Media black-out adds to excitement
20 Jul 2008, 12:50pm Posted by GrantEmotion is running high this week in South East Asia's favourite land-locked nation in the build up to the much heralded match against the Vietnam Swans on July 27 at the National University of Laos (the so-called "spiritual third home of Lao football").
Ask any person in the streets of Vientiane for their thoughts on the Elephants upcoming game and you will hear a common refrain: "bor khao-jii ". This is Lao for "I think the Elephants are in for a shot. If they get out to an early lead, and can just keep the run going through the mid-field, it should be very close."
Organisers, in order to build expectations in the lead up to the game, imposed a worldwide media black-out on the basis that too many other sporting events had lost considerable intrigue, and therefore cache, through the public being aware of them beforehand. The black-out has appeared to work very well, with virtually no media outlets commenting on the match in any way whatsoever. However, rumours have spread on the internet that CNN in particular has let its excitement get the better of it and tried to circumvent the media black-out by running a series of stories with a subliminal theme (A story on the magnificence of elephants in Lagos, Nigeria. A subsequent story on how the Vietnamese economy is tanking, and then a brief story on Britney Spears entitled "From Beautiful Swan to Ugly Duckling?").
Despite the media blackout, naturally the Elephants vs Swans game is being compared with another big contest which has the potential to shape the wider world - the 2008 US Presidential Election. Political pundits have drawn obvious parallels between the Elephants, and Barack Obama, both in terms of youth and freshness (to quote Donnie Whalberg and Jordan Knight from their recent leading article in the New Yorker magazine "Barack and the Lao Elephants are the real New Kids on the Block"), and eloquence (the Elephants theme song including the word "stomp" a poetic 138 times). The comparison is no less striking on the other side: John McCain once spent some time in Vietnam.
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