Singapore must have really screwed New York Times bad in some way. Like a spurned lover, New York Times just wouldn’t let Singapore go without a bad spanking.

Now I really really like New York Times, its Sunday “this is a phone book” edition got me through many lonely weekends in upstate New York but its numerous snarky articles about Singapore really leaves me cold.

Barely 3-4 weeks after its bitchy article about Mas Selamat escaping from jail comes another catty article about Singapore’s government trying to get its citizens to mate.

Yes, that’s right. Mate. Copulate. Have s-e-x

The Singapore government did set up a government dating agency called the Social Development Unit (SDU) to help graduates find partners after our founding father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, bemoaned the fact that female university graduates were marrying later and later while having less and less children.

He was particularly worried about graduates not marrying and giving birth to smart kids so he decided he just had to to something about these stubborn educated ambitious women who-just-wouldn’t-give-birth-like-they-are-supposed-to-damnit

To Singaporean girls aspiring for the Sex and the City lifestyle, children would only muddle up the picture – do you think the Sex and the City girls would be this glamorous with kids in tow?

Wake up and smell the Cosmopolitans!

So the article is factually accurate, I give New York Times that. But their articles on Singapore reflect an overzealous tendency to portray Singapore as a village of infantile minions ruled by the Wizard of Oz and his flying monkeys.

Yes the SDU thing sounds ridiculous but it’s not like Singaporeans really take our government’s prodding that seriously. Singapore’s rapidly falling birth rate is a serious concern but it’s not like we’re all going to get pregnant as a form of misguided patriotism.

Singapore might not be the most complicated country in the world but it’s certainly not the land of simpletons New York Times like to believe it is

Photo credit: New York Times