After hearing from Asian Americans around the country, ESPN took action and fired the writer responsible for the “chink in the armor’ headline. And it suspended an anchor for using the same tired cliche.
That’s both good and bad.
Good, in that it punishes the perps. Bad, in that it should send a chill through the ranks of wordsmiths in journalism.
I take no joy in seeing someone lose their job. Indeed, I think a public apology on all ESPN shows would have been sufficient.
The problem with firing is that the mesage to ESPN workers sounds more like censorship than a corrective action.
We’re fighting racism, not free speech.
And yet, what happened when we were free to talk about Lin?
People started ching-chonging and using racist language because they don’t really know how to be clever or smart about Lin without resorting to race.
It shows how ignorant and how limited people are about Asian Americans.
When Lebron or Kobe have a great game, no one breaks out the fried chicken and watermelon jokes. Everyone knows that’s racist. For Asian Americans, no one seems to care. Maybe now they will.
I’m sure ESPN didn’t want to be a buzzkill and spoil the party. But by taking an extreme zero tolerance stand against slurs, it shows it means business.
Lin’s performance today helping the Knicks beat the defending champion Dallas Mavericks means Linsanity has legs.
Maybe now we can all celebrate it without a lapse into racism.
Category Archives: movies
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.
Emil Guillermo’s take on “Lost” Finale:Longer than a Sunday School lesson, complete with Father, Son, and Holy Ghosts; But still a showbiz–not a religious experience–for me. Now bring on the devil–the “24” finale
Over the last six years, I was an on-again, off-again “Lost” watcher. I really got into it when I lived on Oahu. I really got off of it when I was too linear for the show’s own good.
I was a Lapsed-Lost follower.
I hadn’t seen an episode for three years until I was hooked by last week’s hype.
The last show? Really? No more “Lost”? Honest to God? I was back on the island.
Without benefit of Cliff Notes, it took me awhile to figure out how I was “Lost” all those years. But it didn’t matter. And then it all came together. The “lost” were found, and everyone was reunited in…. Heaven?
I suppose if I was a devotee all these years, this would have been my religious experience. The family coming together and seeing the light.
But I wonder how else they could have tied things up. People coming together for a journey, but instead of Oceanic 815, they’re sitting in pews at a church. The 8:15 Mass?
The number of Christian references would have bothered me if I were say Buddhist or Muslim. But since I was in church earlier that day for Pentecost Sunday and had the image of tongues of fire in my mind all day, I was intrigued how openly Christian the finale was.
Symbols abound: The coffin marked “Christian Shepherd.” The drinking of the cup, with the words, “Now you are like me.” Desmond being lowered to the depths of fire and the earth moving–“Revelation”? Ben apologizing to John, and John saying, “I forgive you.” Jack the son, with his father, who has all the answers, or not. But yes, we’re all dead. No Last Supper. But there is a group hug/cocktail-less cocktail party, with everyone ending up in the pews. There are 16 people, 4 more than the apostles. And the father walks down the aisle to open the door. Let there be light. Transfiguration? And then it’s all interspersed with Jack on the island, on his back, wounded on his side, a more obvious Christ figure, no? But Jesus didn’t have his dog with him in the end.
I swear the show was more fun than watching the Church Channel.
I watched the ending again this morning, and if I wasn’t so snarky, I’d say the guilt from missing the last three seasons almost rendered me teary-eyed. But I dare say it was more remarkable a display from the producers than not, and hardly the cop-out as suggested by one major daily.
If you wanted a technical explanation for things, you’re a fool anyway. The producers had it more right than not. I forgive them their convolution.
When you kill a show, you are attending a funeral. I did catch symbols of other religions on the stained glass windows, so it wasn’t totally Christian, just predominantly so. But the tone was fine for saying goodbye. The story isn’t about physics and science. It’s about human relations and characters, and for something so Hollywood the “Lost” finale was pretty damn moving.
Now on to the end of “24,”where the devil shall be vanquished as the day ends.
More State of Play: Minority Journalists on the sinking ship
One thing more thing on the Russell Crowe movie: It does have plenty of minorities sprinkled in the newsroom, except of course in the lead roles. There’s the black city editor who hounds Cal. There’s a few black writers seen at their desks. And an Asian guy who could be an editor or the legal guy.
And they’re all working in a place that looks like a fire hazard.
I didn’t hear my kids say, “Gee, Dad, I want to work there.”
It must have seemed to them like a white collar coal mine.
Still, the lack of diversity in journalism may actually be a good thing now. Maybe minority journalists are lucky that we’re not the lead rats on the sinking ship.
I suppose that depends if journalism is LIFO (last in, first out) or FIFO (first in, first out).
In survival mode, the state of journalism makes it impossible to sustain any kind of racial equity. And retention rates for talented minorities were low even before the decline of the industry. If anything, media companies will need better affirmative action programs to make sure journalism and the media business doesn’t stay all-white for another 100 years.
As both a former TV and newspaper reporter, I did note how in the journalism movie, convention has turned the glamorous TV reporter into the dramatic chorus. Formerly, a director would simply flash a newspaper headline, filling the movie screen in bold type to emphasize a plot point.
So old school. But soon even an anchor or a breathless reporter summing up the plot will seem outdated.
In the future, we’ll all just get twittered.
