I could not help but feel sympathy for your columnist , Sugu, and his reflection on the widespread ignorance and apathy for world affairs among his in-laws, whom he says is a microcosm of the American public. Unfortunately, that same condition isn't too different from what exists in Malaysia.

I have often felt that the American public is kept busy, pre-occupied and perhaps confused through an assault of distractions from opportunistic media and marketeers. Caught in a daily smog of mostly inconsequential information, inessential products, and scandals du jour, it is a wonder that Americans don't trip over themselves more frequently. In Malaysia, we have Galeri Smart Shop. And magazines like ' Mangga '.

Here, you can see the local media evolving slowly but surely into very much the same sad throwbacks: a media without a conscience or any real vision to shape our thinking - it is no wonder we are very much on the same road to ruin.

Mostly the local, and especially the vernacular, media are highly insular - feeding the public more of the same mediocrity or half-truths, fuelling unhealthy speculation and very seldom making any effort to nurture healthy dissent that can provide the checks and balances a civil society needs.

If one were to take a look at the covers of most local magazines and tabloids and see for one's self the issues that their editors think make great cover stories, that would be enough indication of the immaturity and shocking priorities within our society, pretty much the same as those of the middle-America of Yakima.

Yes, Sugu's in-laws are not too dissimilar from thousands of Malaysian families who really do not care what goes on beyond their front-gates. I should know - I am related to some of them.

And we can expect this trend to continue here if the Malaysian distractions of race, religion, and regressive ideas of values and morality continue to fragment our people and breed that monster called hypocrisy among us. Like the Americans, most of our own people are assaulted into blurriness and silence.