Yasmin cannot but Kugan can, is it?
How ironic.
When a tabloid belonging to the Utusan group told the truth – i.e. that Yasmin Ahmad was born a man – there was a firestorm of protest from some reporters.
But when Utusan Malaysia was telling untruths, there was pregnant silence from the newspaper fraternity.
When the feelings of Yasmin’s family were hurt by the revelation, there was an uproar from the advertising agencies (she was responsible for the Petronas commercials, and a long time with Leo Burnett), and from reporters and the socialites who were her friends.*
But when the feelings of Kugan Ananthan’s family were hurt by the things printed about him, these people (who raised a stink on Yasmin’s behalf by threatening to pull their ad money from the paper, and the senior editors who drafted a protest letter and led a signature drive, and the “disgusted” Marina Mahathir blog which called for a boycott of “that despicable rag” Kosmo!) were silent.
Utusan Malaysia had reported that Kugan’s family “charged into” and “broke into” the mortuary to see his battered body. The paper’s editorial voice Awang Selamat likened the episode to “action in a Bollywood film”.
