing credentials as pathetically hypocritical.

Fast forward to August 2010, and we have a Helen Ang under siege from an Umno Youth report against her for allegedly seditious writing against Malays-Muslims. Prior to reporting to the police for the required interview, she posted an article where she did a ‘Samy’. No, she didn’t claim to wear a saree but a baju kurung .

In it she went to great pains (complete with a photo) to extol her affinity with the Malay community and culture by proof of her baju kurung wearing habits, to repudiate the report of her seditious writing.

So … selendang, saree, baju kurung , what’s the difference, my dear Ang? Ang has set her standard for Teo Nie Ching which she herself could not even meet! Maybe I should recommend to her the words of Snow White’s stepmother (paraphrased):

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who in the land is most hypocritical of all?