Banning a tabloid

Prachatai reports that “[w]ithout any explanation, Thailand has blocked access to the New York Post.” The tabloid seems an unlikely newspaper to censor as it usually only carries stories that are somewhat kooky, titillate or shock.

The speculation is that the tabloid carried stories on the monarchy that were disliked by either the palace, the king, royalist snitches or some civil or military bureaucrat who stumbled upon them when linking to salacious articles about murderous threesomes of a beauty queen eating pizza (both recent articles).

So we thought we’d search the site to see what they had on Thailand. The most recent stories are of a bear “dropped” from a helicopter and the coin consuming turtle. Then there’s stuff about a python biting a man’s penis as it slithered out of a toilet and the monks breeding tigers. None of this seemed likely to exercise the internet censors or cyber vigilantes.

Back in 2016, there was a story a bit like the one that caused a kerfuffle and denials about Pattaya’s sex trade, “Inside the Thai sex scene — where women are sold like meat.” Perhaps that got some attention. Or maybe a related story bothered a do-gooder, “Gangs of transsexual sex workers are attacking tourists in Thailand.” Yet that is also from 2016.

What about royal stories? We found these, and in feudal-wannabe-absolutist Thailand under the military dictatorship, any of them could have caused censors to spring into action, even if all of them are months old and some are from wire services.

One on the death of the last king seems unlikely to cause offense: Thailand’s king, world’s longest-serving monarch, dies at 88. Another story we found in our search of the period since early 2016 was headlined Thailand prepares to welcome its new kooky king, which, apart from the headline, is a standard report on succession.

It is possible that articles on the prince who is now king might be a reason for censorship. The first story, Thailand’s new king is a kooky crop top-wearing playboy, reproduces the infamous temporary tattoo photos from Munich airport, and has some interesting detail, any line of which may have caused consternation in a palace and regime that wants a more santitized “history”:

… the playboy prince has a reputation among his soon-to-be subjects for bizarre behavior, womanizing and cruelty to his many wives.

Taking a page from Caligula, Vajiralongkorn named his favorite pet, a poodle named Foo Foo, as an air marshal.

He even took the pooch to a 2007 reception hosted in his honor by US Ambassador Ralph “Skip” Boyce.

“Foo Foo was . . . dressed in formal evening attire complete with paw mitts, and at one point during the band’s second number, he jumped up onto the head table and began lapping from the guests’ water glasses,” Boyce wrote, according to a WikiLeaks document.

“The Air Chief Marshal’s antics . . . remains the talk of the town to this day.”

But tales of the prince’s behavior exist mostly in the realm of rumor in Thailand. The nation has strict laws banning stories about the royal family.

But in 2007, the depravity of Vajiralongkorn’s court was exposed when a video surfaced of his third wife, Princess Srirasmi, a former bar waitress, walking around topless at her own birthday party while eating cake with Foo Foo.

When the dog died last year, it was given a four-day funeral.

Srirasmi has split from the prince after being booted from the Royal Palace in December. In a show of his cruelty, he recently allowed her parents to be thrown in prison for 2¹/₂ years for “royal defamation.”

His earlier two marriages were equally rocky. During his first — to his cousin — he allegedly fathered five kids with a mistress, then married the mistress. Later he dumped her, forcing her to flee the country.

Another story, Thailand’s new king used his poodle to spite his father, could also cause the censorship, beginning with this:

Family relations were a royal bitch for Thailand’s clown prince.

The country’s kooky crop top-sporting playboy prince adopted Foo Foo, the pampered poodle he famously named as an air marshal — all to spite his father, according to a report.

This report cites a 2015 New Mandala story by Christine Gray, commenting on a lese majeste case.

The New York Post also has an article on lese majeste, This is what happens when you insult the new Thai king. This story features video of a “woman accused of insulting the kooky crown prince of Thailand was publicly humiliated and forced to grovel beneath a portrait of the country’s late king,” during the early mourning period for the late king.

If Thailand’s “authorities” are trying to concoct a new hagiographical account of the tenth king, then the internet censors have a huge task ahead of them.