I only did it to assuage my white guilt for Manzanar.
I knew it. I knew you offered those tickets out of pity. I should have just studied that day. Even though I was out of school by then. You know, because that's just how we roll. Curse you BW!!!!
I am interested in hearing why you think that this was racist instead of merely playing on stereotypes. Christ, if we can't laugh at ourselves and each other for the silly cultural, religious, political, and ethnic differences we all have, then maybe the terrorists should win.
As for your last query, google "Jay Leno Freddie Mitchell" and see what comes up. To my recollection, nobody said anything about that being even remotely racist.
number 1 (from KAB's post), i am definitely not calling you a racist. i want to pre-empt that. i didn't even know if you are asian. doesn't matter to me.
we CAN laugh at ourselves. it's the other people laughing at us for being different that is offensive and racist. and let's put this in context. i make fun of asians (i am asian) with my friends all the time. i have quite a diverse group of friends. in my close group of cal friends, we literally have an asian, a white person, two black people and a latin person. we bust each other's races and our own respective races.
we are not producing a segment on fox and showing it on a major cable network.
to your last point, jay leno is making fun of freddie mitchell, not black people. BIG difference. leno does what i described in my hypothetical on people in the streets of LA. trust me, if he did a segment ONLY on black people or latins in LA and made fun of their accents and ridiculous answers, he would be screwed. and not in a good way.
is there a double standard for white people? yes. the segment could have been done on foreign european SC students and i doubt it would draw the same criticism. is that fair? no, but that's the world we live in.
I knew it. I knew you offered those tickets out of pity. I should have just studied that day. Even though I was out of school by then. You know, because that's just how we roll. Curse you BW!!!!
It wasn't just pity. I wanted you to know how loud pagans can yell.
I think context and intent are VERY important with this kind of thing. I am a white dude, but I thought this Fox video was very offensive. It went way beyond making me cringe; it made me angry. The interview guy went out of his way to play up stereotypes about Asian students being ignorant of sports, and then went so far as to riff on their accents ("Was that 'badminton' or 'better?"). How many native born Americans speak un-accented Mandarin? Fox purports to be a news network. To me, that makes this kind of thing worse.
OTOH, I have to admit that I find Lisa Lampanelli to be hilarious, even though her subject material is patently offensive, WAY over the top, and frequently cringe-inducing. But people know (based on her interviews, her circle of friends, etc.) that she does not really believe any of that stuff, and she spares no ethnic group from her rants. I don't know if this distinction cuts it with other people on this Board, but I would be interested in comments.
100% agreed.
BTW, Lisa Lampanelli is hilarious. Her work on roasts are comic gold.
Three pages already and not a single "stop being so sensitive" comment. That must be a new record for threads about racism here. Haven't seen the video yet, but my curiosity is certainly piqued.
Three pages already and not a single "stop being so sensitive" comment. That must be a new record for threads about racism here. Haven't seen the video yet, but my curiosity is certainly piqued.
The Fox people would not have done a piece like this on the UCLA, Cal or UW campuses, because they're already known for having a large population of International Asian students who know and care little of football. Doing it at USC is what makes it funny, not that the students have trouble making the "L" sound. All you science and engineering majors who had Asian TA's already knew that.
Too many idiots out there go with the stereotype. Chancellor Tien was one of the great Cal academics and was a HUGE Cal FB supporter as Cal Chancellor. And yes he had a distinct accent but it was no big deal whether he did or not.
Too many idiots out there go with the stereotype. Chancellor Tien was one of the great Cal academics and was a HUGE Cal FB supporter as Cal Chancellor. And yes he had a distinct accent but it was no big deal whether he did or not.
Not to mention the obvious fact there are a lot of Asians on this board.
Should I do a roll call on Asians in a new thread? I'm kidding.
It wasn't just pity. I wanted you to know how loud pagans can yell.
You know, I used to think that big rotund guys like Pavarotti had an advantage to belt out the resonating sounds from their pie holes. Until I met you. I think Sandy should sign you up and rock the Old Blues section to life.
Whether its racist or not is clearly debatable. What's really shocking is that the Fox editors thought that something like this was just ok to air. Not one person over at Fox thought to themselves "hmmmm....someone may find this offensive."
For the record, back when I was a student, there was a huge AAPI representation in the student section.
I would love to hear Prof. Edward's take on this.
You mean the same Harry Edwards who intentionally scheduled midterms during the Jewish High Holidays, refused to schedule makeup exams until forced to by the administration, and them made them at odd hours and much more difficult?
There is almost no one's opinion I am interested in less.
<blockquote><div class="name-said">CrimsonBear;561903 said:</div><hr>Not to mention the obvious fact there are a lot of Asians on this board.<br /><br />Should I do a roll call on Asians in a new thread? I'm kidding.<hr></blockquote><br /><br />Going by school demographics, 30-40% of the posters here should be asian, unless it's true that asians are less american and thus, care less about football.:eek:
Going by school demographics, 30-40% of the posters here should be asian, unless it's true that asians are less american and thus, care less about football.:eek:
I am interested in hearing why you think that this was racist instead of merely playing on stereotypes. Christ, if we can't laugh at ourselves and each other for the silly cultural, religious, political, and ethnic differences we all have, then maybe the terrorists should win.
As for your last query, google "Jay Leno Freddie Mitchell" and see what comes up. To my recollection, nobody said anything about that being even remotely racist.
I'll weigh in on what I don't like about it. Small point - what drunk said - the "All American" comment, implying that Asians aren't, is uncalled for.
But the major point is, its just too easy. Which is why it also wasn't funny. The best ethnic humor finds differences that you kind of weren't conciously aware but when its pointed out, you realize it of OR finds humor in the DIFFERENCE not in the person who is different. No value judgment involved. Making fun of someone's accent is just mean spirited, like making fun of a kid with a lisp or a stutter. Ha Ha. He talks funny. Running around a large campus until you find kids with accents who struggle with the finer points of English and making them look stupid because of it is not creative or funny. I really don't think that many people that were the butt of that type of joke would "laugh at themselves". I could definitely see going to another country and having somebody make fun of me as an American and laughing if it was kind of funny. But if say, somebody waited until I was eating lunch and took close ups of me cramming food in my mouth so they could say "Look at the fat American pig", I wouldn't appreciate it.
Does calling it racist get us anywhere? Probably not. Its not really different then running around interviewing 50 blondes until you get a real ditz so you can make fun of the dumb blonde. But it was mean spirited and childish and when you add in that its mean spirited and childish and it targets a particular ethnicity, they should have known better.
At the end of the day, though, your ability to get away with poking fun based on race goes up when what you are doing is actually funny. Which is in part why this guy didn't get away with this. It wasn't funny.
Going by school demographics, 30-40% of the posters here should be asian, unless it's true that asians are less american and thus, care less about football.:eek:
Does this mean BI Karaoke Night has moved one more step towards reality? I like to think my version of "Love Me Tender" is the one the King listens to in heaven.
You know, I used to think that big rotund guys like Pavarotti had an advantage to belt out the resonating sounds from their pie holes. Until I met you. I think Sandy should sign you up and rock the Old Blues section to life.
I was really hoping you'd say "Hey, some of my best friends are pagans" - just because I don't think I've heard anyone say that before.
Now I have this vision of BW climbing up Mt. Olympus to bring offerings to Zeus or something.
<blockquote><div class="name-said">GB54;561935 said:</div><hr>Does this mean BI Karaoke Night has moved one more step towards reality? I like to think my version of "Love Me Tender" is the one the King listens to in heaven.<hr></blockquote><br /><br />Please, karaoke is all about contemporary songs now, like "Baby".
<blockquote><div class="name-said">Bearsph74;561942 said:</div><hr>Please, karaoke is all about contemporary songs now, like "Baby".<hr></blockquote><br /><br />Wait, you think "Baby" is contemporary?
I'll weigh in on what I don't like about it. Small point - what drunk said - the "All American" comment, implying that Asians aren't, is uncalled for.
But the major point is, its just too easy. Which is why it also wasn't funny. The best ethnic humor finds differences that you kind of weren't conciously aware but when its pointed out, you realize it of OR finds humor in the DIFFERENCE not in the person who is different. No value judgment involved. Making fun of someone's accent is just mean spirited, like making fun of a kid with a lisp or a stutter. Ha Ha. He talks funny. Running around a large campus until you find kids with accents who struggle with the finer points of English and making them look stupid because of it is not creative or funny. I really don't think that many people that were the butt of that type of joke would "laugh at themselves". I could definitely see going to another country and having somebody make fun of me as an American and laughing if it was kind of funny. But if say, somebody waited until I was eating lunch and took close ups of me cramming food in my mouth so they could say "Look at the fat American pig", I wouldn't appreciate it.
Does calling it racist get us anywhere? Probably not. Its not really different then running around interviewing 50 blondes until you get a real ditz so you can make fun of the dumb blonde. But it was mean spirited and childish and when you add in that its mean spirited and childish and it targets a particular ethnicity, they should have known better.
At the end of the day, though, your ability to get away with poking fun based on race goes up when what you are doing is actually funny. Which is in part why this guy didn't get away with this. It wasn't funny.
I heartily agree that it wasn't funny in that regard, because, as you say, it wasn't done particularly creatively. However, as I said earlier, I'm not sure that's really what they were going for here, as a significant part of the joke to me was that they did it on the USC campus, where these types of students are generally not believed to exist.
I'd just describe it as idiotic with a big helping of xenophobia. They decided to go to a school with a lot of international students, focus on one segment of that population and mock their accents. Stunning, just stunning that this made this way up the tree without getting yanked. I'd heard about the piece and figured they'd be talking to a number of $C students and teasing them in various ways, and that the accent thing came up at some point. It was pretty surprising to see that seeking out Asian kids and making them say "Colorado" was only the whole point of the segment.
Just, wow.
Agree. But you missed two points.
The segment begins with the expressed intention of giving Colorado and Utah an "All American" welcome. Then cuts to students who have heavy Asian accents.
All the students in the segment are Asian background. What don't any non-Asian students attend USC?
It's so funny watching the PC Police tripping over themselves trying to grab the reins of this "dumb-$hit" out of control "slop piece" simply for their own race's advantage.
Everyone here should grow a pair and understand that this "USC/All-American/Asian" piece was put together by a bunch of numbnuts probably more used to producing you-tube video's than anything else.
But I'm sorry to say, you should get used to it. With the advent of 1,000 digital channels with "nothing on," your likelihood of viewing dumb filler like this only increases.
The race to the bottom is on. Enjoy.
By the way i thought it was slightly insensitive, but I did see good technical comedy value in it. (I believe the '$C all-american football/$C foreign students mangling the english language and football knowledge' juxtaposition has already been expressed, so please don't start an argument with me regarding my opinion).
PS. If any Tiger Mom's want to debate I'd be happy to engage in discussion.
