8 Asians

One day a reality or just Photoshop?

The New York Times just did a story about “Before Obama, There Was Bill Cosby,” which I found quite coincidental, since I was contemplating recently with all the Obama election victory coverage about his historic win about what brought us to this moment in time, and how I thought that there would be no President Elect Obama without The Cosby Show (also coined as The Huxtable Effect by a blogger). As the Times put it:

“But one idea seems to be gaining traction, and improbably it has Bill Cosby and Karl Rove in agreement: “The Cosby Show,” which began on NBC in 1984 and depicted the Huxtables, an upwardly mobile black family — a departure from the dysfunction and bickering that had characterized some previous shows about black families — had succeeded in changing racial attitudes enough to make an Obama candidacy possible. On election night Mr. Rove, the former Bush strategist, said on Fox News: “We’ve had an African-American first family for many years in different forms. When ‘The Cosby Show’ was on, that was America’s family. It wasn’t a black family. It was America’s family.” “

That is what I thought when I saw the Obama family on stage in Grant Park as they all were waving their hands into America’s living rooms and why I used that family photo on my blog post about Asian Americans overwhelmingly supporting Obama. Before, if you saw a black president portrayed on television, like Dennis Haysbert’s portrayal of David Palmer as the President of the United States or Morgan Freeman as president in Deep Impact, you knew that you were watching fiction. Who would have ever thought that the United States would ever elect a black man as president? In the final episode of the final season of The West Wing, Jimmy Smits portrays Matthew Santos, a Hispanic Democratic candidate and Senator that becomes President Elect.

Some have argued that ABC’s 2005 failed “Commander in Chief” television series portraying Geena Davis as female President Mackenzie Allen was a liberal conspiracy to get the country comfortable for a President Hillary Clinton… In the upcoming new season 7 of Fox’s ‘24,’ actress Cherry Jones will be portraying the president.

I ask you – has there ever been an Asian American portrayed as a president or presidential candidate on American television or film? If not, more now than ever, is the time to have one! If we cannot even imagine having an Asian American president fictionally, how will America ever have an Asian American in reality?

I think the first viable Asian American to run for president will be Republican Governor Bobby Jindall of Louisiana. He was already rumored to be on John McCain’s vice-presidential short list. I expect Jindall to run in 2010 and/or 2014. Jindall is currently 37, so he has plenty of time to get more experience. A future contender may be John Chiang, currently California’s state controller. But first, I believe Chiang has ambitions to be the governor of California. There are rumors that America’s first Asian American governor (of the mainland, or as Sarah Palin would put it, “in the lower 48″), former governor of the state of Washington, Gary Locke, may be appointed to an Obama cabinet position.

I missed this 3-part series in AsianWeek earlier this summer titled, “The First Asian Pacific American President: With an African American on the path to the White House, when is it our turn?” I think it will probably not be in my lifetime. But at the very least, I would hope to see an Asian American president in a television series or major American film prior to an Asian American being elected President of the United States (POTUS).

I’m a big fan of The Onion, but I am even a bigger fan of their video segments, positioned as the Onion News Network (ONN). The latest video I’ve come across I thought was hilarious:

China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Okay, apologies in advance for the worst post title EVER. But I couldn’t resist. I have the corniest sense of humor.

2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the popular period novel, Anne of Green Gables, written by my personal heroine and Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. If you’ve never heard of this book, then you’re either male or a very confused female. Just kidding about confused. I really meant that you’ll never be my friend in real life.

Written as a newspaper serial and published in 1908, Anne illustrated the life of a young red-haired orphan who was mistakenly adopted by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, two siblings looking for help on their farm on Prince Edward Island. She arrives and chaos ensues, but Anne ends up capturing the hearts of the Avonlea townsfolk and then (in the next eight or nine books–depending on whether you count the shorts stories that Montgomery wrote up later in life) she becomes a teacher, earns a Bachelors degree (which was pretty unique at the time), falls in love, has A LOT of kids and basically leads the best live EVER.
Continue Reading »

This is BREAKING NEWS, people. We’ve heard all about how hard Asians work–sometimes to the death–but no one has bothered to figure out how we do it!

Wait, how do we do it? Easy.

TWINS.

See, it works like this: you basically rope your identical twin into working the same exact job as you without telling anyone, share opposite hours and voila, the whole world thinks you’re a work-a-holic robot. It also helps if you and your twin are married to a pair of identical twins, too. Alright, so most of us don’t have the luxury of being a twin but a pair of twin couples in China made this work.

Customers dubbed the pair the “robot couple” because of their marathon hours, which involved opening the restaurant at 6am and apparently still being there to close it up at 3am.

But it has now emerged that the restaurant in the city of Yiwu in eastern China is actually run by two couples – and both the men and the women are identical twins.

Read more here.

Now that’s what I call a brilliant work ethic. So who wants to be my twin right now so I can go home and nap?

Nurse who first treated McCain; Hanoi Hilton’s prison director. Source: Newsweek.

This being an election year, I am on quite a few email lists and came across this one from the Silicon Valley Obama email list, an article on McCain. Newsweek interviewed the nurse who first took care of McCain when he crash landed in Vietnam as well as McCain’s prison director at the “Hanoi Hilton” (who totally denies that McCain was tortured – maybe we have another swiftboating here…), as well as many others in Vietnam, in “Why Vietnam Loves McCain“:

“Just about everyone in Vietnam agrees. They all know who McCain is, and no one seems to hold a grudge about the 23 bombing missions he flew against targets in and around Hanoi. That goes for ordinary Vietnamese, senior bureaucrats and people who met him during his captivity—the district nurse who may have saved his life after he was shot down, and the hard-line military officer who was his chief jailer for more than five years at the Plantation and the notorious Hanoi Hilton. They like the way McCain pushed Washington to normalize relations in the 1990s and the way trade has mushroomed from $1.5 billion in 2001 to $12 billion last year, and they believe he’ll help them even more if he wins. It’s a far cry from the day McCain parachuted from his disintegrating jet and was severely beaten and stripped to his underwear by the mob that pulled him from Truc Bach Lake.”

Basically, it looks like the Vietnamese liked how McCain put the past behind him, and help re-open the United States to Vietnam (along with other veterans like his fellow Senator John Kerry). A lot has been made about McCain’s previous comments specifically (purportedly) regarding his Vietnamese captors and torturers, “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” He later apologized for using that epithet. I personally give him the benefit of the doubt.

Now I am not supporting McCain in this election, and definitely respect his service to this country. I cannot even imagine surviving 5 years in a prison camp, especially with years of solitary confinement as well as torture. I registered as a Republican to vote for McCain in the 2000 California Republican primary because I thought he was the MUCH better Republican candidate (and knew that George W. Bush would be a huge mistake if nominated and then elected…) – though I did vote for Gore in November.

What I wonder is how Vietnamese-Americans feel about McCain? I’m sure the anti-Communists in San Jose who were ardent supporters for “Little Saigon” are probably pro-McCain, but how about overall? I’m sure the American-born Vietnamese-American probably has very little connection to the Vietnam War of the 60’s and early 70s. Who do Vietnamese-Americans lean more towards – if anybody at all – or is it split even?

One of the most popular news stories being shared today on Yahoo! News is about a 45 year-old Japanese man who literally keeled over from too much work and stress.

The unidentified man worked for Toyota, and “in the two months up to his death, the man averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month…”

Why have I heard this story before? Maybe because karoshi, its Japanese term, has been grouped together with all the other Japanese stereotypes, from the overworked salaryman who puts his career before his family, all of which leads to his untimely demise.

But to hear it actually happen, especially with the idea that someone can work over 80 hours of overtime? Insane.

This story is prompting me to do two things: First, I’m going to forward this to my mother to leave me alone so she won’t think I’m wasting my life at my desk job and secondly, I’m going to bury this article far away from my bosses so they don’t get any useful ideas about having me stay late in the office.

When you typically think of Asian Americans settling down, you probably think the West Coast (California, Washington State) , the Northeast, or possibly Chicago. Well, demographic trends show that more and more Asian Americans are moving away from the traditional hubs, as reported in USA Today’s article, “In a twist, USA’s Asians are heading to the Mountain West“:

“In a surprising twist to historical settlement patterns, growing numbers of Asian Americans are beginning to bail from the places that have long been their main gateways to the West: California and Washington. Wearied by the same crushing home prices, poor schools, jammed freeways and persistent crime that have sent millions of other Californians packing, Asian Americans are moving to spots in the West they hope will produce better lifestyles — namely Las Vegas and Phoenix. The Asian migration is fueling ethnic diversity in places that have been overwhelmingly white. Since 1990, Nevada has had the most rapid growth of any state in the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The number jumped 174% in the 1990s and 67% so far this decade to about 211,000, according to 2007 Census Bureau estimates. Asians now make up about 8.2% of Nevada’s 2.6 million people — a higher percentage than the national share of 5.4%. Arizona also is registering significant growth among Asians, a trend fueled largely by an exodus from California and Washington.”

The article goes on to describe a lot of growth in the areas of Asian focused grocery stores, restaurants and even banks cantered towards Asian Americans. Washington state’s cost of living seems pretty cheap to me compared to San Francisco Bay Area, so I can only imagine how inexpensive housing is in Nevada and Arizona – especially given the number of foreclosures going on in those overbuilt cities during the housing boom.

The article also notes that there is going to be a new national “glossy” Asian American magazine launched in Las Vegas, titled AsianAm , which will sell for $4.50 and aim for an initial circulation of 700,000. 700,000 sounds HUGE… If you know the history of Asian American magazines (such as A Magazine, TransPacific, etc.), none have ever been able to survive long-term. Maybe AsianAm will?

(Yuqing Zhang will be a freshman at Thomas Jefferson in the fall. With him are his father, Ronald Zhang, and mother, Yehong Zhou. (By Michael Alison Chandler — The Washington Post)

Early in June, New York University and the College Board had published a study about Asian Americans attempts to dismantle the stereotype that Asian-Americans are all a bunch of math & science geeks focused on nothing but academic achievement and without legitimate needs, titled “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight.“ 8Asians’ blogger Bo blogged about it in her post, “Breaking News: We’re not homogenous!” To possibly reinforce the stereotype and possibly suggest a rising yellow peril, today’s Washington Post, the newspaper reports on its front page, “At Magnet School, An Asian Plurality.”

“At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the Alexandria area this year, more than 2,500 applicants vied for 485 seats. Asian American students got 219, or 45 percent of the total, while white students got 205, or 42 percent… A plurality of Asian American students in a high school class would be an anomaly in the Washington region, where fewer than one in 10 residents is Asian American. In Fairfax, which supplies most of the school’s students, people of Asian descent account for 16 percent of the population, census data show. That percentage has doubled since 1990 and is the highest in the area…The rising concentration of Asian Americans at T.J. mirrors demographic trends in other elite math and science magnet schools. In New York, the selective and specialized Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School have Asian American majorities, although about 10 percent of the metropolitan population is of Asian descent. In San Francisco, Asian Americans make up more than 60 percent of the students at selective Lowell High School and about a third of the city’s population.”

There are more Asian Americans than whites in Thomas Jefferson – it must be news! And of course, Asian Americans are good at math and science and are filling up all the science & math magnet schools across the country! Perhaps there will be a “New White Flight” in Fairfax County? Well, I am being a bit sarcastic – if you read the whole article, it really isn’t being too alarmist and raises the typical Asian American “model minority” stories and questions issues around affirmative action and college admissions.

The newspaper also references Jenny Tsai, “a recent Harvard graduate” who wrote her senior college thesis on “‘Too Many Asians at this School’: Racialized Perceptions and Identity Formation” which I blogged about earlier this year.

Do you think the Washington Post is simply reporting the news? How do you feel about articles like these – proud? awkward? ashamed? or apathetic?