Talk Shows and Political Movement
In 2003, Wong converted to Christianity during the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong. He was attracted to liberation theology after his contact with the least-privileged in society during the crisis. He was active in mobilising support for the Hong Kong 1 July marches.
In 2004, he took a sabbatical from his talk show "Close Encounters of a Political Kind", after being beaten up by gangsters allegedly paid by the Chinese Government, citing "political pressure". Following a self-imposed three-month exile in Canada, he returned to Hong Kong where he was sacked from his weeknight political phone-in radio programme, and moved to a late Saturday night slot (with significantly fewer listeners). In less than a year, the programme was cancelled and Wong was effectively and controversially taken off-air. This event was significant for Hong Kong as it meant that there was no longer any outspoken and critical radio talk show host on any Hong Kong radio station. During his time off-air, he continued to run his beef noodle restaurant in Mongkok.
In 2006, he co-founded the League of Social Democrats, an uncompromisingly pro-democracy, pro-human rights, anti-Big Business political party in Hong Kong. In 2007, he made a comeback to phone-in radio talk show, hosting a weekly political radio programme "Wong Yuk-man Channel" on MyRadio. The show quickly gained popularity and some videos of his broadcasts – captured by a studio camera and uploaded to YouTube – have become some of the most-watched videos in Hong Kong. "Wong Yuk-man Channel" has subsequently become a twice-weekly radio programme, now extended from one hour to 1½ hours. In 2008, he was appointed a trustee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Read more about this topic: Raymond Wong (politician)
Famous quotes containing the words talk shows, talk, shows, political and/or movement:
“Talk shows are proof that conversation is dead.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“We talk of the Turks, and abhor the cannibals; but may not some of them, go to heaven, before some of us?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I’d wish the government took honest people into consideration, it shows enough consideration for scoundrels.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)