Author Norman Mailer called New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani "a one-woman kamikaze" and "a token" minority hire in a Rolling Stone interview, prompting the president of the Asian American Journalists Association to call him a racist.
Racist or not, Mailer is certainly part of the mindset that keeps the mainstream media -- whether it's journalism or the entertainment industry -- so lily white. If you're a person of color and get in, then of course it must be because you were some affirmative action case.
I've experienced this in my career, taking a job at a big newspaper and having most people assume I was an intern from the minority internship program. Even at other jobs, there is always a subtle undercurrent that the few non-white people on staff were there only because there was some mandate to hire minorities.
Sure, sometimes a minority candidate gets hired when they're not ready for the job. I've seen it. I've also seen a lot of white people who aren't qualified get hired as well. Having a diverse workforce is generally good, but it has to be done right, with good hiring decisions that don't fall into the affirmative action trap that Mailer is complaining about.
Posted by harry at 8:52 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Author Norman Mailer called New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani "a one-woman kamikaze" and "a token" minority hire in a Rolling Stone interview, prompting the president of the Asian American Journalists Association to call him a racist.
Racist or not, Mailer is certainly part of the mindset that keeps the mainstream media -- whether it's journalism or the entertainment industry -- so lily white. If you're a person of color and get in, then of course it must be because you were some affirmative action case.
I've experienced this in my career, taking a job at a big newspaper and having most people assume I was an intern from the minority internship program. Even at other jobs, there is always a subtle undercurrent that the few non-white people on staff were there only because there was some mandate to hire minorities.
Sure, sometimes a minority candidate gets hired when they're not ready for the job. I've seen it. I've also seen a lot of white people who aren't qualified get hired as well. Having a diverse workforce is generally good, but it has to be done right, with good hiring decisions that don't fall into the affirmative action trap that Mailer is complaining about.
Posted by harry at 8:52 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Author Norman Mailer called New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani "a one-woman kamikaze" and "a token" minority hire in a Rolling Stone interview, prompting the president of the Asian American Journalists Association to call him a racist.
Racist or not, Mailer is certainly part of the mindset that keeps the mainstream media -- whether it's journalism or the entertainment industry -- so lily white. If you're a person of color and get in, then of course it must be because you were some affirmative action case.
I've experienced this in my career, taking a job at a big newspaper and having most people assume I was an intern from the minority internship program. Even at other jobs, there is always a subtle undercurrent that the few non-white people on staff were there only because there was some mandate to hire minorities.
Sure, sometimes a minority candidate gets hired when they're not ready for the job. I've seen it. I've also seen a lot of white people who aren't qualified get hired as well. Having a diverse workforce is generally good, but it has to be done right, with good hiring decisions that don't fall into the affirmative action trap that Mailer is complaining about.
Posted by harry at 8:52 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
A federal appeals court upheld civil contempt findings against reporters whose confidential sources pointed to scientist Wen Ho Lee as a possible spy.
I'm a little torn here bacause as a journalist I believe reporters shouldn't be compelled to reveal sources. However, Lee was totally screwed over by the government and the media that cow-towed to whatever the government said about Lee without really checking it out, as journalists are supposed to do.
Helen Zia's book,My Country Versus Me
A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage
Maybe we'll never know what really happened and where those missing data tapes are. Maybe Lee was a spy. In any event, the whole case showed how easily Asian Americans are stereotyped and how racial profiling can proliferate in the media.
Posted by harry at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A federal appeals court upheld civil contempt findings against reporters whose confidential sources pointed to scientist Wen Ho Lee as a possible spy.
I'm a little torn here bacause as a journalist I believe reporters shouldn't be compelled to reveal sources. However, Lee was totally screwed over by the government and the media that cow-towed to whatever the government said about Lee without really checking it out, as journalists are supposed to do.
Helen Zia's book,My Country Versus Me
A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage
Maybe we'll never know what really happened and where those missing data tapes are. Maybe Lee was a spy. In any event, the whole case showed how easily Asian Americans are stereotyped and how racial profiling can proliferate in the media.
Posted by harry at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A federal appeals court upheld civil contempt findings against reporters whose confidential sources pointed to scientist Wen Ho Lee as a possible spy.
I'm a little torn here bacause as a journalist I believe reporters shouldn't be compelled to reveal sources. However, Lee was totally screwed over by the government and the media that cow-towed to whatever the government said about Lee without really checking it out, as journalists are supposed to do.
Helen Zia's book,My Country Versus Me
A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage
Maybe we'll never know what really happened and where those missing data tapes are. Maybe Lee was a spy. In any event, the whole case showed how easily Asian Americans are stereotyped and how racial profiling can proliferate in the media.
Posted by harry at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Yay! If you ever worried that life in mainstream America was going to get boring, what with all the ethnic sensitivity and the lack of racism 'n' stuff, don't worry. You'll have plenty of heartburn for years to come.
This week's bad guy is T-Mobile, who are currently promoting their fee-less cell phone service using flash animated banners of the "Poser Mobile Posse". The Posse are three cartoon figures: "Big Spenda" Lopez, "The Fee" Jones, and, naturally, "25 cent" Chang. In the animations, they are "posing" as cell phone service providers who try to sell their customers on the hip hop cred of their services, all the while charging fees. You can see the three banners on this student's website. And here's a closer view of our very own representative, "25 cent Chang".
The three caricatures of a smoked-out Latino, slit-eyed, grinning Asian, and fat, pimped-out white guy are a new, interesting spin on using racial stereotypes to sell product. Instead of selling mainstream whiteness a la Aryancrombie and Fitch, T-Mobile is itself clearly trying to sell black hip hop cred. The implication of the ads is that whites, Latinos and Asians are not really hip hop, not really street, not really trustworthy. The ads are meant to appeal to a consumer base that will presumably accept this premise without question: either a black consumer base, or a non-black consumer base anxious to acquire street legitimacy themselves.
That Latinos, whites and Asians are being sacrificed in favor of a tough, street image of blackness is, as I said, interesting, since we're used to seeing blacks, Latinos and Asians sacrificed for a clean image of whiteness. But it's only interesting for about two minutes. Then it's just racist. I really hope they don't think this ploy will actually work.
If you want to tell them yourself exactly what kind of metal this balloon is made of, here's the contact info:
T–Mobile Customer Relations
PO Box 3730
Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380
1-800-932-8997
1-877-677-5505
email: click on the words CONTACT US at the bottom of their website
Thanks to May-lee Chai, via Heather Woodward, for the heads up.
Posted by claire at 2:00 AM | Comments (72) | TrackBack
Yay! If you ever worried that life in mainstream America was going to get boring, what with all the ethnic sensitivity and the lack of racism 'n' stuff, don't worry. You'll have plenty of heartburn for years to come.
This week's bad guy is T-Mobile, who are currently promoting their fee-less cell phone service using flash animated banners of the "Poser Mobile Posse". The Posse are three cartoon figures: "Big Spenda" Lopez, "The Fee" Jones, and, naturally, "25 cent" Chang. In the animations, they are "posing" as cell phone service providers who try to sell their customers on the hip hop cred of their services, all the while charging fees. You can see the three banners on this student's website. And here's a closer view of our very own representative, "25 cent Chang".
The three caricatures of a smoked-out Latino, slit-eyed, grinning Asian, and fat, pimped-out white guy are a new, interesting spin on using racial stereotypes to sell product. Instead of selling mainstream whiteness a la Aryancrombie and Fitch, T-Mobile is itself clearly trying to sell black hip hop cred. The implication of the ads is that whites, Latinos and Asians are not really hip hop, not really street, not really trustworthy. The ads are meant to appeal to a consumer base that will presumably accept this premise without question: either a black consumer base, or a non-black consumer base anxious to acquire street legitimacy themselves.
That Latinos, whites and Asians are being sacrificed in favor of a tough, street image of blackness is, as I said, interesting, since we're used to seeing blacks, Latinos and Asians sacrificed for a clean image of whiteness. But it's only interesting for about two minutes. Then it's just racist. I really hope they don't think this ploy will actually work.
If you want to tell them yourself exactly what kind of metal this balloon is made of, here's the contact info:
T–Mobile Customer Relations
PO Box 3730
Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380
1-800-932-8997
1-877-677-5505
email: click on the words CONTACT US at the bottom of their website
Thanks to May-lee Chai, via Heather Woodward, for the heads up.
Posted by claire at 2:00 AM | Comments (72) | TrackBack
Yay! If you ever worried that life in mainstream America was going to get boring, what with all the ethnic sensitivity and the lack of racism 'n' stuff, don't worry. You'll have plenty of heartburn for years to come.
This week's bad guy is T-Mobile, who are currently promoting their fee-less cell phone service using flash animated banners of the "Poser Mobile Posse". The Posse are three cartoon figures: "Big Spenda" Lopez, "The Fee" Jones, and, naturally, "25 cent" Chang. In the animations, they are "posing" as cell phone service providers who try to sell their customers on the hip hop cred of their services, all the while charging fees. You can see the three banners on this student's website. And here's a closer view of our very own representative, "25 cent Chang".
The three caricatures of a smoked-out Latino, slit-eyed, grinning Asian, and fat, pimped-out white guy are a new, interesting spin on using racial stereotypes to sell product. Instead of selling mainstream whiteness a la Aryancrombie and Fitch, T-Mobile is itself clearly trying to sell black hip hop cred. The implication of the ads is that whites, Latinos and Asians are not really hip hop, not really street, not really trustworthy. The ads are meant to appeal to a consumer base that will presumably accept this premise without question: either a black consumer base, or a non-black consumer base anxious to acquire street legitimacy themselves.
That Latinos, whites and Asians are being sacrificed in favor of a tough, street image of blackness is, as I said, interesting, since we're used to seeing blacks, Latinos and Asians sacrificed for a clean image of whiteness. But it's only interesting for about two minutes. Then it's just racist. I really hope they don't think this ploy will actually work.
If you want to tell them yourself exactly what kind of metal this balloon is made of, here's the contact info:
T–Mobile Customer Relations
PO Box 3730
Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380
1-800-932-8997
1-877-677-5505
email: click on the words CONTACT US at the bottom of their website
Thanks to May-lee Chai, via Heather Woodward, for the heads up.
Posted by claire at 2:00 AM | Comments (72) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area, if you don't already have plans for tonight (and hey, even if you do) you might want to check out Locus Arts tonight. Our friends there are hosting a CD release party for Bao Phi, a Minneapolis-based spoken word poet. Bao's been on Def Poetry Jam. Our own Director of Photography, Seng Chen, played on a couple of the tracks.
Read an interview with Bao here at New California Media
And here's a story at Pacific News Service I thought some of us can relate to: You may be average-sized in the U.S. but in Asia, you're considered fat. One girl's story of going from a Medium to an X-Large.
Posted by Melissa at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area, if you don't already have plans for tonight (and hey, even if you do) you might want to check out Locus Arts tonight. Our friends there are hosting a CD release party for Bao Phi, a Minneapolis-based spoken word poet. Bao's been on Def Poetry Jam. Our own Director of Photography, Seng Chen, played on a couple of the tracks.
Read an interview with Bao here at New California Media
And here's a story at Pacific News Service I thought some of us can relate to: You may be average-sized in the U.S. but in Asia, you're considered fat. One girl's story of going from a Medium to an X-Large.
Posted by Melissa at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area, if you don't already have plans for tonight (and hey, even if you do) you might want to check out Locus Arts tonight. Our friends there are hosting a CD release party for Bao Phi, a Minneapolis-based spoken word poet. Bao's been on Def Poetry Jam. Our own Director of Photography, Seng Chen, played on a couple of the tracks.
Read an interview with Bao here at New California Media
And here's a story at Pacific News Service I thought some of us can relate to: You may be average-sized in the U.S. but in Asia, you're considered fat. One girl's story of going from a Medium to an X-Large.
Posted by Melissa at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
After a recent IM with a Hyphen staffer, she blew my mind when she revealed "she only eats to get full, not for pleasure." To me, this is like drinking bad beer. How can you NOT care about what you put in your body? Besides the whole "temple = body" thing, there is just too much good things out there.
I cook out of necessity but mostly because I like to eat well. I get busy, too, and rely on bad food choices sometimes. But to make a regular habit, or not think about eating well, that would bum me out. So before she opened up a Hot Pocket, I hit her with this recipe, which comes out pretty good. I've made it a couple times now.
HALIBUT HYPHEN-STYLE
(for two)
1 lb of halibut
ground pepper
ginger (thumb size stalk, chopped)
green onions (four stalks, chopped in two inch strips)
shiitake mushrooms (handful, reconsituted if dried, sliced)
cilantro (handful, cut)
rock salt
1 1/2 tb veg oil
soy sauce
Season halibut with pepper and ginger and steam fish in wok or bamboo steamer (or wrap in foil and stick in preheated 400 degree oven) for 10-12 minutes. Be careful not to overcook and make sure fish is opaque before yanking it. When this is cooking, prep mushrooms, green onions, cilantro. Heat oil in saucepan on medium.
When fish is done, move to platter. Sprinkle with rock salt, then garnish with shiitake mushrooms, green onions. Turn up heat on oil, when it gets real hot (wait until you see a wisp of smoke), drizzle over the top of garnished halibut herb mountain. Snap, pop! Top with soy sauce and cilantro. Serve with rice and tea. Banging.
***Notes: Nothing is measured, so I'm only giving approximates. Add or subtract ingredients to your liking. You can sub any good light fish, like cod, but cod tends to smell too strong. Halibut is light, not too flaky and compliments the herbs well. Do NOT use sea bass! The delicious species is almost fished out!
Posted by at 1:29 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
After a recent IM with a Hyphen staffer, she blew my mind when she revealed "she only eats to get full, not for pleasure." To me, this is like drinking bad beer. How can you NOT care about what you put in your body? Besides the whole "temple = body" thing, there is just too much good things out there.
I cook out of necessity but mostly because I like to eat well. I get busy, too, and rely on bad food choices sometimes. But to make a regular habit, or not think about eating well, that would bum me out. So before she opened up a Hot Pocket, I hit her with this recipe, which comes out pretty good. I've made it a couple times now.
HALIBUT HYPHEN-STYLE
(for two)
1 lb of halibut
ground pepper
ginger (thumb size stalk, chopped)
green onions (four stalks, chopped in two inch strips)
shiitake mushrooms (handful, reconsituted if dried, sliced)
cilantro (handful, cut)
rock salt
1 1/2 tb veg oil
soy sauce
Season halibut with pepper and ginger and steam fish in wok or bamboo steamer (or wrap in foil and stick in preheated 400 degree oven) for 10-12 minutes. Be careful not to overcook and make sure fish is opaque before yanking it. When this is cooking, prep mushrooms, green onions, cilantro. Heat oil in saucepan on medium.
When fish is done, move to platter. Sprinkle with rock salt, then garnish with shiitake mushrooms, green onions. Turn up heat on oil, when it gets real hot (wait until you see a wisp of smoke), drizzle over the top of garnished halibut herb mountain. Snap, pop! Top with soy sauce and cilantro. Serve with rice and tea. Banging.
***Notes: Nothing is measured, so I'm only giving approximates. Add or subtract ingredients to your liking. You can sub any good light fish, like cod, but cod tends to smell too strong. Halibut is light, not too flaky and compliments the herbs well. Do NOT use sea bass! The delicious species is almost fished out!
Posted by at 1:29 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
After a recent IM with a Hyphen staffer, she blew my mind when she revealed "she only eats to get full, not for pleasure." To me, this is like drinking bad beer. How can you NOT care about what you put in your body? Besides the whole "temple = body" thing, there is just too much good things out there.
I cook out of necessity but mostly because I like to eat well. I get busy, too, and rely on bad food choices sometimes. But to make a regular habit, or not think about eating well, that would bum me out. So before she opened up a Hot Pocket, I hit her with this recipe, which comes out pretty good. I've made it a couple times now.
HALIBUT HYPHEN-STYLE
(for two)
1 lb of halibut
ground pepper
ginger (thumb size stalk, chopped)
green onions (four stalks, chopped in two inch strips)
shiitake mushrooms (handful, reconsituted if dried, sliced)
cilantro (handful, cut)
rock salt
1 1/2 tb veg oil
soy sauce
Season halibut with pepper and ginger and steam fish in wok or bamboo steamer (or wrap in foil and stick in preheated 400 degree oven) for 10-12 minutes. Be careful not to overcook and make sure fish is opaque before yanking it. When this is cooking, prep mushrooms, green onions, cilantro. Heat oil in saucepan on medium.
When fish is done, move to platter. Sprinkle with rock salt, then garnish with shiitake mushrooms, green onions. Turn up heat on oil, when it gets real hot (wait until you see a wisp of smoke), drizzle over the top of garnished halibut herb mountain. Snap, pop! Top with soy sauce and cilantro. Serve with rice and tea. Banging.
***Notes: Nothing is measured, so I'm only giving approximates. Add or subtract ingredients to your liking. You can sub any good light fish, like cod, but cod tends to smell too strong. Halibut is light, not too flaky and compliments the herbs well. Do NOT use sea bass! The delicious species is almost fished out!
Posted by todd at 1:29 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
I've been meaning to blog this all week --but I still think it's an exciting story. MTV has noticed Asian Americans!
As told in the NY Times article on "I Want My Hyphenated Identity" (cringe), MTV is going to be coming out with 3 new channels aimed at Asian Americans: MTV Desi (for South Asian Americans), MTV Chi (for Chinese Americans) and MTV K (for Korean Americans).
According to the Times:
The channels will not be merely tweaked reproductions of MTV India, MTV China or MTV Korea, three of MTV's 42 channels abroad. Rather, they will, like their target audiences, be hybrids, blending here and there and grappling with identity issues, mostly in English. MTV Desi will serve as the prototype. Interspersed among Bollywood videos, electronic tabla music and English-Gujarati hip-hop, it will feature brief documentary clips profiling desis, comic skits about South Asian-American generational conflicts, interviews with bicultural artists and desi house parties, live. MTV Chi will mix up Mandarin rock, Canto pop and Chinese-American rap; MTV K will tap into South Korean hip-hop and the little-known but vibrant Korean-American pop scene.
(As an aside, how are we supposed to pronounce MTV Chi? Chai, like the tea? or Chee, like cheese? who comes up with these names? Am I supposed to know because i'm of chinese descent?)
It's interesting that MTV, which to me seems to try to define and represent mainstream American youth culture in very white and sometimes black terms, is finally trying to figure out the whole "nation of immigrants" thing. After research in house groups and mini parties, "MTV concluded that second-generation immigrants not only desire their own age-appropriate connection to their parents' homeland but that they also passionately want to see their struggle to define themselves as hyphenated Americans mirrored on television."
Wow! People at MTV figured out that 2nd generation kids are not just all trying to be white, act white, and appropriate an all white culture! They didn't get that we don't like the concept "hyphenated" identity, but that will take another 20 or so years.
I'll be interested to see if this means higher visibility for our AA homegrown artists, and therefore commercial viability. If it brings in ad revenue and attracts a wide audience, it could mean good things for AA media. Or am I being too optimistic?
It is annoying to see that one of the only non-music ways the muckety mucks at MTV seem to think they can address ethnicity-specific programming is by addressing identity issues. Is that the assumption of white people, that we sit around in constant internal turmoil bleating, "I'm not white! Who am I then? I'm trapped between two (gasp!) cultures!"
Hopefully that will just be a stage of development for the channels, and they'll be able to mature to address other issues too.
Posted by jennifer at 5:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I've been meaning to blog this all week --but I still think it's an exciting story. MTV has noticed Asian Americans!
As told in the NY Times article on "I Want My Hyphenated Identity" (cringe), MTV is going to be coming out with 3 new channels aimed at Asian Americans: MTV Desi (for South Asian Americans), MTV Chi (for Chinese Americans) and MTV K (for Korean Americans).
According to the Times:
The channels will not be merely tweaked reproductions of MTV India, MTV China or MTV Korea, three of MTV's 42 channels abroad. Rather, they will, like their target audiences, be hybrids, blending here and there and grappling with identity issues, mostly in English. MTV Desi will serve as the prototype. Interspersed among Bollywood videos, electronic tabla music and English-Gujarati hip-hop, it will feature brief documentary clips profiling desis, comic skits about South Asian-American generational conflicts, interviews with bicultural artists and desi house parties, live. MTV Chi will mix up Mandarin rock, Canto pop and Chinese-American rap; MTV K will tap into South Korean hip-hop and the little-known but vibrant Korean-American pop scene.
(As an aside, how are we supposed to pronounce MTV Chi? Chai, like the tea? or Chee, like cheese? who comes up with these names? Am I supposed to know because i'm of chinese descent?)
It's interesting that MTV, which to me seems to try to define and represent mainstream American youth culture in very white and sometimes black terms, is finally trying to figure out the whole "nation of immigrants" thing. After research in house groups and mini parties, "MTV concluded that second-generation immigrants not only desire their own age-appropriate connection to their parents' homeland but that they also passionately want to see their struggle to define themselves as hyphenated Americans mirrored on television."
Wow! People at MTV figured out that 2nd generation kids are not just all trying to be white, act white, and appropriate an all white culture! They didn't get that we don't like the concept "hyphenated" identity, but that will take another 20 or so years.
I'll be interested to see if this means higher visibility for our AA homegrown artists, and therefore commercial viability. If it brings in ad revenue and attracts a wide audience, it could mean good things for AA media. Or am I being too optimistic?
It is annoying to see that one of the only non-music ways the muckety mucks at MTV seem to think they can address ethnicity-specific programming is by addressing identity issues. Is that the assumption of white people, that we sit around in constant internal turmoil bleating, "I'm not white! Who am I then? I'm trapped between two (gasp!) cultures!"
Hopefully that will just be a stage of development for the channels, and they'll be able to mature to address other issues too.
Posted by jennifer at 5:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I've been meaning to blog this all week --but I still think it's an exciting story. MTV has noticed Asian Americans!
As told in the NY Times article on "I Want My Hyphenated Identity" (cringe), MTV is going to be coming out with 3 new channels aimed at Asian Americans: MTV Desi (for South Asian Americans), MTV Chi (for Chinese Americans) and MTV K (for Korean Americans).
According to the Times:
The channels will not be merely tweaked reproductions of MTV India, MTV China or MTV Korea, three of MTV's 42 channels abroad. Rather, they will, like their target audiences, be hybrids, blending here and there and grappling with identity issues, mostly in English. MTV Desi will serve as the prototype. Interspersed among Bollywood videos, electronic tabla music and English-Gujarati hip-hop, it will feature brief documentary clips profiling desis, comic skits about South Asian-American generational conflicts, interviews with bicultural artists and desi house parties, live. MTV Chi will mix up Mandarin rock, Canto pop and Chinese-American rap; MTV K will tap into South Korean hip-hop and the little-known but vibrant Korean-American pop scene.
(As an aside, how are we supposed to pronounce MTV Chi? Chai, like the tea? or Chee, like cheese? who comes up with these names? Am I supposed to know because i'm of chinese descent?)
It's interesting that MTV, which to me seems to try to define and represent mainstream American youth culture in very white and sometimes black terms, is finally trying to figure out the whole "nation of immigrants" thing. After research in house groups and mini parties, "MTV concluded that second-generation immigrants not only desire their own age-appropriate connection to their parents' homeland but that they also passionately want to see their struggle to define themselves as hyphenated Americans mirrored on television."
Wow! People at MTV figured out that 2nd generation kids are not just all trying to be white, act white, and appropriate an all white culture! They didn't get that we don't like the concept "hyphenated" identity, but that will take another 20 or so years.
I'll be interested to see if this means higher visibility for our AA homegrown artists, and therefore commercial viability. If it brings in ad revenue and attracts a wide audience, it could mean good things for AA media. Or am I being too optimistic?
It is annoying to see that one of the only non-music ways the muckety mucks at MTV seem to think they can address ethnicity-specific programming is by addressing identity issues. Is that the assumption of white people, that we sit around in constant internal turmoil bleating, "I'm not white! Who am I then? I'm trapped between two (gasp!) cultures!"
Hopefully that will just be a stage of development for the channels, and they'll be able to mature to address other issues too.
Posted by jennifer at 5:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
On Friday, I and 4 other Hyphen staffers went to see Margaret Cho at Davies Symphony Hall in SF. She had two back to back shows (SF is her hometown after all). I've seen her perform twice before when I was living in Houston. Always a good time.
We went to the second show and it was completely packed. I've never seen so many cute gay boys in my life. We had awesome seats -- we were only about 10 rows from the stage.
She seemed a little tired, but she was still hilarious. I think maybe this wasn't her best show (thought I couldn't tell you why exactly). She's lost quite bit of weight. I know it's messed up for me to zero in on that right away, but it was the first thing I noticed. I was kind of surprised she didn't say anything about it -- Margaret's not shy about anything and she's gone over the weight issue before in a prior show, recounting the pressure she was under to slim down when she was on All American Girl.
Of course, she did one of her great imitations of her mom, but she only did one, like it was a requirement and she knew people expected it. The best though was her impression of Bjork. I thought I was going to burst, I was laughing so hard.
Anyways, I recommend her show. Here's her tour schedule. Did you know she keeps a blog too? It's pretty serious stuff. She's actually quite serious in person, at least the one time I interviewed her over the phone. But they say that about a lot of comedians.
Posted by Melissa at 11:13 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
On Friday, I and 4 other Hyphen staffers went to see Margaret Cho at Davies Symphony Hall in SF. She had two back to back shows (SF is her hometown after all). I've seen her perform twice before when I was living in Houston. Always a good time.
We went to the second show and it was completely packed. I've never seen so many cute gay boys in my life. We had awesome seats -- we were only about 10 rows from the stage.
She seemed a little tired, but she was still hilarious. I think maybe this wasn't her best show (thought I couldn't tell you why exactly). She's lost quite bit of weight. I know it's messed up for me to zero in on that right away, but it was the first thing I noticed. I was kind of surprised she didn't say anything about it -- Margaret's not shy about anything and she's gone over the weight issue before in a prior show, recounting the pressure she was under to slim down when she was on All American Girl.
Of course, she did one of her great imitations of her mom, but she only did one, like it was a requirement and she knew people expected it. The best though was her impression of Bjork. I thought I was going to burst, I was laughing so hard.
Anyways, I recommend her show. Here's her tour schedule. Did you know she keeps a blog too? It's pretty serious stuff. She's actually quite serious in person, at least the one time I interviewed her over the phone. But they say that about a lot of comedians.
Posted by Melissa at 11:13 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
On Friday, I and 4 other Hyphen staffers went to see Margaret Cho at Davies Symphony Hall in SF. She had two back to back shows (SF is her hometown after all). I've seen her perform twice before when I was living in Houston. Always a good time.
We went to the second show and it was completely packed. I've never seen so many cute gay boys in my life. We had awesome seats -- we were only about 10 rows from the stage.
She seemed a little tired, but she was still hilarious. I think maybe this wasn't her best show (thought I couldn't tell you why exactly). She's lost quite bit of weight. I know it's messed up for me to zero in on that right away, but it was the first thing I noticed. I was kind of surprised she didn't say anything about it -- Margaret's not shy about anything and she's gone over the weight issue before in a prior show, recounting the pressure she was under to slim down when she was on All American Girl.
Of course, she did one of her great imitations of her mom, but she only did one, like it was a requirement and she knew people expected it. The best though was her impression of Bjork. I thought I was going to burst, I was laughing so hard.
Anyways, I recommend her show. Here's her tour schedule. Did you know she keeps a blog too? It's pretty serious stuff. She's actually quite serious in person, at least the one time I interviewed her over the phone. But they say that about a lot of comedians.
Posted by Melissa at 11:13 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
In the last two weeks I've smoked approximately two packs of cigarettes directly and about twenty packs indirectly. Yep, I'm in Europe still.
I'm in Berlin, right now most definitely my favorite city in the world. I had the luck to arrive just as one of Berlin's famous and rare summer heat waves descended -- just in time for the solstice -- and to be reminded how in summer the whole city turns out of doors and into the funny wooden-slatted seats of its five thousand sidewalk cafes. Paris is famous for its sidewalk cafes, but you have to share them with traffic exhaust and traffic noise. I'm always shocked at how loud and unromantic Paris is whenever I forget long enough to go there. Berlin, on the other hand, is quiet and beautiful -- full of green, leafy parks lined with friendly cafes where they don't care if you sit all day drinking a single cup of coffee.
And now they have wifi.
In fact, I'm sitting at such a cafe right now, drinking my second wine spritzer and feeling a little drunk. They have H & M here. Now that's civilized.
I told an old friend of mine here (a documentary film producer) what kind of magazine Hyphen was and she got all excited and said, "You know my friend, [German murmur murmur]? I'm sure I've mentioned him before. He's Vietnamese but grew up here. He does the same thing, writes about the Vietnamese in Germany, you really should meet him!" I'm just waiting to hear that the Vietnamese and Korean Germans have gotten together and started a magazine. The children of the Korean guest workers invited here by West Germany starting in the fifties, and the Vietnamese guest workers invited here by East Germany starting around the same time, are now adults in their twenties and thirties. A couple of Asian American film festivals ago, they showed a German film about a transracial adoptee.
This world really is changing. Seven years ago, when l Ieft Berlin and moved back to the States, the city was one, big, ethnic German construction site, a sort of temporary Lager between the past and the future. But I didn't really think much back then about what the Berliner future was going to look like. Now the city is sparkling new glass and steel, two out of three restaurants are Turkish, Asian or some sort of Hispanic, one out of five hip, lovely young people you see on the streets and in the clubs is mixed or of some darker substance than German, and people I went to the university with are getting jobs as sensitivity trainers. You can actually start doing a little Asian spotting on the streets. On the train from Prague I sat across from three young women, presumably Indonesian, who were speaking a mix of German and English to each other. Two were wearing a hijab, one wasn't. I have no idea what that means.
I suppose I could have imagined this, but I guess I've been thinking local and working global. As my film producer friend, Sonia, likes to say, "Aber Hallo!" ["Yeah ... helloooo ..."]
Posted by claire at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In the last two weeks I've smoked approximately two packs of cigarettes directly and about twenty packs indirectly. Yep, I'm in Europe still.
I'm in Berlin, right now most definitely my favorite city in the world. I had the luck to arrive just as one of Berlin's famous and rare summer heat waves descended -- just in time for the solstice -- and to be reminded how in summer the whole city turns out of doors and into the funny wooden-slatted seats of its five thousand sidewalk cafes. Paris is famous for its sidewalk cafes, but you have to share them with traffic exhaust and traffic noise. I'm always shocked at how loud and unromantic Paris is whenever I forget long enough to go there. Berlin, on the other hand, is quiet and beautiful -- full of green, leafy parks lined with friendly cafes where they don't care if you sit all day drinking a single cup of coffee.
And now they have wifi.
In fact, I'm sitting at such a cafe right now, drinking my second wine spritzer and feeling a little drunk. They have H & M here. Now that's civilized.
I told an old friend of mine here (a documentary film producer) what kind of magazine Hyphen was and she got all excited and said, "You know my friend, [German murmur murmur]? I'm sure I've mentioned him before. He's Vietnamese but grew up here. He does the same thing, writes about the Vietnamese in Germany, you really should meet him!" I'm just waiting to hear that the Vietnamese and Korean Germans have gotten together and started a magazine. The children of the Korean guest workers invited here by West Germany starting in the fifties, and the Vietnamese guest workers invited here by East Germany starting around the same time, are now adults in their twenties and thirties. A couple of Asian American film festivals ago, they showed a German film about a transracial adoptee.
This world really is changing. Seven years ago, when l Ieft Berlin and moved back to the States, the city was one, big, ethnic German construction site, a sort of temporary Lager between the past and the future. But I didn't really think much back then about what the Berliner future was going to look like. Now the city is sparkling new glass and steel, two out of three restaurants are Turkish, Asian or some sort of Hispanic, one out of five hip, lovely young people you see on the streets and in the clubs is mixed or of some darker substance than German, and people I went to the university with are getting jobs as sensitivity trainers. You can actually start doing a little Asian spotting on the streets. On the train from Prague I sat across from three young women, presumably Indonesian, who were speaking a mix of German and English to each other. Two were wearing a hijab, one wasn't. I have no idea what that means.
I suppose I could have imagined this, but I guess I've been thinking local and working global. As my film producer friend, Sonia, likes to say, "Aber Hallo!" ["Yeah ... helloooo ..."]
Posted by claire at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In the last two weeks I've smoked approximately two packs of cigarettes directly and about twenty packs indirectly. Yep, I'm in Europe still.
I'm in Berlin, right now most definitely my favorite city in the world. I had the luck to arrive just as one of Berlin's famous and rare summer heat waves descended -- just in time for the solstice -- and to be reminded how in summer the whole city turns out of doors and into the funny wooden-slatted seats of its five thousand sidewalk cafes. Paris is famous for its sidewalk cafes, but you have to share them with traffic exhaust and traffic noise. I'm always shocked at how loud and unromantic Paris is whenever I forget long enough to go there. Berlin, on the other hand, is quiet and beautiful -- full of green, leafy parks lined with friendly cafes where they don't care if you sit all day drinking a single cup of coffee.
And now they have wifi.
In fact, I'm sitting at such a cafe right now, drinking my second wine spritzer and feeling a little drunk. They have H & M here. Now that's civilized.
I told an old friend of mine here (a documentary film producer) what kind of magazine Hyphen was and she got all excited and said, "You know my friend, [German murmur murmur]? I'm sure I've mentioned him before. He's Vietnamese but grew up here. He does the same thing, writes about the Vietnamese in Germany, you really should meet him!" I'm just waiting to hear that the Vietnamese and Korean Germans have gotten together and started a magazine. The children of the Korean guest workers invited here by West Germany starting in the fifties, and the Vietnamese guest workers invited here by East Germany starting around the same time, are now adults in their twenties and thirties. A couple of Asian American film festivals ago, they showed a German film about a transracial adoptee.
This world really is changing. Seven years ago, when l Ieft Berlin and moved back to the States, the city was one, big, ethnic German construction site, a sort of temporary Lager between the past and the future. But I didn't really think much back then about what the Berliner future was going to look like. Now the city is sparkling new glass and steel, two out of three restaurants are Turkish, Asian or some sort of Hispanic, one out of five hip, lovely young people you see on the streets and in the clubs is mixed or of some darker substance than German, and people I went to the university with are getting jobs as sensitivity trainers. You can actually start doing a little Asian spotting on the streets. On the train from Prague I sat across from three young women, presumably Indonesian, who were speaking a mix of German and English to each other. Two were wearing a hijab, one wasn't. I have no idea what that means.
I suppose I could have imagined this, but I guess I've been thinking local and working global. As my film producer friend, Sonia, likes to say, "Aber Hallo!" ["Yeah ... helloooo ..."]
Posted by claire at 12:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted by Melissa at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted by Melissa at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Posted by Melissa at 9:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Also, to add to Harry's post today, the infamous 49ers video made it onto the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Watch the clip here.
Posted by Melissa at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Also, to add to Harry's post today, the infamous 49ers video made it onto the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Watch the clip here.
Posted by Melissa at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Also, to add to Harry's post today, the infamous 49ers video made it onto the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Watch the clip here.
Posted by Melissa at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
San Francisco 49ers owner John York apologized for the team's training video that depicted a buck-toothed Asian character who rolled his L's and R's when speaking, among other offensive images.
It's great that York was contrite and said sorry in every way possible. I hope he follows through with getting his football players more involved with the Asian American and other communities.
But in the "boys will be boys" culture of pro sports, there aren't many Asians or Asian Americans. There will be other incidents. Maybe some day when there are more Ichiros, Tigers (yes, we claim him), Yao Mings, Dat Nguyens (Dallas Cowboys) and Bruce Chens (Baltimore Orioles) in sports, Danny Graves (hapa Vietnamese now with the New York Mets) won't have fans yelling "Go back to Vietnam" at him when he doesn't do well. Graves, understandably, flipped the fan off, which led to his release from the Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds were pretty harsh in releasing Graves, viewing it only as him acting in a profane manner toward a fan. Granted, taking crap from fans comes with the job of being a pro athlete, and Graves says he shouldn't have reacted the way he did, but it's only human. Don't know if the fan was thrown out or anything, but probably not.
The 49ers could have also just said, sorry, we got rid of the guy who did this and moved on. But it appears, for now at least, that York is serious. Maybe part of it is because this incident blew up so publicly, but let's hope not. Let's hope he follows through.
Posted by harry at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
San Francisco 49ers owner John York apologized for the team's training video that depicted a buck-toothed Asian character who rolled his L's and R's when speaking, among other offensive images.
It's great that York was contrite and said sorry in every way possible. I hope he follows through with getting his football players more involved with the Asian American and other communities.
But in the "boys will be boys" culture of pro sports, there aren't many Asians or Asian Americans. There will be other incidents. Maybe some day when there are more Ichiros, Tigers (yes, we claim him), Yao Mings, Dat Nguyens (Dallas Cowboys) and Bruce Chens (Baltimore Orioles) in sports, Danny Graves (hapa Vietnamese now with the New York Mets) won't have fans yelling "Go back to Vietnam" at him when he doesn't do well. Graves, understandably, flipped the fan off, which led to his release from the Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds were pretty harsh in releasing Graves, viewing it only as him acting in a profane manner toward a fan. Granted, taking crap from fans comes with the job of being a pro athlete, and Graves says he shouldn't have reacted the way he did, but it's only human. Don't know if the fan was thrown out or anything, but probably not.
The 49ers could have also just said, sorry, we got rid of the guy who did this and moved on. But it appears, for now at least, that York is serious. Maybe part of it is because this incident blew up so publicly, but let's hope not. Let's hope he follows through.
Posted by harry at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
San Francisco 49ers owner John York apologized for the team's training video that depicted a buck-toothed Asian character who rolled his L's and R's when speaking, among other offensive images.
It's great that York was contrite and said sorry in every way possible. I hope he follows through with getting his football players more involved with the Asian American and other communities.
But in the "boys will be boys" culture of pro sports, there aren't many Asians or Asian Americans. There will be other incidents. Maybe some day when there are more Ichiros, Tigers (yes, we claim him), Yao Mings, Dat Nguyens (Dallas Cowboys) and Bruce Chens (Baltimore Orioles) in sports, Danny Graves (hapa Vietnamese now with the New York Mets) won't have fans yelling "Go back to Vietnam" at him when he doesn't do well. Graves, understandably, flipped the fan off, which led to his release from the Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds were pretty harsh in releasing Graves, viewing it only as him acting in a profane manner toward a fan. Granted, taking crap from fans comes with the job of being a pro athlete, and Graves says he shouldn't have reacted the way he did, but it's only human. Don't know if the fan was thrown out or anything, but probably not.
The 49ers could have also just said, sorry, we got rid of the guy who did this and moved on. But it appears, for now at least, that York is serious. Maybe part of it is because this incident blew up so publicly, but let's hope not. Let's hope he follows through.
Posted by harry at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wanna see the world at work? Literally?
I'm probably a total Janey-come-lately to the extent of the web cam scene, but I'm in Europe right now (first we take Prague, then we take Berlin) and I was looking for e-postcards to send to my friends and came across this apparently Czech website which hooks into web cams all over the world so you can grab snapshots for e-postcards. Wow! Pretty toys!
There are no webcams in Afghanistan or Georgia (the autonomous country one, not the midnight train to one) but there are several in China, including this nifty one from the Deutsche Schule in Shanghai, updated every ten seconds or so. How appropriate on so many fronts. Deutschland, hier komm' ich!
In other news, I made a pilgrimage to the Prague expat haven, the Globe Cafe, to use the internet and see if they had any readings in Englisch scheduled while I'm here (they didn't) and ended up sitting perpy to what probably wasn't, but could have been, Prague's only other Asian American, who kept shooting me "I know you are and you know I am" looks.
One thing I gotta say about being involved in the outspoken San Francisco As Am scene is that there are no more of those looks; we constitute a third of this city after all. But to be honest, I kinda almost miss the small secret-agentness of it, the "we're both conspicuously of each other --even if we're not really -- and yet nobody here knows what that really means except us" ness of it, the "And you know I'm not gonna acknowledge you as a sistah, right? And you know why, right?" ness of it. Ya know?
Will report from Berlin.
Posted by claire at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Wanna see the world at work? Literally?
I'm probably a total Janey-come-lately to the extent of the web cam scene, but I'm in Europe right now (first we take Prague, then we take Berlin) and I was looking for e-postcards to send to my friends and came across this apparently Czech website which hooks into web cams all over the world so you can grab snapshots for e-postcards. Wow! Pretty toys!
There are no webcams in Afghanistan or Georgia (the autonomous country one, not the midnight train to one) but there are several in China, including this nifty one from the Deutsche Schule in Shanghai, updated every ten seconds or so. How appropriate on so many fronts. Deutschland, hier komm' ich!
In other news, I made a pilgrimage to the Prague expat haven, the Globe Cafe, to use the internet and see if they had any readings in Englisch scheduled while I'm here (they didn't) and ended up sitting perpy to what probably wasn't, but could have been, Prague's only other Asian American, who kept shooting me "I know you are and you know I am" looks.
One thing I gotta say about being involved in the outspoken San Francisco As Am scene is that there are no more of those looks; we constitute a third of this city after all. But to be honest, I kinda almost miss the small secret-agentness of it, the "we're both conspicuously of each other --even if we're not really -- and yet nobody here knows what that really means except us" ness of it, the "And you know I'm not gonna acknowledge you as a sistah, right? And you know why, right?" ness of it. Ya know?
Will report from Berlin.
Posted by claire at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Wanna see the world at work? Literally?
I'm probably a total Janey-come-lately to the extent of the web cam scene, but I'm in Europe right now (first we take Prague, then we take Berlin) and I was looking for e-postcards to send to my friends and came across this apparently Czech website which hooks into web cams all over the world so you can grab snapshots for e-postcards. Wow! Pretty toys!
There are no webcams in Afghanistan or Georgia (the autonomous country one, not the midnight train to one) but there are several in China, including this nifty one from the Deutsche Schule in Shanghai, updated every ten seconds or so. How appropriate on so many fronts. Deutschland, hier komm' ich!
In other news, I made a pilgrimage to the Prague expat haven, the Globe Cafe, to use the internet and see if they had any readings in Englisch scheduled while I'm here (they didn't) and ended up sitting perpy to what probably wasn't, but could have been, Prague's only other Asian American, who kept shooting me "I know you are and you know I am" looks.
One thing I gotta say about being involved in the outspoken San Francisco As Am scene is that there are no more of those looks; we constitute a third of this city after all. But to be honest, I kinda almost miss the small secret-agentness of it, the "we're both conspicuously of each other --even if we're not really -- and yet nobody here knows what that really means except us" ness of it, the "And you know I'm not gonna acknowledge you as a sistah, right? And you know why, right?" ness of it. Ya know?
Will report from Berlin.
Posted by claire at 11:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thoughts I've walked into whilst trapsing about the intardnet...
"Billboards are like having millionaires throw rocks at your head. You never asked to see them, have them invade your life, and make you feel inadequate. Pick up the rock and throw it back."
- Robert "Banksy" Banks, UK Urban Artist
Posted by at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thoughts I've walked into whilst trapsing about the intardnet...
"Billboards are like having millionaires throw rocks at your head. You never asked to see them, have them invade your life, and make you feel inadequate. Pick up the rock and throw it back."
- Robert "Banksy" Banks, UK Urban Artist
Posted by at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thoughts I've walked into whilst trapsing about the intardnet...
"Billboards are like having millionaires throw rocks at your head. You never asked to see them, have them invade your life, and make you feel inadequate. Pick up the rock and throw it back."
- Robert "Banksy" Banks, UK Urban Artist
Posted by at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A survey of 2000 people of color (Asian, African American, Latino, Native American, Arab American) by New California Media found that 45% of respondents prefer to get their news through the ethnic media. They conclude that 13% of all adults in the US get most of their news through ethnic-specific outlets, and that 64 million adults have regular contact with ethnic media.
We only need 1 million to subscribe to Hyphen. Heck, we'd be pretty happy with just a few hundred thousand.
Okay, granted --when they say "ethnic media" they are usually referring to foreign-language tv, radio, and print. But media like Hyphen are on the rise --ethnic specific but in English.
Obviously, there are huge differences between Hyphen and newspaper printed in Hindi, Chinese or Thai. We're serving an readership that has grown up here and has a different set of issues and sensibilities than a recent immigrant. And we know you're out there.
So where are you, english-speaking, Asian American lovers of ethnic media?
AAs are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the US. We are well educated, a good percentage has a high income. Why isn't there a single profitable general interest magazine for Asian America out there?
Hyphen isn't profitable, we're a struggling nonprofit. aMagazine died after 10 years of operation. Yolk Magazine bit the dust, too, though their t-shirt division is still operating (those shirts that say "Got Rice?"). More and more AA women's mags are out there, I guess figuring there's a big market for women trying to figure out how to put on eye shadow. Monolid is still in production, though not totally flush either --the website's main page still has an article from 2000 on it.
So I pose the question: why isn't there a bigger demand for magazines like Hyphen --and our hypothetical competition? Why aren't there a range of Asian American magazines --for teens, for retirees, for the politically conservative, for the post-structuralist, for the career-minded, for the entrepeneurs? In a world where magazines like "California Fly Fisherman" sells, surely we're not overreaching ourselves.
Posted by jennifer at 9:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A survey of 2000 people of color (Asian, African American, Latino, Native American, Arab American) by New California Media found that 45% of respondents prefer to get their news through the ethnic media. They conclude that 13% of all adults in the US get most of their news through ethnic-specific outlets, and that 64 million adults have regular contact with ethnic media.
We only need 1 million to subscribe to Hyphen. Heck, we'd be pretty happy with just a few hundred thousand.
Okay, granted --when they say "ethnic media" they are usually referring to foreign-language tv, radio, and print. But media like Hyphen are on the rise --ethnic specific but in English.
Obviously, there are huge differences between Hyphen and newspaper printed in Hindi, Chinese or Thai. We're serving an readership that has grown up here and has a different set of issues and sensibilities than a recent immigrant. And we know you're out there.
So where are you, english-speaking, Asian American lovers of ethnic media?
AAs are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the US. We are well educated, a good percentage has a high income. Why isn't there a single profitable general interest magazine for Asian America out there?
Hyphen isn't profitable, we're a struggling nonprofit. aMagazine died after 10 years of operation. Yolk Magazine bit the dust, too, though their t-shirt division is still operating (those shirts that say "Got Rice?"). More and more AA women's mags are out there, I guess figuring there's a big market for women trying to figure out how to put on eye shadow. Monolid is still in production, though not totally flush either --the website's main page still has an article from 2000 on it.
So I pose the question: why isn't there a bigger demand for magazines like Hyphen --and our hypothetical competition? Why aren't there a range of Asian American magazines --for teens, for retirees, for the politically conservative, for the post-structuralist, for the career-minded, for the entrepeneurs? In a world where magazines like "California Fly Fisherman" sells, surely we're not overreaching ourselves.
Posted by jennifer at 9:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A survey of 2000 people of color (Asian, African American, Latino, Native American, Arab American) by New California Media found that 45% of respondents prefer to get their news through the ethnic media. They conclude that 13% of all adults in the US get most of their news through ethnic-specific outlets, and that 64 million adults have regular contact with ethnic media.
We only need 1 million to subscribe to Hyphen. Heck, we'd be pretty happy with just a few hundred thousand.
Okay, granted --when they say "ethnic media" they are usually referring to foreign-language tv, radio, and print. But media like Hyphen are on the rise --ethnic specific but in English.
Obviously, there are huge differences between Hyphen and newspaper printed in Hindi, Chinese or Thai. We're serving an readership that has grown up here and has a different set of issues and sensibilities than a recent immigrant. And we know you're out there.
So where are you, english-speaking, Asian American lovers of ethnic media?
AAs are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the US. We are well educated, a good percentage has a high income. Why isn't there a single profitable general interest magazine for Asian America out there?
Hyphen isn't profitable, we're a struggling nonprofit. aMagazine died after 10 years of operation. Yolk Magazine bit the dust, too, though their t-shirt division is still operating (those shirts that say "Got Rice?"). More and more AA women's mags are out there, I guess figuring there's a big market for women trying to figure out how to put on eye shadow. Monolid is still in production, though not totally flush either --the website's main page still has an article from 2000 on it.
So I pose the question: why isn't there a bigger demand for magazines like Hyphen --and our hypothetical competition? Why aren't there a range of Asian American magazines --for teens, for retirees, for the politically conservative, for the post-structuralist, for the career-minded, for the entrepeneurs? In a world where magazines like "California Fly Fisherman" sells, surely we're not overreaching ourselves.
Posted by jennifer at 9:58 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Add spelling bees to the list of Asian American competitive triumps (along with ping-pong, competitive eating, and the Westinghouse Science Awards). The top four finishers in last week's National Spelling Bee were all Indian American kids, who have garnered first place in five out of the past seven Bees. Is it a nerd thing, a cultural thing, or both? The New York Times seems to think so.
"Striving in America, and in the Spelling Bee"
By Joseph Berger
The New York Times, Sunday, June 5, 2005
For many American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry.
In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year.
Behind those statistics lies a beguiling story, not just of immigrant pluck, but of a craze that seems to have swept through the Indian-American community.
Excellence in a number of fields has always had a cultural tinge - consider the prevalence of Dominicans in baseball, Jews in violin playing, Kenyans in long-distance running. In 1985, when a 13-year-old son of Indian immigrants, Balu Natarajan, beat out his competitors by spelling "milieu," it had an electrifying impact on his countrymen, much as Juan Marichal's conquest of baseball had for Dominicans. Balu not only became an overnight Indian sensation, one whose name resonates 20 years later, but other Indian-Americans have tried to emulate his feat.
Certainly, immigrant strivers have always done astonishingly well in national academic contests, not to mention in school in general. In some years, more than a quarter of the 40 winners in the Intel Science Talent Search, known originally as the Westinghouse awards, have been immigrants or their children.
Interviews with those winners, many who are the children of seamstresses or small-time shopkeepers, reveal that to bring the glow of accomplishment into their parents' spare lives, they will sacrifice television viewing and socializing to work on agonizingly slow and complicated experiments.
But Indians brought to spelling mastery some particular advantages, said Madhulika S. Khandelwal, an Indian immigrant who directs the Asian American Center at Queens College. Their parents or grandparents were usually educated, often as scientists or engineers; their parents generally spoke English and appreciated the springboard powers of education.
Unlike many American children who are schooled in sometimes amorphous whole-language approaches to reading and writing, Indians are comfortable with the rote-learning methods of their homeland, the kind needed to master lists of obscure words that easily stump spell-checker programs. They do not regard champion spellers as nerds.
By 1993, the North South Foundation, based outside of Chicago and devoted to making sure Indians here do as well in English as in math, set up a parallel universe of spelling bees. Now 60 chapters around the country hold such contests, according to its founder, Ratnam Chitturi.
They become a minor-league training ground for the major league 80-year-old Scripps National Spelling Bee, which was started by The Louisville Courier-Journal as a way to promote "general interest among pupils in a dull subject."
The enthusiasm has spread. There are now chat rooms and blogs where Indians discuss spelling. Stories about the contests are featured prominently in community newspapers.
"When you see a kid spelling correctly, there was the excitement that he was representing all of us," said Arun Venugopal, a reporter for the newspaper India Abroad who has written about the spelling bees.
Indian families throw themselves in fevered fashion behind their youngsters, drilling them on esoteric words and etymologies, Greek and Latin roots, as well as from spelling lists provided on the Scripps Web site. In doing so, they are as single-minded as other American parents, who have been known to help their fledgling gymnasts, tennis players and singers.
The 2003 documentary "Spellbound," about the 1999 national spelling bee, offered its own example of pushy kin. The father of one Indian contestant, Neil, mentions that a relative back home in India has hired a thousand people to chant prayers during the bee and promised to provide meals for 5,000 if Neil should win.
Mr. Natarajan, the 1985 winner and now a 33-year-old doctor of sports medicine, described the contest as a "a bridge between that which is Indian and that which is American," and it may be that the example of Neil's father is a bridge too far.
But overall, Mr. Natarajan said, the Indian record on spelling bees "gives the community quite a bit of confidence that we can do well here, much like other ethnicities pursuing the American dream."
Posted by Lisa at 11:07 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Add spelling bees to the list of Asian American competitive triumps (along with ping-pong, competitive eating, and the Westinghouse Science Awards). The top four finishers in last week's National Spelling Bee were all Indian American kids, who have garnered first place in five out of the past seven Bees. Is it a nerd thing, a cultural thing, or both? The New York Times seems to think so.
"Striving in America, and in the Spelling Bee"
By Joseph Berger
The New York Times, Sunday, June 5, 2005
For many American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry.
In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year.
Behind those statistics lies a beguiling story, not just of immigrant pluck, but of a craze that seems to have swept through the Indian-American community.
Excellence in a number of fields has always had a cultural tinge - consider the prevalence of Dominicans in baseball, Jews in violin playing, Kenyans in long-distance running. In 1985, when a 13-year-old son of Indian immigrants, Balu Natarajan, beat out his competitors by spelling "milieu," it had an electrifying impact on his countrymen, much as Juan Marichal's conquest of baseball had for Dominicans. Balu not only became an overnight Indian sensation, one whose name resonates 20 years later, but other Indian-Americans have tried to emulate his feat.
Certainly, immigrant strivers have always done astonishingly well in national academic contests, not to mention in school in general. In some years, more than a quarter of the 40 winners in the Intel Science Talent Search, known originally as the Westinghouse awards, have been immigrants or their children.
Interviews with those winners, many who are the children of seamstresses or small-time shopkeepers, reveal that to bring the glow of accomplishment into their parents' spare lives, they will sacrifice television viewing and socializing to work on agonizingly slow and complicated experiments.
But Indians brought to spelling mastery some particular advantages, said Madhulika S. Khandelwal, an Indian immigrant who directs the Asian American Center at Queens College. Their parents or grandparents were usually educated, often as scientists or engineers; their parents generally spoke English and appreciated the springboard powers of education.
Unlike many American children who are schooled in sometimes amorphous whole-language approaches to reading and writing, Indians are comfortable with the rote-learning methods of their homeland, the kind needed to master lists of obscure words that easily stump spell-checker programs. They do not regard champion spellers as nerds.
By 1993, the North South Foundation, based outside of Chicago and devoted to making sure Indians here do as well in English as in math, set up a parallel universe of spelling bees. Now 60 chapters around the country hold such contests, according to its founder, Ratnam Chitturi.
They become a minor-league training ground for the major league 80-year-old Scripps National Spelling Bee, which was started by The Louisville Courier-Journal as a way to promote "general interest among pupils in a dull subject."
The enthusiasm has spread. There are now chat rooms and blogs where Indians discuss spelling. Stories about the contests are featured prominently in community newspapers.
"When you see a kid spelling correctly, there was the excitement that he was representing all of us," said Arun Venugopal, a reporter for the newspaper India Abroad who has written about the spelling bees.
Indian families throw themselves in fevered fashion behind their youngsters, drilling them on esoteric words and etymologies, Greek and Latin roots, as well as from spelling lists provided on the Scripps Web site. In doing so, they are as single-minded as other American parents, who have been known to help their fledgling gymnasts, tennis players and singers.
The 2003 documentary "Spellbound," about the 1999 national spelling bee, offered its own example of pushy kin. The father of one Indian contestant, Neil, mentions that a relative back home in India has hired a thousand people to chant prayers during the bee and promised to provide meals for 5,000 if Neil should win.
Mr. Natarajan, the 1985 winner and now a 33-year-old doctor of sports medicine, described the contest as a "a bridge between that which is Indian and that which is American," and it may be that the example of Neil's father is a bridge too far.
But overall, Mr. Natarajan said, the Indian record on spelling bees "gives the community quite a bit of confidence that we can do well here, much like other ethnicities pursuing the American dream."
Posted by Lisa at 11:07 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Add spelling bees to the list of Asian American competitive triumps (along with ping-pong, competitive eating, and the Westinghouse Science Awards). The top four finishers in last week's National Spelling Bee were all Indian American kids, who have garnered first place in five out of the past seven Bees. Is it a nerd thing, a cultural thing, or both? The New York Times seems to think so.
"Striving in America, and in the Spelling Bee"
By Joseph Berger
The New York Times, Sunday, June 5, 2005
For many American contestants, the most uncommon words at last week's national spelling bee were not appoggiatura and onychophagy, but the names of the top four finishers: Anurag Kashyap, Aliya Deri, Samir Patel and Rajiv Tarigopula. All were of Indian ancestry.
In recent years, descendants of Indian immigrants - less than 1 percent of the population - have dominated this contest, snatching first place in five of the past seven years, and making up more than 30 of the 273 contestants this year.
Behind those statistics lies a beguiling story, not just of immigrant pluck, but of a craze that seems to have swept through the Indian-American community.
Excellence in a number of fields has always had a cultural tinge - consider the prevalence of Dominicans in baseball, Jews in violin playing, Kenyans in long-distance running. In 1985, when a 13-year-old son of Indian immigrants, Balu Natarajan, beat out his competitors by spelling "milieu," it had an electrifying impact on his countrymen, much as Juan Marichal's conquest of baseball had for Dominicans. Balu not only became an overnight Indian sensation, one whose name resonates 20 years later, but other Indian-Americans have tried to emulate his feat.
Certainly, immigrant strivers have always done astonishingly well in national academic contests, not to mention in school in general. In some years, more than a quarter of the 40 winners in the Intel Science Talent Search, known originally as the Westinghouse awards, have been immigrants or their children.
Interviews with those winners, many who are the children of seamstresses or small-time shopkeepers, reveal that to bring the glow of accomplishment into their parents' spare lives, they will sacrifice television viewing and socializing to work on agonizingly slow and complicated experiments.
But Indians brought to spelling mastery some particular advantages, said Madhulika S. Khandelwal, an Indian immigrant who directs the Asian American Center at Queens College. Their parents or grandparents were usually educated, often as scientists or engineers; their parents generally spoke English and appreciated the springboard powers of education.
Unlike many American children who are schooled in sometimes amorphous whole-language approaches to reading and writing, Indians are comfortable with the rote-learning methods of their homeland, the kind needed to master lists of obscure words that easily stump spell-checker programs. They do not regard champion spellers as nerds.
By 1993, the North South Foundation, based outside of Chicago and devoted to making sure Indians here do as well in English as in math, set up a parallel universe of spelling bees. Now 60 chapters around the country hold such contests, according to its founder, Ratnam Chitturi.
They become a minor-league training ground for the major league 80-year-old Scripps National Spelling Bee, which was started by The Louisville Courier-Journal as a way to promote "general interest among pupils in a dull subject."
The enthusiasm has spread. There are now chat rooms and blogs where Indians discuss spelling. Stories about the contests are featured prominently in community newspapers.
"When you see a kid spelling correctly, there was the excitement that he was representing all of us," said Arun Venugopal, a reporter for the newspaper India Abroad who has written about the spelling bees.
Indian families throw themselves in fevered fashion behind their youngsters, drilling them on esoteric words and etymologies, Greek and Latin roots, as well as from spelling lists provided on the Scripps Web site. In doing so, they are as single-minded as other American parents, who have been known to help their fledgling gymnasts, tennis players and singers.
The 2003 documentary "Spellbound," about the 1999 national spelling bee, offered its own example of pushy kin. The father of one Indian contestant, Neil, mentions that a relative back home in India has hired a thousand people to chant prayers during the bee and promised to provide meals for 5,000 if Neil should win.
Mr. Natarajan, the 1985 winner and now a 33-year-old doctor of sports medicine, described the contest as a "a bridge between that which is Indian and that which is American," and it may be that the example of Neil's father is a bridge too far.
But overall, Mr. Natarajan said, the Indian record on spelling bees "gives the community quite a bit of confidence that we can do well here, much like other ethnicities pursuing the American dream."
Posted by Lisa at 11:07 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Can you get any cooler than this? An Indian American entrepreneur is forming a company to develop commercial space-faring vehicles!
Before you start scoffing, said businessman, Chirinjeev Kathuria of Chicago, had previously formed a company -- MirCorps -- that sent an American businessman into space in 2000. So it's kinda already been done. Kathuria's new effort is a Canadian corporation named PlanetSpace, a partnership with Canadian Arrow, a company originally founded to compete for a prize to build the first successful space vehicle.
Kathuria says of PlanetSpace: "The fact is I've always wanted to make commercial space travel a reality for the everyday person, and to create a business to make a company profitable. PlanetSpace is going to be doing that and to create a whole new industry based on space tourism. We are going to focus on making products in space, for instance, pharmaceutical drugs that we can make 10 times cheaper in zero gravity. We will also look at satellite repair, waste disposal."
It's exciting, but also scary, to think that the corporate structure, and the capitalist bottom line, could succeed where government space programs fail: in developing a civilian culture of space travel and habitation. I suppose, though, that between an arms race and the profit motive, there's not much to choose from.
In any case, by the time you're old enough to retire (your health bostered by drugs produced in orbit), a cruise out the stratosphere, possibly even to the moon, might be one of the brochures your travel agent sends you. In Hyphen's Issue Seven (due out at the end of the summer) we'll have a feature on how to take care of your body in zero gravity. Better get started preparing now.
Posted by claire at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Can you get any cooler than this? An Indian American entrepreneur is forming a company to develop commercial space-faring vehicles!
Before you start scoffing, said businessman, Chirinjeev Kathuria of Chicago, had previously formed a company -- MirCorps -- that sent an American businessman into space in 2000. So it's kinda already been done. Kathuria's new effort is a Canadian corporation named PlanetSpace, a partnership with Canadian Arrow, a company originally founded to compete for a prize to build the first successful space vehicle.
Kathuria says of PlanetSpace: "The fact is I've always wanted to make commercial space travel a reality for the everyday person, and to create a business to make a company profitable. PlanetSpace is going to be doing that and to create a whole new industry based on space tourism. We are going to focus on making products in space, for instance, pharmaceutical drugs that we can make 10 times cheaper in zero gravity. We will also look at satellite repair, waste disposal."
It's exciting, but also scary, to think that the corporate structure, and the capitalist bottom line, could succeed where government space programs fail: in developing a civilian culture of space travel and habitation. I suppose, though, that between an arms race and the profit motive, there's not much to choose from.
In any case, by the time you're old enough to retire (your health bostered by drugs produced in orbit), a cruise out the stratosphere, possibly even to the moon, might be one of the brochures your travel agent sends you. In Hyphen's Issue Seven (due out at the end of the summer) we'll have a feature on how to take care of your body in zero gravity. Better get started preparing now.
Posted by claire at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Can you get any cooler than this? An Indian American entrepreneur is forming a company to develop commercial space-faring vehicles!
Before you start scoffing, said businessman, Chirinjeev Kathuria of Chicago, had previously formed a company -- MirCorps -- that sent an American businessman into space in 2000. So it's kinda already been done. Kathuria's new effort is a Canadian corporation named PlanetSpace, a partnership with Canadian Arrow, a company originally founded to compete for a prize to build the first successful space vehicle.
Kathuria says of PlanetSpace: "The fact is I've always wanted to make commercial space travel a reality for the everyday person, and to create a business to make a company profitable. PlanetSpace is going to be doing that and to create a whole new industry based on space tourism. We are going to focus on making products in space, for instance, pharmaceutical drugs that we can make 10 times cheaper in zero gravity. We will also look at satellite repair, waste disposal."
It's exciting, but also scary, to think that the corporate structure, and the capitalist bottom line, could succeed where government space programs fail: in developing a civilian culture of space travel and habitation. I suppose, though, that between an arms race and the profit motive, there's not much to choose from.
In any case, by the time you're old enough to retire (your health bostered by drugs produced in orbit), a cruise out the stratosphere, possibly even to the moon, might be one of the brochures your travel agent sends you. In Hyphen's Issue Seven (due out at the end of the summer) we'll have a feature on how to take care of your body in zero gravity. Better get started preparing now.
Posted by claire at 11:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two interesting stories in the SF Chronicle today.
First, Bench, a Philippines-based clothing store, is following Jollibee's lead and opened a store (complete with Filipino mannequins) in Daly City. They'll probably do brisk business.
In the Datebook section is a story about artist Donna Keiko Ozawa who has made a sculpture out of 60,000 pairs of chopsticks to call attention to how wasteful we are with the disposable utentsils. (She collected them over a month at several Japantown restuarants.) I couldn't agree more. I've always felt bad about using them and try to take them with me when I leave (but often, I forget, just as I often forget to take the doggie bag.) Recently, someone gave me a plastic set in a cute little carrying case, so I try to carry those with me everywhere.
OK, back to my lazy Saturday afternoon. You know it's a lazy day when I'm just getting around to the paper at 4 pm.
Posted by Melissa at 4:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Two interesting stories in the SF Chronicle today.
First, Bench, a Philippines-based clothing store, is following Jollibee's lead and opened a store (complete with Filipino mannequins) in Daly City. They'll probably do brisk business.
In the Datebook section is a story about artist Donna Keiko Ozawa who has made a sculpture out of 60,000 pairs of chopsticks to call attention to how wasteful we are with the disposable utentsils. (She collected them over a month at several Japantown restuarants.) I couldn't agree more. I've always felt bad about using them and try to take them with me when I leave (but often, I forget, just as I often forget to take the doggie bag.) Recently, someone gave me a plastic set in a cute little carrying case, so I try to carry those with me everywhere.
OK, back to my lazy Saturday afternoon. You know it's a lazy day when I'm just getting around to the paper at 4 pm.
Posted by Melissa at 4:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Two interesting stories in the SF Chronicle today.
First, Bench, a Philippines-based clothing store, is following Jollibee's lead and opened a store (complete with Filipino mannequins) in Daly City. They'll probably do brisk business.
In the Datebook section is a story about artist Donna Keiko Ozawa who has made a sculpture out of 60,000 pairs of chopsticks to call attention to how wasteful we are with the disposable utentsils. (She collected them over a month at several Japantown restuarants.) I couldn't agree more. I've always felt bad about using them and try to take them with me when I leave (but often, I forget, just as I often forget to take the doggie bag.) Recently, someone gave me a plastic set in a cute little carrying case, so I try to carry those with me everywhere.
OK, back to my lazy Saturday afternoon. You know it's a lazy day when I'm just getting around to the paper at 4 pm.
Posted by Melissa at 4:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A coalition of 25 to 30 Asian American organizations plans to send a letter to the San Francisco 49ers today protesting the team's use of racial stereotypes in a training video.
The video was supposed to help players deal with the media and introduce them to the diversity of the Bay Area. Needless to say, the message may have been lost in the delivery.
And, what's up with George Chung, who played the buck-toothed Chinese guy with the thick accent in the video? He's the leading contender for the "Gedde Watanabe Long Duk Dong" acting award so far this year.
Posted by harry at 9:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A coalition of 25 to 30 Asian American organizations plans to send a letter to the San Francisco 49ers today protesting the team's use of racial stereotypes in a training video.
The video was supposed to help players deal with the media and introduce them to the diversity of the Bay Area. Needless to say, the message may have been lost in the delivery.
And, what's up with George Chung, who played the buck-toothed Chinese guy with the thick accent in the video? He's the leading contender for the "Gedde Watanabe Long Duk Dong" acting award so far this year.
Posted by harry at 9:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A coalition of 25 to 30 Asian American organizations plans to send a letter to the San Francisco 49ers today protesting the team's use of racial stereotypes in a training video.
The video was supposed to help players deal with the media and introduce them to the diversity of the Bay Area. Needless to say, the message may have been lost in the delivery.
And, what's up with George Chung, who played the buck-toothed Chinese guy with the thick accent in the video? He's the leading contender for the "Gedde Watanabe Long Duk Dong" acting award so far this year.
Posted by harry at 9:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
As if the team records for the past few years haven't been sufficient to tarnish the once great image of the SF 49ers, something like this has to drop. In a supposed in-house "training" video recently released/leaked to the press, team PR manager Kirk Reynolds engages in some controversial actions. Actions which include such gems as racial jokes, the mocking of same-sex marriage, lesbian porn, and topless women frolicking with Reynolds.
In the first portion of the video, Reynolds stops in Chinatown and relates the fact that the team analyzes and deals with everything that is written about the players and the organization. That this is true is demonstrated by an interview with a bespectacled, buck-toothed "Chinese" man in an aloha shirt (acted out by then-49ers trainer and martial arts expert George Chung (currently in contention for an Oscar)) whom is asked to translate an Asian language newspaper article.
Sure — the man says in a stereotypical Asian accent reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
"Tim Latte (Rattay, a Niners quarterback). He feel good now. He feeling good. No plactice with the team, so most of the time he play with himself."
"49ers love being in community. Very patriotic . . . support president and his George Bush erection."
"Erection?" Reynolds asks.
"Yes," the Chinese man echoes. "It say, 'You like Bush — then you like his erection.'
"My name is Suck Hung,'' the Chinese man says as he's leaving. "My brother's name is Suck Young — my whole family suck."
To the credit of the 49ers' front office, the person most visible (and possibly most responsible for the video )in the video has been discharged, and statements have been issued relating the fact such videos and beliefs are "absolutely contradictory to the ideals and values of the San Francisco 49ers."
Granted this video was never meant to be viewed by the public at large, but what does this say about how certain people within the organization see their fanbase? I can't believe the 49ers would allow something like this to be produced. The team is based in one of the most diverse markets in the US.
Let's just hope it is a few bad apples, and not the whole bunch. Overall, I really see it as much ado about nothing. But some heads might be in an uproar about it.
Read the SF Gate story.
See the videos in question (note, there is explicit material contained within).
Posted by at 2:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
As if the team records for the past few years haven't been sufficient to tarnish the once great image of the SF 49ers, something like this has to drop. In a supposed in-house "training" video recently released/leaked to the press, team PR manager Kirk Reynolds engages in some controversial actions. Actions which include such gems as racial jokes, the mocking of same-sex marriage, lesbian porn, and topless women frolicking with Reynolds.
In the first portion of the video, Reynolds stops in Chinatown and relates the fact that the team analyzes and deals with everything that is written about the players and the organization. That this is true is demonstrated by an interview with a bespectacled, buck-toothed "Chinese" man in an aloha shirt (acted out by then-49ers trainer and martial arts expert George Chung (currently in contention for an Oscar)) whom is asked to translate an Asian language newspaper article.
Sure — the man says in a stereotypical Asian accent reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
"Tim Latte (Rattay, a Niners quarterback). He feel good now. He feeling good. No plactice with the team, so most of the time he play with himself."
"49ers love being in community. Very patriotic . . . support president and his George Bush erection."
"Erection?" Reynolds asks.
"Yes," the Chinese man echoes. "It say, 'You like Bush — then you like his erection.'
"My name is Suck Hung,'' the Chinese man says as he's leaving. "My brother's name is Suck Young — my whole family suck."
To the credit of the 49ers' front office, the person most visible (and possibly most responsible for the video )in the video has been discharged, and statements have been issued relating the fact such videos and beliefs are "absolutely contradictory to the ideals and values of the San Francisco 49ers."
Granted this video was never meant to be viewed by the public at large, but what does this say about how certain people within the organization see their fanbase? I can't believe the 49ers would allow something like this to be produced. The team is based in one of the most diverse markets in the US.
Let's just hope it is a few bad apples, and not the whole bunch. Overall, I really see it as much ado about nothing. But some heads might be in an uproar about it.
Read the SF Gate story.
See the videos in question (note, there is explicit material contained within).
Posted by at 2:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
As if the team records for the past few years haven't been sufficient to tarnish the once great image of the SF 49ers, something like this has to drop. In a supposed in-house "training" video recently released/leaked to the press, team PR manager Kirk Reynolds engages in some controversial actions. Actions which include such gems as racial jokes, the mocking of same-sex marriage, lesbian porn, and topless women frolicking with Reynolds.
In the first portion of the video, Reynolds stops in Chinatown and relates the fact that the team analyzes and deals with everything that is written about the players and the organization. That this is true is demonstrated by an interview with a bespectacled, buck-toothed "Chinese" man in an aloha shirt (acted out by then-49ers trainer and martial arts expert George Chung (currently in contention for an Oscar)) whom is asked to translate an Asian language newspaper article.
Sure — the man says in a stereotypical Asian accent reminiscent of Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
"Tim Latte (Rattay, a Niners quarterback). He feel good now. He feeling good. No plactice with the team, so most of the time he play with himself."
"49ers love being in community. Very patriotic . . . support president and his George Bush erection."
"Erection?" Reynolds asks.
"Yes," the Chinese man echoes. "It say, 'You like Bush — then you like his erection.'
"My name is Suck Hung,'' the Chinese man says as he's leaving. "My brother's name is Suck Young — my whole family suck."
To the credit of the 49ers' front office, the person most visible (and possibly most responsible for the video )in the video has been discharged, and statements have been issued relating the fact such videos and beliefs are "absolutely contradictory to the ideals and values of the San Francisco 49ers."
Granted this video was never meant to be viewed by the public at large, but what does this say about how certain people within the organization see their fanbase? I can't believe the 49ers would allow something like this to be produced. The team is based in one of the most diverse markets in the US.
Let's just hope it is a few bad apples, and not the whole bunch. Overall, I really see it as much ado about nothing. But some heads might be in an uproar about it.
Read the SF Gate story.
See the videos in question (note, there is explicit material contained within).
Posted by at 2:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Alice Wu's Saving Face opens this month in cities across the U.S. If you haven't already heard me gush about it, well, let me gush for you again. It's a cute and funny romantic comedy about Wil, a talented surgeon who hasn't come out to her mom yet, who falls in love with Vivian, a free-spirted ballerina. And then there's Wil's single mom, played by the unfailingly beautiful Joan Chen who moves in with Wil after she gets kicked out by her own father because of a surprise pregnancy. While Wil struggles to keep her relationship on the down low, mom sits on the couch eating up a storm and watching Chinese soap operas. Generational conflict. Mother daughter relationship. Culture clash. Love story. Lots to explore in this film.
This is the first Asian American film bankrolled by Hollywood since the Joy Luck Club -- it's been 12 years. Show your support, not just cause it's an Asian American film, but because it's a pretty good one.
Here's the schedule of openings:
NEW YORK: May 27th at the Angelika (in Soho) and the AMC 25 (on 42nd Street)
LOS ANGELES: May 27th at the Sunset Laemmle 5, Westside Pavilion, Playhouse (Pasadena), Town Center (Encino) and South Coast Village (Costa Mesa)
SF BAY AREA: June 3rd at the Landmark Embarcadero, UA Stonestown Twin, Landmark Shattuck (Berkeley), Palo Alto Square, Century 5 (Pleasant Hill), Santana Row (San Jose) and Marin/Sausalito.
OTHER CITIES: Boston (6/3), Atlanta (6/24), Chicago (6/10), Dallas (6/17), Houston (6/17), Denver (7/1), Detroit (6/24), Miami (6/17), Minneapolis (6/24), Seattle (6/24), St. Louis (6/24), Washington (6/24)
Here's a story that ran in Sunday's New York Times about how Wu stuck to her guns and resisted Hollywood's attempts to replace her characters with white ones and make the love story a heterosexual one.
We've got our own interview with Alice Wu coming up soon on this site, so stay tuned!
Posted by Melissa at 10:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Alice Wu's Saving Face opens this month in cities across the U.S. If you haven't already heard me gush about it, well, let me gush for you again. It's a cute and funny romantic comedy about Wil, a talented surgeon who hasn't come out to her mom yet, who falls in love with Vivian, a free-spirted ballerina. And then there's Wil's single mom, played by the unfailingly beautiful Joan Chen who moves in with Wil after she gets kicked out by her own father because of a surprise pregnancy. While Wil struggles to keep her relationship on the down low, mom sits on the couch eating up a storm and watching Chinese soap operas. Generational conflict. Mother daughter relationship. Culture clash. Love story. Lots to explore in this film.
This is the first Asian American film bankrolled by Hollywood since the Joy Luck Club -- it's been 12 years. Show your support, not just cause it's an Asian American film, but because it's a pretty good one.
Here's the schedule of openings:
NEW YORK: May 27th at the Angelika (in Soho) and the AMC 25 (on 42nd Street)
LOS ANGELES: May 27th at the Sunset Laemmle 5, Westside Pavilion, Playhouse (Pasadena), Town Center (Encino) and South Coast Village (Costa Mesa)
SF BAY AREA: June 3rd at the Landmark Embarcadero, UA Stonestown Twin, Landmark Shattuck (Berkeley), Palo Alto Square, Century 5 (Pleasant Hill), Santana Row (San Jose) and Marin/Sausalito.
OTHER CITIES: Boston (6/3), Atlanta (6/24), Chicago (6/10), Dallas (6/17), Houston (6/17), Denver (7/1), Detroit (6/24), Miami (6/17), Minneapolis (6/24), Seattle (6/24), St. Louis (6/24), Washington (6/24)
Here's a story that ran in Sunday's New York Times about how Wu stuck to her guns and resisted Hollywood's attempts to replace her characters with white ones and make the love story a heterosexual one.
We've got our own interview with Alice Wu coming up soon on this site, so stay tuned!
Posted by Melissa at 10:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Alice Wu's Saving Face opens this month in cities across the U.S. If you haven't already heard me gush about it, well, let me gush for you again. It's a cute and funny romantic comedy about Wil, a talented surgeon who hasn't come out to her mom yet, who falls in love with Vivian, a free-spirted ballerina. And then there's Wil's single mom, played by the unfailingly beautiful Joan Chen who moves in with Wil after she gets kicked out by her own father because of a surprise pregnancy. While Wil struggles to keep her relationship on the down low, mom sits on the couch eating up a storm and watching Chinese soap operas. Generational conflict. Mother daughter relationship. Culture clash. Love story. Lots to explore in this film.
This is the first Asian American film bankrolled by Hollywood since the Joy Luck Club -- it's been 12 years. Show your support, not just cause it's an Asian American film, but because it's a pretty good one.
Here's the schedule of openings:
NEW YORK: May 27th at the Angelika (in Soho) and the AMC 25 (on 42nd Street)
LOS ANGELES: May 27th at the Sunset Laemmle 5, Westside Pavilion, Playhouse (Pasadena), Town Center (Encino) and South Coast Village (Costa Mesa)
SF BAY AREA: June 3rd at the Landmark Embarcadero, UA Stonestown Twin, Landmark Shattuck (Berkeley), Palo Alto Square, Century 5 (Pleasant Hill), Santana Row (San Jose) and Marin/Sausalito.
OTHER CITIES: Boston (6/3), Atlanta (6/24), Chicago (6/10), Dallas (6/17), Houston (6/17), Denver (7/1), Detroit (6/24), Miami (6/17), Minneapolis (6/24), Seattle (6/24), St. Louis (6/24), Washington (6/24)
Here's a story that ran in Sunday's New York Times about how Wu stuck to her guns and resisted Hollywood's attempts to replace her characters with white ones and make the love story a heterosexual one.
We've got our own interview with Alice Wu coming up soon on this site, so stay tuned!
Posted by Melissa at 10:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Search
Categories
Recent Comments
Recent Entries
Archives
Resources
