February 18, 2012 5:22 PM
We were all having so much fun, too. But that's no excuse for racism.
I was wondering when someone would use a "Chink in the Armor" reference.
I'm sure many Asian Americans thought about it too. But only the most screwed up Asian American self-hater would use it in public to describe the basketball flaws of Jeremy Lin.
It's not so bad if we were all living in Medieval America and people actually bought their chain maille and armor from Barney's and Macy's. Then, hey, sure, it might be OK. When you get a ding in your metal suit, that's a drag. We all can relate.
But the dark ages are gone. We live in a diverse America, and when you say "Chink," you are not bringing the love. Nor are you talking about the flaws of Sir Lancelot, real or imagined.
Still, if someone likened Lin's ball-handling to Lancelot trying a crossover move in full armor, you might make a case for "plausible deniability."
But let's face it.
We all know what someone means when they say "Chink" in reference to Jeremy Lin.
The media, in this case the headline writers at ESPN, have been so giddy with Linsanity, they must have thought it gave everyone the green light to have some racist fun.
Editors surely would have taken more care to blurt the "N" word. But evidently not the "C" word.
The good fun of Linsanity is intended to make people realize how inclusive the world has become.
It's not intended to desensitize us all to the racist sentiments of the past.
ESPN has apologized for the slur, but that isn't enough.
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund is calling for full apologies on ESPN cablecasts. The network needs to set the record straight for all to hear, lest anyone get the idea that slurs on Asian Americans are OK.
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Updates at www.amok.com. Follow Emil on Twitter @emilamok.
February 14, 2012 3:35 PM
Maybe they should take down all the "NO MSG" signs in Chinese restaurants around New York.
MSG officially stands for Madison Square Garden, and MSG is saying "YES!" in a big way to our new national Asian American hero, Jeremy Lin.
Playing in the NBA on a hapless Knicks team with all its injured millionaires on the bench, journeyman Lin came out of nowhere to right a fallen ship.
Now people are talking about the Knicks like they really are a team worth following (they're not), and in one miraculous week, Lin has become a pop figure the likes of Bruce Lee.
Of course, he's in New York, where the media can light up a ball of gas and extinguish it just as quickly. Lin was the right player at the right time. The team still isn't championship calibre, but Lin is still Asian American.
And that is rightfully a big deal--and not just to Asian Americans who automatically identify with Lin's hard-work, underdog path to the limelight.
I'm not making him into Martin Luther Lin or anything. But you must admit there just haven't been many Asian American ballers on the hardwood. Maybe keeping stats. And there's Eric Spoelstra, the Miami Heat coach, the first Asian American (Filipino) coach. But players?
Surely, you know that the retired Yao Ming doesn't count.
Yao's Asian from China. So are all the other tall Asian ballers you've seen. Not Asian American. But you knew that, right?
Lin, born in Palo Alto, is Asian American. An ABC, American-born Chinese.
Just forcing people to make that distinction is more significant than how many points Lin has racked up.
Playing in New York, Lin has exposed the continued ignorance about Asian Americans in general.
When you're an invisible group, people aren't going to make a big deal about national origin, or ethnic origin.
But it's more than just a technical difference. It says something about what and who Asian Americans are.
There have been Asian American players in the past; Lin's not the first. In the 70s, Ray Townsend out of UCLA, who played for the Golden State Warriors, was the first American Filipino.
The first Asian American was actually Wataru Misaka, a Japanese American 5-foot,7-inch guard from Utah who played briefly in New York in 1947.
Misaka was the first non-white player in the NBA.
But history is lost in the mania. Linsanity means Lin is the most googled and tweeted Asian American on the planet. It's more Linfomania, if not Linphomania.
Any love is usually diluted by just a dash of racism, if not out and out racism. Lin has acknowledged hearing taunts all the way back to his Harvard days when people would say, "Hey, the orchestra's on the other side of campus," or some such jabber.
These days he takes a slight from teammates like Carmelo Anthony, who tweeted that Lin was "Rudy."
Rudy? The undersized Notre Damer who never really played but suited up on the team? Lin may be an underdog, but he's a for real basketball talent who is more than just a "Rudy."
Even the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) took African American sportswriter Jason Whitlock to task for a tweet on Feb. 10 after Lin lit up Kobe and the Los Angeles Lakers for 38 points last week. Tweeted Whitlock: "Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight."
Whitlock only displayed more ignorance on FoxSports.com later:
"I get Linsanity. I've cried watching Tiger Woods win a major golf championship. Jeremy Lin, for now, is the Tiger Woods of the NBA. I suspect Lin makes Asian Americans feel the way I feel when I watch Tiger play golf."
Earth to Whitlock. Don't you know that Tiger is half-Asian American? We claim him too.
And while we're on the subject of golf, I didn't exactly see the media go gaga about Charlie Wi's lead and ultimate fall to Phil Mickelson in last week's AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. Wi is Korean born, who went to Cal and lives in Southern California, though he still retains his Korean ties. Both Wi and Kevin Na, a Korean-born naturalized American, were both in the top 10 throughout the tournament, but neither could make a Richter scale move playing in Carmel.
Meanwhile Tiger, who finished behind Wi and Na, got all the attention, though it still wasn't enough to stop the Lin buzz.
Pro golf just doesn't have the heat like the NBA.
It would be great to get to the point where it doesn't make a difference what race you are in this country. But with inequalities and disparities making a comeback with a vengeance in the parts of life that matter, we aren't there yet.
So you have to celebrate these ethnic triumphs when you can. Will American-born Chinese Lin continue to do his thing at the same level? Those of us in Northern California who saw him with the Warriors have already had our mini-Linsanity last year. But we also got real, when Lin was cut from the team, and then moved through the D-League, then Houston, then on to the Knicks.
Still, last week was amazing for Lin. And on the big stage, he put every Asian American on the map with him. Just like Connie Chung did when she was on the network news. Just like Norm Mineta did when he rose in Congress and ultimately became a cabinet member in two administrations. Just like all the Asian Americans who are fortunate to break through and make us all a little less invisible.
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Updates at www.amok.com. And don't forget to follow Emil on Twitter, @emilamok.
February 13, 2012 2:41 PM
A prior engagement on the West Coast meant I couldn't get to the AALDEF dinner in New York City last week. So let me give my own award to AALDEF honoree Fareed Zakaria for an excellent interview Sunday with George Soros on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS show.
It's not every day you see someone elicit such candid talk from a billionaire.
And let's face it, when it comes to fixing this country's economy, to paraphrase Hillary, it takes more than a village.
It takes a few billionaires.
Unfortunately, Super PAC guys like the Koch Brothers play to stereotype and give billionaires a bad name. So it's refreshing that others in their tax-bracket like Warren Buffett and Soros have displayed a more egalitarian sensibility.
In the GPS interview, Soros was critical of the broken political process that "is leading the country into a dead end."
He said the economy was improving, but he worried that the politics of the election "would put a lid" on the recovery mostly because the Republicans don't want to see a recovery going into the November election.
"So they will push for austerity and no new taxes, therefore cutting off services, which will depress economic activity," Soros said, painting the GOP's cynical facade which he sees suddenly changing in the event of a Republican victory.
"If the Republicans win, they will undergo a miraculous transformation where they discover that actually we can afford to have some stimulus," he said.
And that's the problem with our country and the political process, which isn't functioning the way it used to. "The political parties are more determined to destroy each other," Soros said.
He was critical of how the Republicans have established the idea that government can't pay for itself or do anything well. "It's a politically inspired campaign which is self-fulfilling, if you believe government is bad, you can do a lot to make sure government is bad. This is where the political process has led the country into a dead end, and that is what we need to somehow get out of."
Unlike many billionaires, Soros believes that the private sector created the imbalances that led to our financial crises and the need for the regulation that most billionaires decry.
But Soros is a billionaire who wants fairness and is thinking of you.
"The super (financial) bubble resulted in a great increase in inequality," Soros said. "Now we have the after-effect where we have slow growth. But if you can have better distribution of income, then the average American would be better off as a result."
And that means Soros is all for paying taxes, though he admits he'd pay more than the 14% Romney paid because of his philanthropic activity.
"But I'm willing to pay more," he said. "If everybody who made as much money as I do gave as much as I do, I wouldn't advocate it. But I think the free-riders should also pay."
Damn those free-riders.
Soros thinks Obama hasn't done quite as much as he could, but he's going to vote for him anyway.
But no word yet on a George Soros-backed Super PAC.
"I haven't decided," Soros said. "But I think it's a big issue. Citizens United has unleashed private money for political purposes that can be used anonymously. This has created an unequal playing field, which will further destroy the political system."
Soros says he's always given money "on principle" and not for "private interests."
"I've always done it very openly, saying what I'm doing," Soros said. He said he'll state what he's doing when he decides, but for now was fairly blunt. "I am distressed by the problem Citizens United has created."
You see, we all have more in common with billionaires than you think.
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See Emil's take on Lin-fomania this week at www.amok.com, and follow him on Twitter, @emilamok.
February 6, 2012 4:17 PM
A Super Bowl victory means New York is now home to a world-class football team. (It's primarily in Jersey, but who's to quibble?)
Coach Tom Coughlin, the man everyone wanted fired mid-season, is now seen in a new light--as a victorious leader.
As the former NFL analyst and coach John Madden liked to say, "Winning is good deodorant."
Of course, it only masks the smell.
The Coughlin effect may actually be at play for New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, the leader of a not quite world-class police force. It isn't world class if the standard includes having a sense of respect for the rights and well-being of the diverse communities a police force is assigned to serve and protect.
But despite numerous calls for Kelly's resignation and for the installation of an independent overseer of the NYPD, Kelly is likely to stay on.
Why? Mostly because of the appearance of winning his "Super Bowl," the war on terrorism, though his strategies have come at the cost of individual civil liberties to Shi'as and Muslims, and people of color in New York.
That's pricey deodorant--and it still smells.
The heat on Kelly has come after yet another AP report revealed a secret document by the police outlining a policy of surveillance of innocent Shi'as and Muslims and their mosques in the New York area.
Kelly has long said police only investigate legitimate leads. After the first Muslim demonstration in Foley Square last November, Kelly's public statements denied any spying at all.
But now the document uncovered by AP reveals Kelly's secret.
He was lying all along.
The department has also been caught lying about Kelly's involvement in and use of the propaganda film, The Third Jihad. First, it was said Kelly wasn't involved. As it turns out, Kelly has a small part in the film and was interviewed for 90 minutes by the filmmakers funded by a right-wing group. Then the department said the film was used by just a handful of officers. Oops. How about 1,500 cadets in the police academy?
Kelly has since blamed a lowly sergeant for the snafu and has apologized for use of the film---not for the lies.
When the lies pertain to a policy of profiling for the purpose of scapegoating an entire community, now you're talking about the need for a change of leadership, or at the very least, a monitor to make sure New York still has a police force that believes in the Constitution.
Not surprisingly, Kelly has his defenders. The Daily News published an article co-written by former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge calling the attacks on Kelly "political correctness."
A New York Times piece was more of an explanation why Kelly stays on so long in the job. In a general sense, the philosophy of going after small crimes to prevent bigger crimes is a winning strategy. But when it comes to warding off terrorism, that translates into the use of simple profiling, which often means scapegoating mass numbers of innocents.
As long as it wards off another 9/11, Kelly does as he pleases, and his boss could care less.
"It's easy for him and the police force to use tactics that are unsavory, very un-American, possibly illegal to profile one community," said Mohammad Ali Naquvi, a lawyer and activist who helped draft a statement for more than 40 groups decrying the NYPD's policies.
Naquvi says the intelligence work is marked by a lack of sophistication and takes on the specious and elementary logic that if terrorists are Muslim, then all Muslims are terrorists.
That's no way to fight an anti-terror campaign.
Naquvi likes to cite a 25-year record from the FBI that attributes just six percent of acts of terror to Muslim groups.
He also points out if the police are warding off Iranian terrorists, going after all Shi'as makes no sense when less than ten percent of Shi'as are Iranian.
The point is profiling is law enforcement's lazy way out of doing an important job. It's not efficient, it's not fair, it's not logical. But that's fine, if you don't care about rights or civil liberties.
And even if you do, if you're Commissioner Kelly, you just have to look at Tom Coughlin and believe that every day there's not another 9/11, you've just won the Super Bowl.
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Updates at www.amok.com. Follow Emil on Twitter, @emilamok.
February 1, 2012 12:20 PM
In politics, when the going gets rough, the tough get dirty and divisive. Even though voters say they don't like to see it, when a campaign is desperate to have a victory, going negative really works.
Florida was so nasty, we can't even call what they were throwing mud. It was fecal.
And now that it's over, it takes a fine acting job (and some nerve) to show your pearly whites through the crusted residue, and declare how it all hasn't diminished one's stature and claim to the White House, but has only prepared one for the big fight.
Makes you wonder what Romney would throw at Obama?
Ah, but a victory speech lets you reset, clean up, and move on.
Romney didn't mention Gingrich in his opening remarks and acknowledged this morning that the Speaker didn't call him last night. But then again, Gingrich didn't call him after Iowa or New Hampshire either. "I guess Speaker Gingrich doesn't have our phone number," Romney quipped on NBC. But maybe Gingrich was still cleaning up after being doused in doo by the Mitter.
No matter, Romney's focus in his speech was all Obama and those in the "faculty lounge."
I guess that means the Romney administration will be full of all those top University of Phoenix grads.
Romney's speech was barely eloquent, but then his mode of victory hardly inspires poetry. The speech did seem to have a mixed message. Yes, he'll repeal Obamacare (or the parts that aren't too much like Romneycare). He'll also not just slow government spending, he'll cut it. But can you really cut the government and balance the budget without raising taxes, and do all that without hurting ordinary people already without a safety net? Can you have such a lean America and still "insist on a military so powerful that no one would even think of challenging it"?
Victory speeches are always short of details, but we needed something major to elevate Romney's status.
Didn't hear it.
Can you really be taken seriously about "saving the soul of America," after the kind of Florida campaign he waged?
Gingrich, for his part, was happy to be equally delusional, acting as if he had just won in South Carolina ten days prior.
He skipped over the last ten days and mentioned the 1994 Contract with America. (Get the preposition right. It wasn't "on" America, though it may have felt that way.) He said he'd have a working presidency from day one and take care of business by executive order.
But I knew he lost it when he explained how he could even think about Nevada next, let alone his inauguration day.
He would move on with "People Power."
"People Power will defeat money power in the next six months," said Gingrich in his speech.
People to Newt: You are no Cory Aquino.
But there's no stopping Gingrich. The big finish of his speech was so damn dramatic, you'd think he was one of the "Three Musketeers."
Said the speaker: "I pledge to you my life, my fortune, my sacred honor."
Or what's left of it.
Whatever Romney's dishing, Gingrich apparently likes it.
The Latinos apparently didn't care for Gingrich much, giving Romney some exit poll props. Latinos were in excess of 54 percent for Romney, just 28 percent for Gingrich. There was a similar polarization for married women, where 51 percent went for Romney and just 28 percent for Gingrich.
The pace of diversity should pick up now as the campaigns move west. Remember a real Pac Man, boxer Manny Pacquiao, was used by Harry Reid to save his political carcass last time out. The Asian American voter does make a difference in Nevada.
But it's also the home state of Gingrich's personal Pac Man, billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
If you liked Florida's nastiness, one can presume whatever happened in Florida will not stay in Florida.
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