Why buy Playboy if you can look at porn on the internet... and other Lee Kuan Yew gems

No, these are not my sentiments. This is the latest pearl of wisdom to emerge from Lee Kuan Yew's controversial interview with National Geographic.

To quote Singapore's founding father and current Minister Mentor in full:

"Why do you want buy Playboy now if you can go into the internet? You get more than what you get in Playboy, that's that," Lee refuses to say whether or not he has ever partaken of the joys of such computer-based stimulation.

These comments didn't end up in the Nat Geo story, so how do we know that Lee said this? Thanks to the assiduous efforts of the Singapore government's media handlers of course.

Like all good PR professionals, Madam Yeong Yoon Ying, press secretary to Lee Kuan Yew, records all his interviews in case disputes with journalists arise at a later date.

Rather helpfully, the Singapore government has just released a full transcript of Lee's interview with National Geographic journalist Mark Jacobson.

Lee's comments about lazy Singaporeans deserving to lose out to hard-working immigrants seem to have caused the most fuss in the Singaporean blogosphere thus far.

But there are some other real gems in the transcript.

For example, we discover that Lee is still troubled by lingering paranoia about a Malay/Muslim "fifth column" in Singapore.

After insisting that Singapore is still a "society in transition" rather than a nation, Lee says:

"We make them say the national pledge and sing the national anthem but suppose we have a famine, will your Malay neighbour give you the last few grains of rice or will she share it with her family or fellow Muslim or vice versa?"

Although Jacobson doesn't ask the question, the interview also raises tantalising questions about whether the elder Lee, now 85, still has the desire to stand for election in the polls that are likley to take place in the next year.

When asked what his favourite hawker stall is, Lee says: "I can’t go anymore because so many people want to shake my hands and I become a distraction, I can’t really get down to my food. I tend to go to restaurants when I go out and I try restaurants with a quiet corner where I can sneak in and sneak out with my friends and not have a crowd wanting to shake hands with me."

If Lee doesn't want to be shaking hands with his fans, will he really want to be out campaigning, even for just the nine-day period that the government restricts electioneering to?

I'd urge anyone interested in Singapore to read the interview transcript in full, if you can bear to put up with Jacobson's fawning manner.

Every interviewer has to butter up their subject a bit but Jacobson, who may not have realised the government were planning to release the transcript, takes journalistic brown-nosing to new levels.

In his opening gambit, Jacobson explains that he's interviewed many American Presidents since he was born in 1948 but that "they come and go".

But, our fearless correspondent tells Lee, "I’ve never interviewed anybody who has stayed the length that you have. It’s like interviewing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson rolled up into one, so it’s kind of nice."

We're clearly not talking Woodward and Bernstein here.

It makes sense to try to make your interviewee feel at ease but Jacobson doesn't ask Lee a single tough question. Contrast his interview with the brilliant battle between Lee and recently-deceased columnist William Safire, who called Lee a "dictator" to his face.