Category Archives: diversity

blog, diversity, journalism, movies, news, politics, race

No”yahoo!” for a “Yahoo-less” Yang; He’s free, but the internet may not be

Seems odd that on the day  we protest the corporate driven legislation that threatens the web, we  find ourselves contemplating the resignation of Chief Yahoo and pioneering web organizer, Jerry Yang.

Read my take Yang’s future on  the Asian American Legal Defense and Education blog at www.aaldef.org/blog

Yang resigned yesterday, leaving the company he founded while a student at Stanford in 1995.

It was a very different world  and a very different internet back then.

Of course, the business and the corporate world remains the same. Heartless, cold, money-driven.

Given that, how did Yang ever survive his biggest faux pas?   After all, his success has  nothing to do with cool technology or intricate algorithms.  In 2008, it wall about simple math.

That’s when he blew it on the Microsoft deal.

Rejecting the Microsoft take-over bid at more than$30 a share, nearly twice what the company was worth, was a tad naive for our country’s brand of  hard-ass capitalism.

Yang didn’t want to take the money and run. He had a dream, after all. But even after that, he stayed. When he was ousted as CEO, he hung around.  And now he’s gone from Yahoo for good.

I’ve got some suggestions for Yang 5.0. on my blog at  the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund:

 http://aaldef.org/blog/bye-bye-yahoo-hello-jerry-yang-50.html

Yang at 43 is a bit of a throwback,  a geek’s geek, less corporate money guy. And certainly less political.

If the web’s old values are to be enshrined as “the way,” it’s going to take a lot more political might from web veterans like Yang to protect it.

The fight over SOPA and PIPA is about how old media companies are trying to take back their old monopolies.And they’re using tried and true methods, the kind of special interest lobbying that produces legislation that protects the likes of Big Pharma, Big Auto, Big Oil, etc. 

SOPA and PIPA would have the effect of changing the democratizing nature of the web.  It’s got nothing to do with privacy. Just money and control. A taming of the world wide web? That’s way different from scouring and searching the web for whatever cool stuff was on it.

That was what a younger Yang was all about when he was a graduate student and Yahoo was his baby.

blog, diversity, race

“The Help,” the new help, and Dr. King: Still a lot of work to be done

 I was touched by Octavia Spencer’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday  as she mentioned Dr.King and domestic help.

Said Spencer: “…with regard to domestics in this country now and then, I think Dr. King said it best – all labor that uplifts humanity has diginity and importance. And I thank you for recognizing that with our film.”

Yes, all work has value. But why do certain people of certain races end up with the domestic jobs? I suppose that’s the indomitable spirit that we celebrate.  Some people just won’t take the jobs we will.  That’s the way it’s always been. But as Spencer talked of domestics, past and present, she didn’t really touch on the main difference among the help these days.

Like everything else, the help is a lot more diverse, with fewer American domestics. And a whole lot more immigrants.

In the 1900s, the help tended to be European immigrants and blacks from the South.

But nowadays, immigrants from around the world dominate, especially from Asia (most often the Philippines), Mexico and Latin America. And when it comes to the blacks, they aren’t from urban places or from the rural south. They’ve been replaced predominately by Caribbean immigrants.

The old South is just that, a dated notion of “the help” as nostalgic as “Gone with the Wind.”

The modern version would be a lot different movie.  The help? It’s Filipino or Latino definitely. They could have Salma Hayek play the part. The Filipina songstress Lea Salonga could do it on Broadway.

Recently, I went to a party at a college acquaintance’s home in San Francisco. I was the only non-white guest in the crowd. It was strange how I actually had more in common with the help than I did with the guests.

The help was a Filipino family that cooked and cleaned and worked for my college friend. They reminded me of my relatives.

When they saw me, they knew not to fraternize. I said a word or two I knew in Tagalog,  but they were total professionals who never broke character. They knew their place. This wasn’t a Filipino family party.

To them, I suppose I might have been a sign of progress.  A Filipino American on tonight’s guest list. How often does that happen?

But I looked at them all night hard at work and saw the opposite. Yes, all labor uplifts and all that.  Dr. King was right. But we were just an update of another kind of continuum.

The past was present, alive and well, with still much work to be done for us all.

blog, diversity, journalism, news, politics, race

Wake of the week: Lowe’s “Muslim Interruptus,” NDAA, and a farewell to Christopher Hitchens

My amok column on Lowe’s and its ad pullout, which I call an example of “Muslim Interruptus,” is up on

www.aaldef.org/blog

Frankly, the issue is worth making a big deal about, though its a basic capitalistic right to pull out whenever you feel like it. Barring contracts, free markets are free, right?

Taking that tack  just means you have to be ready for the political firestorm, and the potential loss in dollars. Though right now, Lowe’s seems to be positioning itself well to be the hardware store of choice for bigots, racists, and haters. Where do I get the supplies I need for the next cross-burning, hate-graffiti spree, or anti-diversity celebration requiring mild incendiary devices? 

I bet at Lowe’s, it’s service with a smile.

www.aaldef.org

The Lowe’s issue was a nice distraction from the The National Defense Authorization Bill, which passed this week with only minor changes that doesn’t really wipe out all the civil liberties concerns.

Maybe the payroll tax issue was used as a smokescreen to further distract attention.

Doesn’t anyone care the law would enable government to detain indefinitely anyone with suspected terrorisist ties, specifically to Al Qaeda, but given loopholes,  likely to include any terrorist organization the government wants to link you to.

The bigger deal is if it’s in the law and “codified.”  That’s the thing that makes all the gatekeepers sleep well  at night, because now they can pretty use this as a starting point for more extreme actions, and feel totally justified. They can lock you up, and now they can throw away the key. Before they had to at least remember there was a key.

Seems like with the NDAA, the American people lose a  whole lot more than Al Qaeda does.

And I thought the Iraq war ended this week.

When it did, I had no feeling. The war destroyed a presidency, our economy, and a sense of what our democracy’s all about. 

Maybe that’s why people aren’t up in arms about the NDAA.

But then there’s another distraction this week… at least for me.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

I was privileged to have Hitchens as a guest on my AM radio show in Washington, DC back in the ’90s. He was intelligent, brash, and provocative. The kind of guest that made radio fun and automatic. He’d call in and I could picture him with the tie undone,  ready with a snarky comment at my prompting.  I know he could seem like a pompous ass at times. But he could turn on the charm when his brilliance failed. And fortunately, or unfortunately,  it rarely did.  And he knew it.

When I moved on from D.C., we  never spoke again. But in recent years because of his writing, I knew he was sick and knew it was all coming to an end. But it doesn’t make it any less shocking when the news arrives via e-alert as it did last night, how the bad boy was quieted once and for all. I preferred the New York Times lead line to the Post’s. You can describe him as a great acerbic writer, but the Times put it in context by mentioning him in the same breath as Thomas Paine and George Orwell.

In the opinion ranks, those two are the Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. They’re not in heaven, but in the great Hall of Peruasive Essayists, somewhere in the equivalent of Cooperstown or Canton, a place where most of us who toil as columnists and bloggers hope to be laid to rest when we no longer have a pulse to register our opinion any longer. 

Hitchens knew the next stop is not a weekly column for a publication in the after life.

That’s the finality of this final deadline for Hitchens. Spirituality? Religion? Death bed conversion? Are you kidding.

So here’s where I just flat out say I hope he was wrong. 

I hope in the end, his belief system was turned upside down, and that faith turned out be fact.

That would have been a ripe opportunity for Hitchens. Because now he would know,or not know,the answer for real. 

 It would have made the utmost tragedy and shame his inability to share the truth with us all, one last time.

blog, diversity, news, politics, race

To fuel his rise, Newt Gingrich loves the undocumented– but just a little bit; Plus, a few thoughts on Herman Cain and the unofficial HCSAI—Herman Cain Sexual Appetite Index.

Newt Gingrich knows how to polarize, so why wouldn’t he be the guy on the right talking about some kind immigration reform? No one else is on the left,or the right.

Check out my Amok comments on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog :

www.aaldef.org/blog

Gingrich’s ploy is really a smart way for the GOP to seem diverse without really being diverse. People in Washington are already talking about the demographic edge with people of color that Obama has. But the Democrats have a bad habit of ignoring the people they love. 

Newt needs to give some people of color an alternative–even if it’s a laughbly bad alternative, this idea of giving some undocumented immigrants legal status,but not citizenship.

It also gives GOP hardliners on immigration a softer edge.  Newt needs that to appeal to the Marco Rubio wing.

So the legalization idea is just  Gingrich using extreme wedge politics that’s more self-serving than humanitarian.

Legalization for some undocumented isn’t amnesty, but Newt will get the effect he wants:  Differentiation from Romney, Perry and the others.

For more check out my Amok column on the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog….

www.aaldef.org/blog

NOW ABOUT THAT HERMAN CAIN FELLOW….

He”s “suspending” his campaign. Just like a student gets suspended, there’s always hope the Principal will let him back him for something.

A fly-by at the GOP convention? But yes, it’s over. And isn’t this all Cain wanted anyway?  It was just a chance to pimp his book and sell his speeches so he can command Gingrich level $60,000 and up fees. He didn’t really want to be president. Like the Redford candidate in the film of the same name, he surely didn’t want to win the nomination and be put in the position of “Now what?”  He just wanted a platform a presidential campagin could give him, sort of like a super Facebook page.

So the Cain Train is suspended, but I still sort of see him as the lone guy riding on the subway at night, looping around waiting for an audience to appear, muttering “9-9-9.”  Books and speeches for sale. Maybe a reality show. Maybe Fox Business will hire him.

As the campaign ends, so ends the relevance of the HCSAI: The Herman Cain Sexual Appetite Index.  (It seems to be healthier than his appetite for pizza).

On the bright side, Cain’s left with his family intact, for now.

And we are only left to wonder what an Obama/Cain post-racial American presidential fantasy might have been.