There is a six-letter word so abused and perverted these days that I wouldn't blame the media for banning it altogether. It is the V-word and, I must confess, I hesitated to write this column about it myself. But journalists must not be daunted by trends that pollute . . . and so, here we go. The word, as you may have guessed, is "values."
It's bad enough that ex-Prime Ministers Lee Kwan Yew (Singapore) and Mohamad Mahathir (Malaysia) celebrated "Asian values" in the 1990s. This novel use of the V-word was a euphemism for paternalism and authoritarian rule. "Just listen to us," it told a few billion allegedly disciplined and industrious folk, "and keep your noses to the grindstone."
Perhaps the only positive thing that came out of the Asian economic crisis of the late '90s was the death of "Asian values." In some countries, the grindstone nearly ground to a halt.