blog, diversity, humor, news, race

Alexandra Wallace for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Queen?

In the nearly 15 years of  writing my “Amok” column in that historic ethnic media publication known as Asian Week, I can’t recall ever seeing a force unite such a disparate group as Asian Americans so totally. And just in time for heritage month.

Given our ethnic variety, never mind our generational differences, it would take a phenomenon of sorts to bring us all together. But then, there she was, like no one else in history, unifying us in these digital times, simply by appearing on the screen and saying the magic words: “Ching, chong, ting, tong, ling long.”

You mean Alexandra Wallace, that ex-UCLA chick who went viral on YouTube?

Wallace, the fresh face of unconscious racism,  gets my vote for San Francisco’s Asian Heritage Street Fair Queen. You might say, we don’t have a queen, at least not that kind. Or that in these modern times a queen is so passé.  But in 2011, Wallace, that ditzy blonde with a webcam and pushup bra, deserves something for waking up a community that normally stays silent.

Quiet Asians?  Not after Wallace did her thing.

If you’ve been living under a large ramen bowl the last six months, google Wallace and you’ll see how she castigated Asians at UCLA for being loud in the library, talking on their cell phones to call people about the Japanese earthquake and practically turning the dorms into Asian ghettoes.

Boorish and graceless, sure.  But then Wallace added a racist touch with her “ching-chong” talk.

It’s just so natural when you want to mock an Asian to get your “ching-chong” on.
 
The “ching-chong” joke has been with us for ages, just as fried chicken and watermelon jokes have hounded blacks since slavery. Today, only a truly racist and ignorant lout would be so unoriginal.

But sensitivity to Asians and Asian Americans just isn’t that far along. So we must endure the Wallaces of the world (and there are millions of them out there) and witness as they discover for the first time their inner “ching-chong” and think they’re being hysterically funny.

Blame it on the media. Trickle down doesn’t work in economic, but it does in pop culture.

Rosie O’Donnell, Rush Limbaugh, Adam Carolla et al. have all fed at the “ching-chong” trough. Morning DJs are notorious. Despite community protests, there’s still a green light that says mock away.

It’s about time the green light turns red.

As a private person, Wallace may deserve an ounce of sympathy. But in this case, she did it for world to see, on the internet, where revolutions are spawned.
 
Inadvertantly,she ushered in the anti-“ching-chong” revolution.

Web-savvy Asian Americans irate at Wallace’s insensitivity responded with videos of their own, some  showing real style..

Wallace ultimately took down her video and apologized. I’m sure she got some menacing taunts, but many more responses I saw seemed to be creative reactions from young Asian Americans.

Historically, Asian Americans have always been slow to meet the challenge of negative speech. A Wallace rant? It’s an invitation to debate. As a first amendment absolutist, I always believe in more speech not less. This time, the internet allowed Asian Americans to speak out.

Her political science professor, Phil Gussin thought some of it was too harsh..

“What Wallace did was hurtful and inexcusable, but the response has been far more egregious,” Gussin reportedly told the UCLA campus paper, the Daily Bruin. “ [Asian Americans] responded with greater levels of intolerance.”

No, I’d say Asian Americans woke up and decided it was time to stand up and be heard.

Besides, if there’s no hate behind her statements, just ignorance, then Wallace has nothing to fear.

She should have stayed in school. Maybe started dating Asian guys.

Remember, any negatives Wallace experienced are just a fraction of what Asian Americans have experienced since coming to America. From Exclusion Acts, to anti-miscegenation laws, to internment camps, Asian Americans have endured it all. We didn’t go away. If we had, there’d be no community worth being part of.

So, yo, Alexandra, thanks for bringing us all together.  Here’s an olive branch—to stand on—my unofficial  street fair queen. See you at the balut-eating contest?

I’m emceeing the event at the Street Fair in San Francisco. Wouldn’t it bee neat to see Alexandra suck a fertilized duck egg? I have one with her name on it!

blog, news, politics

Humanizing Bin Laden: He read Noam Chomsky? Colored his beard and used “natural Viagra”?

Osama bin Laden’s home videos have been released as have other details about his life.

Is it a surprise that he liked reading MIT Professor Noam Chomsky’s work?  The right has always marginalized Chomsky who remains an outspoken left-wing intellect.  But is there some validity to the questions Chomsky asks about the death of OBL?

You may disagree with him, but if you don’t allow Chomsky to speak his mind and discredit him as a “two-nickel crank” (as the Wall Street Journal has done) what has become of our great country, the land of the free? 

Don’t we fight the terrorists in order to protect our unique freedoms? We certainly don’t fight terrorism in order to  restrict or intimidate Americans from expressing their strong opinions.

More Amok at www.aaldef.org/blog

blog, news, race, sports

Boxing as karaoke: Mosley’s puffed up face shows you can go through the motions against Manny Pacquiao in a lacklustre fight and still end up looking like dog crap

Anyone who ordered the pay-per-view  fight last Saturday between Manny Pacquiao and Sugar SHAME Mosley (my new nickname for the loser) would be correct in demanding your money back.

At least if you were in Vegas, you could have won your money back betting the fight. For the rest of us, we were taken in by the promoters.

You wanted a fight? For the masses of Filipinos throughout the world watching via satellite, what we saw could only be described as a glorified sparring contest at best, a fraud at worst.

It was like karaoke boxing. Not really boxing, but it sort of looked and sounded like it. And everyone was drunk and had a good time anyway, right? Not exactly.

For our money we all deserved to see a real genuine battle between two men who actually punch at each other. We don’t watch boxing to see how sportsmanlike the boxers are in their etiquette.  We watch to see two brave opponents beat each other to the pulp. But in this title bout, no less, we had Pacquiao and Mosley practically hugging and winking at each other, love-tapping their gloves at the start and finish of each round.

Now I see why many people have turned to MMA. There’s no pussyfooting  there. And if there was, you could really tell.

In boxing, all the worse evasive things were on display in Saturday’s  championship fight. Mosley didn’t land many punches because he didn’t throw many. He was on the run most of the fight. The ring isn’t the place to do your roadwork.  

Even M.P., our hero, seemed to go at it in cruise control. When Pacquiao knocked down  Mosley in the 3rd round, one expected to see  Pacman  go for the kill. Instead, Pacquiao seemed to let Mosley continue the charade. M.P surely didn’t fight like his life depended on it. 

Pacquiao did seem to wake up when Mosley stepped on his foot then pushed him down.  Counted as a knockdown, the unfairness of it all seemed to inspire Pacquiao to step up the assault.  A matter of honor, I guess. But by then, he was so far ahead, there was just no point.

And that is the problem for both fighters. For Mosley, who should do everyone a favor and go off and retire, there was no point in this fight, other than to collect his massive pay day.

For Pacquiao,  it’s getting to be the same thing. There is no one left to fight except Floyd Mayweather, who continues to make unreasonable demands that make booking the “dream fight” more and more unlikely.

Mayweather may have wanted to look at how Pacquiao handled a seemingly stronger, larger opponent (as if he didn’t have ample evidence). But there was something about the aging Mosley that seemed to make many people doubt Pacquiao.  The pay-per-view seemed particularly biased toward Mosley, as if this would be the comeuppance for Pacquiao, the smaller man.

By the end, sportscaster James Brown, who is related by marriage to Filipina Loida Lewis, was apologizing for having bought into the Mosley hype. He should be. Another doubter of Filipino prowess fights the dust.

I imagine even Mayweather was looking at the fight as a barometer of how well he’d do against Pacquaio.  Mayweather had beaten Mosley recently, but not as easy as the Pacman did.

Seeing Mosley, his battered face puffed up and swollen,  say that he was surprised by Pacquiao’s power probably didn’t make Mayweather call his agent and say, “Let’s book this fight.”

I’ve always said Pacquiao should quit while he still has his head.  It’s no different now. He has so much to give to the world beyond yellow boxing gloves. Let’s hope he quits now.  

After Mosley, I don’t care to see any more. Readers will note that as an avid Pacquiao follower I was mum on this fight prior to Saturday. It just didn’t seem worth talking about.  Now the fight’s  real value emerges.

It could be Pacquiao’s last.

If it is, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Manny has nothing else to prove in the ring.

For the sport, he should quit now.

But for his accountant, his bank statement, and his entire entourage, the beat goes on.

blog, journalism, news, politics

May Day, May Day! Stand by for news: The night Obama pre-empted Osama

When most Americans were trying to figure out if it would be Donald Trump or “Desperate Housewives,” (Sunday is a TV night, right?) the president chose to make the most dramatic news release of his life.

Only it started as a tease, a stand by notice that lingered and made the imagination race. What could it be?

I knew it could only be about a death.  Or that someone is dying. The current president? Not after the birther victory

Is Biden dead? Would we want to know that soon? The TV folks were restrained, as they should. Then someone mentioned national security, and I knew. It had to be something bigger than Biden. How about Osama bin Laden?

Where were you when you heard?

I regret I was flipping around watching the TVnewsers vamp. And while some preferred restraint (like Wolf Blitzer who wouldn’t go on without multiple independent sources), I had flipped to Geraldo on Fox as he confirmed the news and started high-fiving a guest in his studio.

I wasn’t sure that was appropriate.

I would have liked to have heard from the president first.

But in this digital age, speed is speed. Everyone knows a little something.  Before the president spoke I was already constructing a birther joke: I tweeted it. It went something like…. The president is going to announce that Obama bin Laden is dead and the U.S. has the body. Donald Trump wants to know if its the long-form or the short-form.

Before the night is over, there are hundreds of similar variations on Twitter. Even Nick Kristoff of the  NYT had a variation of “longform,shortform.”

And by the time the president was able say, “I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of nnocent men, women, and children,”  he had been scooped.

But  he’s still the big winner, even if the announcement on the West Coast at least,  pre-empted all of  “America’s Next Great Restaurant” and “Desperate Housewives,” but  not Trump’s “Apprentice.”

No worries. The president still got the big show. He pre-empted the terrorist with his own real life “24.”

Emil Guillermo's amok commentary on race, politics, diversity…and everything else. It's Emil Amok's Takeout!

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