Jeff Yang of AsianPOP has written a compelling response to the blog post in his latest column, and I am briefly quoted in it. I will write a full response shortly, since Yang (due to his word limit) was unable to touch on many of the issues raised in our conversation together.

A Chinese immigrant accused of stabbing, beheading and cannibalizing a man on a Greyhound bus in Canada pleaded in court Tuesday for someone to “please kill me,” and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. 

Vince Weiguang Li, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2004, is charged with second-degree murder in last Wednesday’s slaying of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean — an attack which witnesses aboard the bus said appeared to be unprovoked. He has yet to enter a plea.

I had much the same reaction as I had when I first heard that the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, was an Asian American man: fear, defensiveness, and an immediate emotional investment in the case.

Like with Cho, I am absolutely horrified with Li’s actions. This apparently unprovoked –and gruesome — attack on a total stranger cannot be justified or condoned, and if Li is found guilty, I am certain that he will receive a life sentence in jail.

But, also, I’m reminded of the little-known statistic showing that Asian American men, like Asian American women, are unusually susceptible to mental illness and disease, confounded by cultural reluctance to seek psychiatric help and therapy. Clearly, from Li’s unprovoked attack on an innocent man, his deranged mutilation of the victim’s body, his comments moments after his arrest that he hoped to “stay on the bus forever”, and his apparently suicidal statement at his court appearance today, Li clearly has mental issues that could have gone undiagnosed for years.

My entire life, I’ve watched mentally ill Asian/Asian American men and women be cast aside as weak, unusual, and “abnormal”. The sicknesses are hidden, pills are shoved at the patients, and the community puts on a brave smile in order to “save face” that there are mentally ill in our midst. This behaviour needs to stop.

There have been many stories of mentally ill, suicidal, or violently psychotic Asian American (or, in this case, Chinese-Canadian) men in recent media, and I have to wonder how many more the APIA community has to hear before we are willing to prioritize mental health issues as our chief concern. As a community, we will continue to allow mental illness to claim those amongst us, so long as we allow these diseases to remain culturally stigmatized and we refuse to acknowledge the effect that the Asian American experience has on how Asian American men and women develop — and seek (or don’t seek) — help for their illnesses.

Being a racial minority, an immigrant, a second-generation man or woman, poor, stereotyped, alienated: all of these narratives place stress on people in a unique, culturally-specific way — a way that is profoundly Asian American. As long as we pretend that mentally ill Asian Americans ”just happen to be” Asian American, rather than reflections of the larger racial and cultural stresses that are unique to our community, we will continue to let both the mental illness and the racial stresses of being Asian American go untreated. 

Acknowledging that the Asian American experience produces stress on a person is no insult to the Asian American experience — I’m not saying that Asian Americans are more likely to be psychotic, deranged killers (although I’m sure that Chinese-Canadians are arming to defend themselves from just such a xenophobic charge following the story of Li’s attack). On the contrary, what I’m saying is that those Asian Americans who are mentally ill are exposed to cultural factors that both influence the kind of mental illness they experience (depression, suicide, feelings of alienation, psychosis) and their willingness to go seek treatment. All first-generation immigrants go through a unique experience having to readjust to a new, alien culture, and I’ve seen too many of those Asian Ameircan immigrants suffer through undiagnosed and debilitating anxiety and depression.

Long story short, I’m angry at Li for being yet another example of the Angry Asian Man stereotype, wielding metal objects like guns, hammers and knives to express a psychotic rage. And I’m feeling defensive for my Chinese-Canadian family, whom I want to protect from the sideways glances from xenophobic Canadians who blame Li’s “Chinese-ness” for the killing. But I also feel deeply saddened by this whole affair: that a man who likely needed psychiatric help never got it, and by a community who will probably be more quick to cast Li from the community than to look inward as to how we can prevent this from ever happening again.

She is the yellow version of bad Black comics doing the “White people do this, Black people do this” routine. Except she draws on every dumbass Asian/Asian American stereotype to not be funny, including such classics as “Asians eat dogs”, “I’m an Asian girl, ain’t I so cute?”, “you can’t tell Asians apart”, and “Asian men are sexually frustrated dorks”.

Beyond the sheer racism of Ms. Ku’s act, Ms. Ku is simply not funny. In fact, her voice is so grating, it’s like nails on a chalk-board — she sounds like she’s trying to sound like a hentai movie, with her endless upward inflection and heavy breathing.

“Miso funny” my ass. How about “you-so need to not quit your day job”? 

Here is what she has to say:

I was on this radio show, and the DJ asked me, “What if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful? What if you woke up and you were blonde, 5′ 11″, and you weighed 100 pounds?”

Well, I probably wouldn’t get up — because I’d be too weak to stand. In our culture, we don’t see people out there with normal-looking bodies. We should all feel beautiful. If you feel beautiful, you will be more political, more active in trying to stand up for yourself, you’ll be in more control of your life, have more sense of power over what you’re doing.

I started to need to feel more positive about myself after I came to Hollywood. I got criticized a lot for my looks — people thought that I was too fat and that I wasn’t pretty. Also, because I’m different — because I’m not white, I’m Asian, I’m not super skinny. I was anorexic for a time when I was about 24, when I was doing television. I was told by network executives that I had to lose weight. I was forced to. I went on a very rigid diet and became very sick because I wasn’t eating at all.

My mother always had body issues, and I really feel that she passed that on to me. She’d had two kids and couldn’t retain her old body. She handed down this disordered eating to me. She was always on a diet and always exercising, but not getting any joy from it. It was a punishing activity. Before I reached puberty, she was always so in love with my body, and saying, “You’re so thin, you’re so thin, just stay that way.”

My father … one time when I was maybe 9 years old and dancing in ballet — I loved it — he said after a recital, “You’re the fattest ballerina.” It so destroyed me that I never wanted to dance again. He wanted to prepare me for a world that was not going to accept me because I think he experienced so much racism. He’d say, “You’re not pretty. And you’re not going to be pretty.” I absolutely believed him.

I was on this radio show, and the DJ asked me, “What if you woke up tomorrow and you were beautiful? What if you woke up and you were blonde, 5′ 11″, and you weighed 100 pounds?”

Well, I probably wouldn’t get up — because I’d be too weak to stand. In our culture, we don’t see people out there with normal-looking bodies. We should all feel beautiful. If you feel beautiful, you will be more political, more active in trying to stand up for yourself, you’ll be in more control of your life, have more sense of power over what you’re doing.

I started to need to feel more positive about myself after I came to Hollywood. I got criticized a lot for my looks — people thought that I was too fat and that I wasn’t pretty. Also, because I’m different — because I’m not white, I’m Asian, I’m not super skinny. I was anorexic for a time when I was about 24, when I was doing television. I was told by network executives that I had to lose weight. I was forced to. I went on a very rigid diet and became very sick because I wasn’t eating at all.

My mother always had body issues, and I really feel that she passed that on to me. She’d had two kids and couldn’t retain her old body. She handed down this disordered eating to me. She was always on a diet and always exercising, but not getting any joy from it. It was a punishing activity. Before I reached puberty, she was always so in love with my body, and saying, “You’re so thin, you’re so thin, just stay that way.”

My father … one time when I was maybe 9 years old and dancing in ballet — I loved it — he said after a recital, “You’re the fattest ballerina.” It so destroyed me that I never wanted to dance again. He wanted to prepare me for a world that was not going to accept me because I think he experienced so much racism. He’d say, “You’re not pretty. And you’re not going to be pretty.” I absolutely believed him.

Now I feel great and settled in myself and the way I look. It took a long time to get there. You need to look in the mirror and compliment yourself. I have these little rituals of being very fastidious about my skin care and drinking a lot of water, and I see the results. When we care for ourselves, these are acts of love.

Do romantic things for yourself. Over the years, I’ve become a dancer, which is a big part of my life. I do belly dancing and burlesque dancing. Now I’m comfortable enough to do shows naked. This is a huge change from feeling super insecure and freaked out to feeling totally comfortable with myself. It’s about celebrating the body as opposed to trying to banish it.

Having been in Tucson, Arizona, for three years this August, I’m starting to see where this person was coming from. Beyond being called my fair share of “Oriental”, I’m surrounded by the deeply-ingrained, institutionalized Old (White) Boys’ Network, and it’s really starting to dishearten me. I want to destroy the people responsible for the unfair treatment, the double-standards, and the blatant stereotyping; yet, the insidiousness of institutionalized racism is that no one person is at fault. There’s no single face I can bloody.

Like many people of colour, I’m faced with the iniquity of being an underprivileged minority, the knowledge that these double standards are not fair, or just, or right, and the understanding that there’s no one — no one – I can petition to change it. And so, I’m left increasingly angry and frustrated.

The local campaign I’m volunteering with (which you can read about at EphraimCruz.com) out here in Tucson is part of a seven-way race for two State House seats. Cruz is arguably the only viable candidate of colour running to represent a district that is 52% Latino.

Our coalition is diverse: we’ve had supporters of all races come to volunteer for our campaign. But it’s inescapable that the candidate, and his top two organizers (myself and electroman) are political outsiders and people of colour.

And the obstacles we’ve faced, some days, seem insurmountable. 

Coming into the race, our candidate was immediately written-off. First, they said we would never be able to get through the candidacy declaration process. When we established our committee, then they said we would never get enough nominating signatures to get on the ballot. When we collected those signatures in record time, they laughed that we would never be able to get public financing. Even now that we’ve gotten our public financing before the incumbent, they continue to discount our candidacy. 

It would be foolish for me to summarily conclude that this immediate doubt of our campaign’s activities and qualifications have to do with race. But, compared to our closest competitors, our campaign has had more volunteers consistently on the ground, we’ve achieved our requirements faster than convention dictates, and we’ve worked equally hard — if not harder — than every other candidate in order to get there. And yet, while the White candidates are instinctively ranked by casual observers as front-runners, the Brown candidates are immediately dismissed as inconsequential. We have to struggle just to be taken seriously. 

Newspaper reporters have published flat-out wrong articles attacking my candidate, and the Democratic Party assumes that the character assassination must be real, even when we can point out the libelous nature of the reporting. We can’t say why our campaign is treated with such unbalanced disrespect, but it hasn’t escaped my attention that none of the White candidates have to worry about a reporter putting a biased spin on their coverage; none of the White candidates have had to worry about any negative press at all.

And that’s even when it’s warranted. Over the weekend, our campaign discovered that one of our White opponents — who has received taxpayer dollars in public financing – broke the rules and didn’t report a more than $200 expense on his campaign finance reports (which subjects each contribution and expenditure to rules and limits).

Chump change? I don’t have the luxury to believe that. Not only would folks all over Southern Arizona freak out with delight if our campaign had made a mistake in our campaign finances, but in order to stay competitive in what we’re seeing as an increasingly unbalanced playing field, we’ve had to make our money stretch. I don’t know how other campaigns would spend an extra $200, but for our campaign, $200 represents over 1,200 pieces of campaign literature, and the opportunity to knock on the doors of more than 1,000 additional voters.

That same Democratic opponent trolled the blogosphere — including this blog — to hype his candidacy, including spreading negative statements against other candidates. When he was challenged on this tactic, he sent his wife to adopt various pseudonyms to continue his work of spreading vicious lies about his opponents. For reasons that you and I can only guess at, they targeted most of their attention to my candidate instead of the other front-runners — who are, you guessed it, White.

Yet, why isn’t anyone in the Democratic Party upset about these repeated attacks against a fellow life-long Democrat? Why is the status quo so willing to belittle and discount a candidate of colour trying to do the right thing, when they will happily ignore a White candidate breaking the rules in their own ranks?

And the sad truth is that electroman and I, along with our candidate, want to run a clean, issue-based campaign that centers the voters square in the discussion. We truly believe that good representation is about paying attention to the voters and what they need help with in their lives, not about these politics-as-usual tactics. The sad truth is that we’ve had to put up with negative innuendo and outright lies about my candidate for months, all spread by our opponents who can’t reciprocate the same courtesy they extend to themselves — to respect my candidate’s qualifications for the job and demand an equal playing field that would allow us to win or lose on the merits of our argument.

For a long time, I’ve blogged about minority communities needing more and better political representation in politics. Asian Americans represent less than 1% of American politicians, and we need to increase those numbers significantly if we expect to achieve the civil liberties and equality we so duly deserve. In general, I believe that more people of colour should be entering into politics, to help ensure that minority communities can get proper representation.

But, I’m gaining a better grasp of how truly tough that mandate is. The Old (White) Boys’ Network simply won’t let people of colour compete on a balanced playing field. Even among Democrats, who are supposed to be the party for the little guy, you have the Hillary Clinton syndrome — Democrats are supportive of helping advance the causes of minority communities, as long as they’re not the ones who have to put their ambitions at risk to do so. The minute you threaten to actually try to do something to better your community, if you’re taking something ear-marked for someone in the Old (White) Boys’ Network, they seem do everything in their power to weigh the odds against you.

Here, Democrats talk a good game about needing more Latino faces in state government to represent a majority-Hispanic region. But none of that has translated into any institutionalized sort of support — or even faith — in a smart, talented, and principled Latino man like Ephraim Cruz who wants to run to represent his district because it’s the right thing to do.

Racism in America is no longer about chastising the man who calls you a “chink”, a “jap”, a “gook”, a “nigger”, a “spic” or a “wetback”. Racism in America is about combatting the non-minority men and women who smile to your face and talk about how they really, really, really want to see better opportunities for people of colour, but who are the first to take you for granted, ignore you, or insult you, when they wouldn’t even dream of treating a White person with your credentials the same way. 

On days like today, you have to wonder why you even bother involving yourself in the racism of politics. On days like today, you’re reminded just how much of a leg-up the right skin-tone can give you and how much of a disadvantage you’re at if you’re just not part of the cool clique. On days like today, you’re reminded that no one in the Old (White) Boys’ Network gives a damn about doing the right thing, just about staying in power.

And on days like today, you wonder why you — a well-meaning person of colour — try, when all they want is be entertained by yet another minority who fails.

Jenn is a volunteer for Ephraim Cruz. Clearly, this is her personal blog, and none of her writings are the least bit reflective of Cruz or his campaign.

Deadline for Submissions: Tuesday, July 15, 2008, midnight        

Who are you: A nitpicky comic book Braniac who rejoices over dissecting the latest continuity crises in maddening detail? Or a slam-bang Wonder Woman warrior who can’t wait for Wednesdays to catch up on the latest fantasy grudge match? Who says you can’t be both?

Girl-Wonder.org is calling for submissions to our brand-new online newsletter, which will mix focused discussions of feminism (and other forms of –isms) in the comics genre with a fun-loving celebration of comic geekdom. This newsletter will be our ongoing love letter to comics – sharing all the serious and not so serious aspects of comics that keep us coming back for more.

On the serious side: Submit your short letters and opinions, no more than 1500 words in length, focusing on current events or academic ideas related to identity politics and comic books. Topics can include, but are not limited to the intersections of race, gender, body image, sexuality, religion, ableism, and class with your favorite comic book characters and titles.

On the fun side: Submit comics-related fanart with a feminist twist or a short fanfiction (no more than 1500 words in length). Selected works will appear in the newsletter’s regular fan-inspired creations section.

Also, submit your entry for this issue’s caption contest. Write a funny, witty, and/or ridiculous caption for this panel. Winner (as chosen on the Girl-Wonder.org forum boards) receives a fabulous gift basket full of hot-off-the-presses Girl-Wonder.org merchandise!Submit your entry to jenn@reappropriate.com! 

My wisdom teeth are definitely unwise.

Now, I’ve been given the unique opportunity to work for Cruz and his campaign to represent LD29. I’ve developed Cruz’s website, helped research local Arizona politics to help him formulate his platform, and have hit the streets to canvass voters for his support. Electroman, Cruz’s campaign manager, and I have had the unique opportunity to build a campaign from the ground-up. In many ways, this is a dream campaign, built on a core of principles and idealism.

Part of what Cruz, electroman, and I believe is that our local government is broken. How many of us have attended a town-hall where our local representatives ask us — the constituency — what we think about a particular hot-button issue? And how many of us trust that our local politicians will take our issues to the government? How many of us even know who our representatives are?

Electroman and I have been frustrated with politics in Tucson: we see a deepening division between voters and local representatives, fueling jadedness and apathy amongst voters. The party establishment seems to take certain voters for granted, many of whom are working-class (or poor), non-English-speaking, and voters of colour. Time and again, we’ve heard voters disregard local politicians, joking that candidates only come to the district during election time, if at all.

Our campaign wants to change that perception of local politics. The reason I am working for Ephraim Cruz is because I believe he has demonstrated, through his twenty years as a public servant, through his experiences fighting the federal government as a whistleblower, and through his personal convictions, that he will be a representative who maintains open communication to his constituency. Electroman and I have built a campaign that hopes to speak to every single voter in the district, and talk to them about why they need a representative who cares about them. Our campaign has already contacted over 2,500 voters in just a month and a half alone of campaigning, and we expect to speak to many more in the coming weeks. Ephraim Cruz has personally visited hundred of voters — in fact, he’s doing it right now as I write this.

This past weekend, I joined our weekly canvass to walk door-to-door talking to voters and give them information about Ephraim Cruz. I was immediately struck by the area we were sent to: it was a working-class, predominantly Hispanic area. The houses were walled in by five-foot-high fences, and each gate was padlocked. A Tucson police department van was parked in the neighbourhood, keeping a watchful eye. This area was clearly struggling.

In the distance, I could see the highest commercial building in Tucson, a beautiful skyscraper with pink-tinted reflective windows located in the heart of downtown Tucson. There, white-collar workers move money around, oblivious to the poverty located just a few miles south and a world away. Meanwhile, the residents of this neighbourhood wake up every morning to the vision of Tucson affluence, rising out of the horizon, just out of reach, a constant reminder that these folks are clearly among the “have-nots”.

We canvassed the residents of the area, speaking to working-class heroes and elderly citizens on fixed incomes. And we asked the voters about what issues affected them, what they would like to see improved about their district, and we heard a variety of answers spanning immigration, the economy, and crime.

But, what we heard time and time again was that we were the only campaign that had ventured into their neighbourhood. Two months before election day, when other candidates had been campaigning for over six months (Cruz launched his campaign late into the season, at the end of March, when other candidates launched their campaigns in October of last year), we were the first and only campaign to petition this impoverished area for votes.

One voter took a piece of literature and immediately disagreed with Cruz’s position on Arizona’s employer sanctions law. The employer sanctions law is a state law requiring employers to check an applicant for employment against a federal database of legal citizens; employers who hire illegal immigrants face punitive fines and other damages. Cruz opposes the employer sanctions law in its current form, not because it hasn’t been working, but because the law puts the responsibility of enforcing federal immigration law on private business owners who haven’t been trained in the country’s immigration policies and nothing in the law protects job applicants from unfair discrimination and profiling based on the law. Moreover, the law paved the way for a state-based guest worker program, which Cruz opposes because it allows employers to side-step fair labour practices by hiring non-citizens.

The voter was adamant that the law was critical to helping him keep his wages up. And he had a valid point (the voter thought we would abolish employer sanctions entirely, not make it more fair), but the bottom line was not whether he agreed or disagreed with Cruz’s platform. It was that we were standing on his doorstep, asking him to let the campaign hear him.

Tucson’s LD29 encompasses lower-income neighbourhoods just like the working-class area I visited over the weekend, but is bordered to the north and the east by much more affluent areas populated by mostly White professionals. Those well-off areas have been visited two or three times by the front-running candidates in the race: most of the opposition even live in these areas. Voters have spoken with many of the candidates. Some have chosen their favourites. Yard signs are up.

So, why aren’t the more impoverished areas getting the same attention? Of course, there’s a money issue: it’s hard to ask for donations from voters who are struggling with chemotherapy payments or just paid the mortgage and have $3.81 left over in their accounts (both stories I’ve heard on the campaign trail). And there’s also the simple truth that most of the folks who run for public office are approaching the campaign as a vanity project; they are trying to accomplish their own political agendas, not fix the system to produce real representation. So many local politicians run as one-issue candidates: forgetting that no one on the ground lives a one-issue life.

Just because voters are poor shouldn’t mean that they are worth ignoring. And yet, that’s exactly the pattern I’ve seen — it’s as if the votes of the less affluent aren’t worth as much. And the poor continue to struggle because no one is willing to walk a few blocks south to talk to them.

Local politicians here in Tucson have stopped listening to the little guy — and no one is calling them on it.

I’ve been blogging less and juggling a busy work schedule with the campaign for Ephraim Cruz because I am infuriated by this failure in the system. Political representatives, local or national, should represent all the voters — not just those with the right kind of income and the right kind of ethnic backgrounds. Politicians should walk the streets and talk to every voter, not hide behind the walls of a class-based (and even race-based) ivory tower.

Barack Obama’s campaign convinced me that we can change the system. We can end a two-party system where both parties ignore the underprivileged — but we need to fight for every inch.  

Jenn is a volunteer for the Cruz for District 29 campaign. Her writing here reflects only her own opinions and does not reflect the opinions of the campaign as a whole.

The report discusses institutionalized racial hierarchies in the Asian Indian culture that elevates fair skin over dark skin; a hierarchy that finds its roots back to British colonialization of India. That hierarchy is complicated, argues the report, by the immigrant experience in America, where immigrants of colour struggle to be accepted in a White-normalizing American culture. It doesn’t help, I’m sure, that American Hollywood, like Bollywood, also emphasizes the beauty of fair skin and Caucasian features, both in its male and female leading actors.

What do you all think about this story? To me, it strikes familiar with East Asian attitudes towards race, racial hierarchy, and the immigrants experience that I havesometimes  encountered — not to say, of course, that everyone’s running around shooting folks. But colourstruck intolerance is hardly unfamiliar.

This poster, pencilled by  Turner, is hanging on my wall, and is one of my favourite images of Wonder Woman.

And even though electroman swore up and down that he would do it, I didn’t believe him. And even though I’m a huge Obama supporter, I’m disappointed in my candidate.

Barack Obama brought me in with a promise to end “politics as usual”. And yet, his decision to run traditionally — to try and outspend McCain — though likely to guarantee Obama a win, smacks of “politics as usual”.

My candidate in my state-level race is participating in public financing, so I know first-hand the benefits (and tribulations) of that system. Public financing evens the playing field, so it allows the candidate with the best message (and most strategic use of those funds) to win the day. Candidates don’t have to seek out large donations from special interests and lobbyists, so are not beholden to anyone when they achieve elected office. In the end, publically financed candidates work directly for the voters — and isn’t that what we’re all looking for in our political representation.

Now, it’s true that Obama is not accepting money from lobbyists or special interest groups, so his fundraising has come directly from voters. But, I believe enough in Obama’s message to believe that he doesn’t need to outspend McCain — when Obama wins, it should be because Americans believe in his candidacy of change, not because Obama flooded the airwaves with it and drowned out the voice of the opposition.

I know Obama’s decision was tactically smart. I hear the talking points of the Democratic party that assure us that the Republicans are working on a costly (and racist) smear campaign using “independent” PACs that Obama wouldn’t be able to effectively combat when limited to public financing.

But I’m still disappointed. That spit-sheen of “new politics” is starting to lose its lustre, even if I — like Fox Mulder — still want to believe.

Assuming that McCain’s advisors have decided that starting an off-shore drilling operation would save Americans money at the pump (just like that stupid idea of a gas tax holiday was supposed to be the key to our energy crisis), let’s pretend that McCain actually believes that off-shore drilling should take place.

Which is an intensely moronic idea.

It’s no secret that America depends on fossil fuels for most of our energy needs. Gas is nearly at $200 a barrel both because oil is increasingly scarce and because Bush enabled gas companies to maintain obscene profits through the scarcity. Just last year, Exxon posted its highest profits to-date, while Americans were growing more and more concerned about paying for their daily commutes.

Several decades ago, back with the first Bush, America outlawed off-shore drilling. Apparently there remains untapped pockets of oil off the coasts of America that companies were not allowed to touch — for fear that a catastrophic oil spill could irrevocably destroy coastal and marine flora and fauna.

That danger remains even to this day. And yet, McCain is proposing that we lift the ban to allow companies to drill for oil off the country’s Eastern coast. If ever we needed proof that Republicans are about big business over our threatened environment, here it is.

And of course, it remains undeniable that off-shore drilling will do little more than pass the buck regarding oil on to the next administration. To address the rising gas prices at the pump, we need a culture shift towards better fuel economy, cheaper alternatives to gas-guzzling cars, and enhancing our use of clean transportation like bicycles and walking. It requires changes in urban planning to facilitate pedestrian and bicycle traffic, investment in public transportation, and federal dollars to aid solar and wind technology. Hybrid cars should cost less, electric cars should be available on the market, and Americans need to stop buying pick-up trucks for city driving.

The reason why I’ve been blogging so little on this site is because I’ve devoted a lot of my extra time to working on a local state representative race here in Arizona (shameless plug: check out EphraimCruz.com). As part of my duties with this campaign, I’ve been doing lots of background research on a variety of state-level issues.

One of the major concerns here in Arizona is a growing water shortage. Situated in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, Tucson was built on a network of groundwater — pockets of underground water that slowly replenish over time (not unlike fossil fuels). However, with the growing urbanization of places like Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona’s groundwater supplies are running dry, and we are expected to lose them completely in the next decade.

As the senator of this state, John McCain should know all too well that addressing the water shortage here in Arizona will not be fixed by simply finding new groundwater sites that have yet to be exploited: our problem is an imbalance in supply and demand that must be corrected. Finding more groundwater — like lifting the nation’s ban on offshore drilling — simply delays the inevitable, and allows politicians like McCain to avoid having to fix the problem for the residents most affected by the shortage. In Arizona, we need a culture shift: we need to eliminate water waste and increase water recycling.

On a much larger scale, America needs the same kind of wake-up call. In some ways, rising gas prices are a good thing, because perhaps then we’ll start to see Americans realize that this unsustainable life-style that we’re used to will leave nothing but sea of problems for our children to inherit.

We’re right in the thick of summer and it’s about 110 degrees Farenheit outside here in Tucson. Which of course means that the primetime TV networks are rolling out their lame post-season filler shows to try and keep ratings up through the summer months. With the cheap production costs of reality television, many of the networks are launching crass reality-based shows that are intended to play on the base instincts of the viewership.

ABC (home of my favourite show — Lost) is premiering a show this Wednesday (June 24th) called “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” during its peak 9/8c slot. Here’s the YouTube of its preview (poor quality):

More trailers are available here.

When I first saw the trailer, a couple months back, I (like Ube) thought that the show was going to be about enrolling Americans in existing Japanese game shows. But instead, ABC has re-created a caricature of a Japanese game show specifically for their American contestants, whom they have nonethless still flown to Japan. Clearly, if the contestants aren’t going to be in a real Japanese gameshow, than the point of taking the contestants to Japan is not for the show, but to mock both the Otherness of Japan and the insular xenophobia of the American contestants. Playing the game show host (whom you see in the trailer) is Rome Kanda, while the Americans will also have an “interpreter”, played by American actor Tony Sano.

Kanda’s host is like Mark Dacascos’ Chairman (of Iron Chef America) on ‘roids. He yells randomly, makes funky faces to the camera, and excitedly tells the contestants to make idiots of themselves in broken “Engrish”. The challenge names mimick direct translations of Japanese, with a deliberate literalness that is intended to mock Japanese practices.

And most disgusting is the Mama-san character, who is not credited in the show’s IMDB. In a lengthened trailer, Mama-san is a stereotypical Asian mother-type (as interpreted by non-Asians) who speaks broken Engrish (”r/l” slurring and poor grammar) who browbeats the American contestants to take off their shoes. Aside from the fact that the very name of a “Mama-san” is insulting, it’s clear that Mama-san was invented to simultaneously expose the American contestants to extreme forms of culture-shock, as well as to provide endless mockery (and misinterpretation) of traditional Japanese customs. Expect scenes of Americans freaking out over alien Japanese cuisine, karaoke, and the Harajuku district.

And if you still don’t believe that this show is intended to mock the Japanese, than you need look no further than the trailer’s excessive use of gongs mixed with the song “Turning Japanese”. Which, in case you’re not aware, is a racist song about masturbation: ‘cuz, when you orgasm from self-stimulation, your eyes squint so much, they might as well be slanty, just like Japanese people’s eyes!

Eyugh. So, traditionally, when shows like these come about, I live-blog them to keep you guys up-to-date about the racist goings-on. I’ll try to live-blog this show, too. Or at least we’ll see how long I can stand it before I throw up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXnoBGIki-U

Okay, so I know this movie will probably be horrible (I mean, the last ones were…), fetishist, and campy but part of me is embarassed to admit I’m kind of intrigued.

Here’s the video:

I’m not sure who’s shocked by this video: this is a young woman who blew onto the music scene with a song about “not wanting to go to rehab”. She has been caught in more scandals than she has had singles in her short career, and she is the poster-child for a celebrity implosion.

Personally, I hated Winehouse’s “rehab” song and was a little disturbed by all the popularity Winehouse received imitating a traditionally African American style of singing. Much like Eminem’s appeal, Winehouse seemed to climb the charts simply by being the less threatening, more familiar colour for White fans of Black music — except that Winehouse was (dare I say it) less talented than Em.

I’ve understood even less the “Winehouse chic” style associated with this singer. On “Project Runway”, Michael Kors praises an outfit by describing the model as looking like Amy Winehouse — but why would anyone want to look like a dingy, wannabe rocker, drug addict?

In this latest video, not only is Winehouse proving, yet again, that she really doesn’t want to go to rehab, but she’s also singing a string of racist epithets. Does that make Winehouse a racist deserving of our ire, a pathetic drug addict deserving of our pity, or just the latest celebrity implosion?

Usually, with this kind of thing, I would publish contact information for a letter-writing campaign, but Winehouse never deserved her fifteen minutes of fame, and there’s no need to prolong it with activist-related attention to this matter. Hopefully, after this, Winehouse will quietly go back into that smoke-filled, hazy crack den she so adores, and stop embarassing us with her misappropriated “music” and seedy drug-induced idiocy.