Your right to be misinformed is safe
Sombat "Nu Ling" Boonngarmanong, head of the pro-government group Red Sunday, isn't involved in show business per se, but he certainly had its stars gossiping after allegedly criticising one of their own, actor Somchai "Tao" Khemklad.
An information graphic is circulating on the social media that includes a photo of Nu Ling with his alleged tweet, “Tao warns ‘whistle mobs’ about going too far.” Next to that is a picture of Tao and a quote attributed to him: “I don’t understand what Suthep wants. He wanted to kill the [amnesty] bill and it’s gone, and I totally agreed with that. But now he’s going too far. Don’t forget he’s a cheat and was responsible for the [red-shirt] deaths in 2010.”
The problem is that Tao insists he’s never said any such thing, and Nu Ling swears he’s just as puzzled about it, so this becomes a misinformation graphic.
Tao, who backs protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban to the hilt, is pretty upset and refuses to believe that Nu Ling isn’t behind the smear campaign. He complained to his pal Pat Nartsawe, who manages the band Thaitanium, and Pat spread the word online. “You’re playing with the wrong guy,” she warned Nu Ling on Instagram. “My brother Tao Somchai is a real man and he never said what you wrote.”
To drive the point home, Pat also posted an actual quote from Tao: “Don’t mess with me. I’m not your friend. I will be after you, man!”
Other celebrities have rushed to Tao’s side, led by the increasingly outspoken Jetrin “J” Wattanasin, everyone sharing his suspicion that Nu Ling dreamed up the graphic – or at least the bogus quote it attributes to Tao.
Theme today: denial
Here’s another headline in the newsy career of Treechada “Poy” Petcharat, the former Miss TU and Miss International Queen, and it comes from overseas.
As reported earlier, Poy – one of Asia’s top transsexual entertainers – has “gone inter”, working on a big-budget Hong Kong film titled “The White Storm”, and she’s spent a lot of time there on the set, flying back and forth from Bangkok.
The headline-making gossip making the rounds is that Louis Koo, one of her co-stars in the film, has been flirting with her – pretty intensely by the sound of things. By the time the “news” got to Thailand, it was amended with the claim that she’s broken up with her Thai boyfriend.
Poy denies it all in an interview with our sister newspaper Kom Chad Luek. Yes, she’s become “close” to Louis Koo, she admits, but it’s strictly an on-the-job relationship and nothing more. “There’s absolutely no chance it would ever develop into a romance,” she says, “but with the rumour going around, it will certainly make me feel nervous when I’m working with him on the set!”
