Staying ahead, in headline writing and in political writing.

Headline of the day:

This headline, from a Channel News Asia item today, was spotted on the xinmsn news website. Taken literally, it says that there is a body (ie one particular body) that has kept popping up at Bedok Reservoir! But, sorry folks, there's nothing paranormal here. The actual CNA item explains what the inept headline writer was trying to say:

http://news.xin.msn.com/en/singapore/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5444454

Good headline writers of course seize the opportunity to pun on bodies, dead or alive. This New York Post headline, depicting a gruesome murder, is said to be among the best:

   
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I found today's write-up in ST -- this time by senior writer Clarissa Oon -- on the Singapore Writers Festival as engaging as yesterday's. So, here's more (ST Life!, "Political writing market opens up", page C9):

There has never been a better time to be writing about politics in Singapore, novelist and political commentator Catherine Lim declared at a forum at the [festival] over the weekend. The sudden opening up of political space following the May general election, plus a newly engaged citizenry, has turned her new maiden volume of political commentaries into a bestseller, she added.

"Just six months ago, it would not have been taken on by any publisher. It's a good time to be a writer in Singapore," said Lim [at a panel discussion on Politics And Society: Is The Pen Always Mightier?]

While Singapore writers [like Lim] cheer the relaxing of political controls, [Ukranian novelist Andrey Kurkov] made an ironic observation: A society that is "free and happy" reads less and has no time for political literature [I hope he spoke right after Ms Lim; that would be deliciously ironic!].

"It's nicer to have unhappy readers,"quipped the writer of absurdist political fiction in Russian... He noted that after 1991, the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union has brought about the "collapse of a whole tradition of literature in Russia".

Why? Because "there's no censorship and when there's no censorship, people are not interested", he said to laughter from the 120-strong audience...

In increasing affluent but crime-ridden Russia and Ukraine, it has become "more dangerous to be a journalist critical of the government than to be a writer of literature," he added.

[The rest here is background stuff on Catherine Lim...]

Lim caused a stir back in 1994 with two political columns [in ST], the first of which pondered the [PAP] Government's inability to inspire affection despite delivering results, a phenomenon she famously termed the "Great Affective Divide".

She was rapped by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for her second column, which speculated on a contest of styles between him and predecessor Lee Kuan Yew.