HOORAY! THE LAPD DOES NOT RACIALLY PROFILE!

He was doing 55 in a 54.

OMG, great news!

The Los Angeles Police Department just announced that of the 320 racial profiling complaints filed against officers last year, none of them had any merit!

That means the LAPD is now 100% racial-profiling-free!

We did it! We reached the mountaintop!

The LAPD is color blind! Hallelujah!

*

In related good news, Nike just proclaimed itself sweatshop-free, the White House just declared that it has never violated the law, and I am happy to announce that I am the sexiest man alive.

--Junichi

DEEZ TRUCK NUTZ

The Latest Republican Target

Since the Democrats are tearing each other apart, I'd like to take this moment to spotlight a Republican lawmaker who will undoubtedly be causing some Republicans to get their teabags all twisted in a knot.

GOP Florida State Senator Cary Baker led a successful effort to ban fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of vehicles in Florida. Sen. Baker's bill would fine motorists $60 for displaying the plastic rocky mountain oysters, which are known by brand names like "Truck Nutz".

If the legislation survives the house, I suspect that some wealthy vehicular gonads connoisseur will challenge the legislation on First Amendment grounds. At the very least, I'm guessing dude below will go balls to the wall to keep his nugget ornaments on his truck.

Dodge. Grab Life By The Horns.

As for my own personal opinion on the matter, I am having difficulty understanding what prompted Senator Baker to spend time on this trivial issue when there are obviously many people in Florida who still aren't wearing flag pins.

--Junichi

OUR GENERATION'S JIM CROW LAWS

Denied

I do not exaggerate when I say that we are literally in the midst of the systematic decimation of American democracy.

In yesterday's 6-3 decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the Supreme Court refused to recognize any constitutional flaws with Indiana's Jim Crow voter identification law, which is, thus far, the most restrictive in the nation.

By sheer coincidence, I also watched the compelling short documentary, Freedom To Vote: Protecting The Ballot, at the Newport Beach Film Festival yesterday. Reading the opinion before watching that was a bit like walking into a horror movie in which you know that every person on the screen is going to die before the credits roll.

As the documentary pointed out, our nation's history is a story of the struggle for the right to vote. But only in the last few years are our government leaders fighting to prevent people from voting.

To my disappointment, few seem alarmed or enraged by the proliferation of Voter ID laws. The common thinking is: What's the big deal? We need to stop voter fraud and, besides, one needs a driver's license to do many things like board a plane, open a bank account, etc.

The big deal is that 20 million people just became potentially disenfranchised as a result of yesterday's Supreme Court decision.

The big deal is that most of the disenfranchised are people of color (mostly African American), elderly, disabled and/or poor people, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates and causes.

The big deal is that these Voter ID laws are enacted because the reactionary right-wing forces of our country are intentionally trying to deprive those groups from voting.

The big deal is that 20% of black voters in Indiana do not currently have a valid photo ID.

The big deal is that almost none of the enacted or proposed Voter ID laws provide measures to help voters obtain the necessary identification or offer alternative ways of voting.

The big deal is that these laws are being passed despite no nationwide widespread evidence of fraud caused by voter impersonation. (In Indiana, there was literally not one reported incident of fraud, which the Supreme Court acknowledged.)

The big deal is that our courts seem interested in a nonexistent form of voter fraud, but could not care less about more widespread evidence of voter fraud in Florida (2000), Ohio (2004), or the New York primary (2008). (Did you realize that not one vote in Harlem went to Obama in the most recent Democratic primary?)

While the Court's decision may not fundamentally alter the 2008 landscape, it will surely eviscerate enough votes in 2010 and beyond to tilt the outcome of any election.

Which is to say, the Supreme Court just handed yet another election to the Republicans.

For the skeptics and critics, let me just say that I understand that, technically, no citizen has been denied the right to vote.

But countless studies have confirmed that the hurdles for those without driver's licenses are immense and unappreciated by those of us who drive every day. Those without licenses will have a difficult time procuring the birth certificates or passports necessary to get one. The documentary I watched yesterday noted how some African American citizens in Georgia were born during an era in which they were not granted birth certificates. Thus, the costs alone are enough to discourage people from going through the trouble.

Reading the Crawford opinion made me appreciate what it must have felt like in 1896 to read Plessy v. Ferguson.

The difference between 1896 and 2008 is that everyone understood the impact of Plessy. But the magnitude of Crawford (and the voter ID laws yet to come) will never be fully appreciated.

--Junichi

DARING THE DEVIL

Yippppeeeeee!

Those who scour Brazilian news for potential nominees for the Darwin Awards are familiar with the story of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli, who set out on April 20th to break a record by floating more than 400 miles in the air while strapped to a thousand helium-filled party balloons.

I give Father de Carli credit for finding the most imaginative way to get high on 4/20.

Unfortunately, he drifted out to sea and has been missing for over a week. He had a GPS system on him, but didn't know how to use it and forgot to bring instructions.

The Brazilian Air Force and Navy are two of several government and private groups that spent days searching for him. After finding some of his balloons in the water, most searches have finally been called off today.

Am I the only one who considers this story an apt metaphor for George W. Bush? Consider the commonalities:

• Wasted countless government resources on pointless expedition
  
• Planned poorly; counted on God to guide him
• Lacked exit strategy
• Failed to accomplish mission
• Retarded
  

(With thanks to A. Haden)

--Junichi

HAROLD AND KUMAR: UP IN SMOKE AGAIN

When Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle debuted in 2004, it was a milestone of sorts - a mainstream, gross-out, stoner comedy with two Asian American men cast as leads. Sure, the humor was juvenile and unapologetically male, there was everything from naked breasts to literal bathroom humor, and a dream sequence featuring an anthropomorphalized bag of weed. Do The Right Thing this was not.

But it did represent an achivement of sorts, symbolically to be sure, but also commercially. The movie had enough of a cult following to warrant a sequel (not to mention revitalize Neal Patrick Harris' career, a remarkable feat on its own), thus suggesting that - hey, Asian American leads won't kill your film. I hope the producers of 21 are pondering this.

The film's sequel, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is an achievement of a kind too, proof that Asian Americans have made it far enough into the Hollywood machine that they can make perfectly mediocre mainstream fare as much as the next folks. Woo hoo, the promised land!

In all seriousness, it's not like anyone was expecting something approaching genius. I was hoping for "adequately funny," something on the level, at best, of a 40 Year Old Virgin or even Superbad (and yeah, there's a huge difference in the quality of funny between those two flicks).

The laugh-o-meter here was somewhere closer to, oh, Walk Hard, which is to say: not that funny. John Cho and Kal Penn are fun enough to watch at times but there's little new creative soil for either to plow. The funniest single scene was probably when Cho shows up in the library stacks, goth-ed out. It lasted all of a few seconds and he didn't even speak but just the sight of him in masscara was good enough. Penn had fewer moments here than in the previous film - the giant bag of weed returned (anatomically correct no less) but that joke really only works once. And while we're keeping score on this kind of thing: too much Rob Cordury, just a touch too much Neil Patrick Harris, and not enough Chris Meloni. And oh yeah, either too much or not enough pubic shots, depending on your taste.

So, in the end, it was "meh" but the thing is...I didn't feel like, "oh crap, we blew our chance!" And maybe that says something more than the film, on its own, can say...that the fact that an Asian American-lead comedy can be mediocre seems ordinary and harmless rather than a hand-wringing disaster. Of course, it helps that the film also is already in the black after the first weekend, earning a very respectable $14M (the original only made $18M total in theaters). Even if the flick has earned middling reviews, the monetary gains won't hurt Kal Penn or John Cho's future chances and may help open that golden door for other Asian American actors and filmmakers to walk through.

Let me end by throwing this question out: the sexual politics in this film are not particularly glowing - not to anyone's surprise of course - but I wonder how many of the men, so huffy puffy at Falling From Grace are going to raise any issues with this flick? (Yeah, I just went there).

Let me also add: why does it mean when a writing and directing team of all White men can make a more commercially successful franchise lead by Asian American men than most Asian American filmmakers? I'm not asking this rhetorically - I'm seriously curious how this happens.

--O.W.

THE WAR ON LATINOS GOES TO THE STREETS...LITERALLY

enjoy 'em while they last
Forget Arizona. Right here in Los Angeles, legislators are going after...taco trucks.

$1000 fine or six months in jail for...selling tacos out of a truck? Are you serious? This is what the L.A. City Council considers valuable legislation? Isn't there, for example, low income housing they could focus on? De-congesting traffic? FIXING LAUSD?

Cotdamnit, leave my al pastor alone!

And while you're at it - leave the bacon-wrapped hot dogs be, too.

---

It's not all bad news...NPR's Morning Edition highlighted the extraordinary story of Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano from East L.A. who learned Japanese from his Issei and Nisei friends growing up and used that skill to convince 1,000 Japanese to surrender during WWII. A new documentary is coming out to tell a story that has gone under the radar for 60 years.

--O.W.

ARIZONA BLUES

hey, where's his American flag pin?
I know Arizona is like the new Mississippi when it comes to retrograde racial politics...it's hard to fathom how a state would take pride in voting down MLK Day but AZ manages somehow. Still, this new legislation passing through their state house is astonishing:

"Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.

SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group."

This passed out of committee 9-6 and is now headed towards a full legislative vote. Maybe I'm naive but even for AZ, I can't see the whole house going for this, especially in an election year. Somewhere, McCain is slapping his forehead, counting all the Latino votes he's losing behind this.

By the way, given that "Hispanic" isn't technically a racial category under the U.S. Census, I'm not sure how this bill would be able to go after a group like MEChA (though I suppose, African and Asian American groups might have problems). And let's not even mention the obvious First Amendment issues.

--O.W.

MR. RAP SUPREME

ghostface spinna

This might be of interest to folks: I recently interviewed Jeff "Chairman" Mao of ego trip fame on the eve of the new Miss Rap Supreme show on VH1 (just two weeks in and already with more beef than a Costco butchery).

Surprisingly, despite his high profile as a journalist/writer and DJ/collector, I found relatively few other interviews out there on the interweb and so my conversation with Jeff covered a broad range of topics in terms of his own personal history as well as professional insights on everything from hip-hop to music criticism to what makes compelling reality television. It's a long interview but I think it makes for a good read (biased as I am).

If you're ever in New York, be sure to roll through APT on Saturday night to see Mao and his friends spin.

By the way, this interview launches what I hope will be a series of Q&As I'll be doing for UCLA's fantastic Asia Pacific Arts Magazine. They've become, to me, the premier resource on Asian American arts/culture over the last few and I'm proud to be able to work with them. Coming up soon: an interview with actor Ken Leung from Lost.

--O.W.

WAVING THE FLAG

hell hath no fury
A question for the informed Poplicks readership:

Has anyone written anything cogent on the rise of Chinese American nationalism in the last few months? This is a phenom I've seen manifested with the debates around the Olympics in China but I have yet to find much in terms of analysis - it's not something I've found discussed in much depth on conventional political sites but I'm assuming at least someone has tried to take it on.

--O.W.

SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES

Click to enlarge

My friend Barbora is a sixth grade teacher. Before teaching the social class structure of Rome, she asked her students to use index cards to assemble a depiction of what they thought the current U.S. social class structure looks like.

The above photo is their collective response.

Since the handwriting is hard to read in the picture, I've transcribed their graph of American social classes below:

• Top level: Mafia, Supreme Court, President, Government
  
  
• Second level: Army, Military, F.B.I.

• Third level: Famous People, Pope, CEOs (Business Owners), Celebrities, High Class Job Such as C.E.O., Heroes (Fire Fighters, Doctors, Military)

• Fourth level: CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Entertainment Workers, Fire Fighters, Doctors, Bankers

• Fifth level: SSA (Social Security Association), Contractor

[Big Gap]

• Sixth level: Teachers

• Seventh level: Alleagle [sic] Imigrants [sic], Homeless

Sounds about right, no?

Although I am baffled by the phrase "Entertainment Workers." Isn't that the category you look for in the yellow pages when trying to find strippers?

I love the specificity of "Chief Technology Officer." Either some kid's parent is a CTO or some science geek just inspired the bully to give him another wedgie.

Finally, I'm thrilled that Barbora's students have recognized the major lobbying efforts and marketing campaigns that we teachers have undertaken in order to be finally recognized as being in a caste above illegal aliens and hobos.

--Junichi

EDWARDS vs. CLINTON vs. OBAMA

Judging by their performances on the Colbert Report ...



I still maintain that John Edwards was the best choice.

--Junichi

BOMBSHELL

Goodbye, Norma Jean

We are obviously living in the era of the celebrity sex tape.

But the unearthing of one featuring a long-dead celebrity icon from decades ago is a new milestone.

According to the NY Post, an FBI-classified sex tape of Marilyn Monroe giving an anonymous man a mouth hug just sold for $1.5 million to someone who will never let the reel see the light of day.

This sale resurrects the constitutional conflict between the penumbra of privacy rights guaranteed by the -- wait, what, somebody just spent $1.5 million to lock up a 15-minute reel of smut? I realize gentlemen prefer blondes, and some like it hot, and other random Marilyn references, but really, $1.5 million?

Even if I were a trillionaire, I would never burn that much to watch 15 minutes of anyone doing anything, much less Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Inch Itch.

At most, I would drop a mil on a sex tape with Martha Washington, and that's only assuming the footage includes George dressed as a pizza delivery man, asking, "Who's This Country's Daddy?"

*

If you want to see the one screen capture photo made available by the original seller of the Marilyn Monroe footage, click here. (NSFW!)

--Junichi

ARE WE IN A RECESSION? (PART 2)

Alberto Gonzales discusses his favorite interrogation technique

Even former Attorney General Gonzales can't find a job.

--Junichi

ARE WE IN A RECESSION?

(before)

(after)

'Nuff said.

From AdFreak:

People in Chicago must be starving after the long, cold winter there, as they have ravaged this bus-shelter ad from ampm convenience stores to retrieve the snacks inside. Ogilvy put the ad up with the idea of slowly taking the snacks away over a four-week period, to reveal the tagline, “Too much good stuff.” Area vandals shortened the campaign’s run to two days. Curiously, they didn’t seem to like the Doritos much.

Although, to be fair, I remember moments during the dot-com boom where I waited so long for a bus that I would have broken into a display case just for one Funyun and a packet of mayonnaise.

--Junichi

FLAMING IN SAN FRANCISCO

Torchbearers of protest?

I often waffle about the usefulness of protests. But today is one of those amazing days where it's easy to see how a massive demonstration can make a great impact.

As far as Olympic protests go, we've come a long way from "Bong Hits for Jesus."

With an international game of "Capture the Torch" forcing the flame to be alternately extinguished and vanished wherever it's gone, this fire is doing wonders to stoke the local, national, and international media to focus on Tibet, among other issues related to China.

Watching the live footage right now of a thousand SF cops protecting a torch that has come to symbolize the Chinese government's unconscionable abuse of basic human freedoms, I can't help but snicker at this quote from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad:

"[T]he Olympic torch has received a warm welcome worldwide."

Given China's censorship of these demonstrations, I suppose that there might be a few billion people who believe this.

*

As for protests in the virtual world, I enjoy this brief animation:

*

Finally, is it me or are the pro-China demonstrators so nationalist that they are totally incapable of participating in any meaningful discussion about China's human rights abuses?

Most of those I've seen or heard interviewed today either adamantly deny that the Chinese government has ever done anything wrong (excuse me?) or mistakenly believe that advocates for Tibetan freedom are vilifying and hoping to imprison all 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Is it not possible to be "proud that China is hosting the Olympics" and acknowledge that China has work to do in the arena of human rights?

To be fair, there are some who are able to make rational arguments for supporting the Olympics in Beijing while acknowledging China's abuses. But Helen Zia doesn't sound anything like PRC-supporting Cuckoo McCocoaPuffs on ABC right now.

Some have asked me how I would feel if other countries were protesting the torch because the games were to be held in the United States. My response: Great! If the games were held in Bakersfield, I would be simultaneously "proud that the U.S. is hosting the Olympics" and happy to accept the criticism that the U.S. has work to do in the field of human rights.

*

Related note: I guess Poplicks.com will now be officially censored in China.

--Junichi

THE TEST: ARE YOU RACIST?

Are you paranoid, sleeping with your finger on the trigger?

In 1999, four NYPD officers fatally shot Amadou Diallo, a black immigrant from Guinea, when they mistook his wallet for a gun. In the officers' criminal trials, they asserted that anybody could have made this mistake and that race had nothing to do with their decision.

If you had been one of the NYPD officers involved in the shooting, could you honestly say that race played no role in the fact that you pulled the trigger?

Now you can find out.

The University of Chicago has created a simple and effective online psychological test. In just a few minutes, you will be presented with a series of photos of 100 white or black men who will be holding either guns or what appear to be wallets or phones. Using your keyboard, your goal is to shoot the armed men as quickly as possible and holster your gun for the others.

Click here to take that test.

See if you, like Nicholas Kristof, are forced to declare yourself a racist.

Enter scores and reaction times in the comments.

(Credit: Mama Shih)

--Junichi

PLANET B-BOY

Go see this movie.

Just goes to show...for all the gains Asian Americans have made in feature filmmaking, our documentary skills kind of rock.

Saying.

--O.W.

RISING SONS

odd man in?
I caught this very, very interesting story on NPR yesterday: "Male Birth Rate Among Asian Americans Studied".

Here's the short version: Columbia Univ. economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund studied the 2000 Census and found that, for Chinese, Korean and Asian Indian American parents, those with two daughters (as their first two children) were 50% more likely to have a son for their third child, compared to White families (who, in this case, are the normative control group I'm assuming). This simply isn't naturally possible, suggesting that there is some kind of sex selection going on though the researchers have been very careful not to draw conclusions as to what form said selection takes since they didn't collect data on that part of the question.

Here's the personal anecdote: I've known at least two Asian American families growing up where the parents had four daughters. Not that I ever asked the parents but you just assume, in those cases, they're trying for that son and finally gave up.

Here's getting back to Almond/Edlund's study. I took a look at the summary version of their research (warning: you need to be logged into a university system to access) which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Some findings worth sharing:

The son-biased ratio (SBR) is apparently new - there was no evidence of such a bias in the 1990 Census. This suggests one of two things (at least): sex selection was less popular then (unlikely) or sex selection technology is more popular now (more likely).

The 1.5:1 SBR at third parity (i.e. after two daughters) is actually higher than what it is in India (1:39:1) though still lower than China in 1990 (2:25 : 1) though the restrictions put on by the one-child rule in China goes a long, long way to explaining how ridiculously out-of-whack their SBR tends towards. However, the fact that it's higher here compared to India (and I think South Korea as well) could also bolster the argument that sex selection methods and technology are more readily available/accessible in the U.S. than elsewhere.

The study compares Asian Americans to Whites (Whites show no statistically significant bias one gender or another) though I'd be curious to see what it looks like compared with African American and Latino American populations. I would still expect that the Asian American SBR to be higher, regardless, 1) because I think patriarchal preference for sons is more entrenched and 2) I think sex selection is less ethically challenging for Asian Americans compared to say, Catholic-raised Latinos (this presumes abortion is one primary method of sex selection).

"Male bias...was true irrespective of the mother's citizenship status" - which suggests that it may not just be immigrant families, but also American-raised families who exhibit a SBR.

"SBR were found despite the absence of many of the factors advanced to rationalize son bias in [Asia] such as China's one-child policy, high dowry payments (India), patrilocal marriage patterns (all three countires) or reliance on children for old age support and physical security." In other words, the SBR in the U.S. makes even less sense here than it does elsewhere in the world. But then again, it's not like patriarchy has ever required much rationalization to assert itself.

It should be noted that in families where a first-born son is present, there's no subsequent SBR with future children, meaning that one could read this finding as suggesting that what Asian Americans really want is at least one son but past that, they're fine with daughters. But they really want that son.

Small aside, but the study claims that Chinese, Koreans and Indians, collectively, make up less than 2% of the overall U.S. population. Accepting that the study is leaving out the second biggest Asian ethnic group (Filipinos), I think their math is wrong. Check it yourself: those three populations - not even accounting for people of mixed-Chinese/Korean/Indian descent - would still be over 2% of the total U.S. population, according to Census 2000 figures.

So what does this all mean?

For starters, let's just ask the unspoken question here: are Asian Americans more likely to use abortion as a means for sex selection? Given the wide availability and affordability of prenatal sex testing and abortion (compared to ineffective or more expensive means of sex selection), it's a rational economic argument that, if you were going to sex select, testing + abortion would be the way to go.

I was looking at the CDC's abortion surveillance stats but given that 1) I'm not a quant guy and 2) it's past midnight, I'm not sure if these tell us anything meaningful since, 1) Asian American women are aggregated with Native Americans and others under the always-popular "Other" category so it's impossible to parse the numbers down just for Asian Americans, let alone just Chinese/Korean/Indian. 2) Table 14 suggests that Other women (presumably including Asian Americans) over the age of 30 are more likely to pursue an abortion relative to White and Blacks in the same respective age group but since Table 14 measures overall abortions rather than per capita, I'm not sure one can read the chart as suggesting that the abortion rates are actually higher within those populations vis a vis others. Maybe someone who is more stat-trained and/or awake than I can crunch that.

Even taking the abortion angle off the table - and I noticed a pro-life group is already using the study to suggest that Asian Americans are abortion-crazy - the study confirms something that most of "us" already knew: Asian American society has a patriarchal slant (pun intended), at least when it comes to prioritizing sons. If someone else has a counter-read to this conclusion, I'd be curious to hear what it is.

Lingering questions: First of all, I find it interesting that among my circle of Asian American couples, everyone wanted daughters - not necessarily exclusively, but most certainly at least one, if not the only child they'd ever have. That was certainly true for Sharon and I and we feel pretty lucky we ended up with a daughter[1] (albeit a daughter who doesn't always eat her veggies and is in the middle of a worrisome princess phase but that's another story). But I was struck by how common this seemed to be with other people we know. This could suggest that, given a generation or so, the SBR might fade within Asian America, at least among 2nd and 3rd generation APIs (something, quite notably, the study doesn't parse but perhaps they didn't have access to the necessary data to do so).

Second, and this is a bit of an aside, but the study notes that the biological norm for male/female is 1.05 sons born for every daughter. I'm no evolutionary scholar (but if you are, chime in!) but wouldn't it make sense for that to go the other way? Wouldn't, from an evolutionary point of view, having a higher ratio of women being born be more advantageous, especially since most women only bear one child at a time, with a long gestation period? I don't see the benefit in producing an excess of men when it's really women you need to propagate the species.


[1] This was rather freaky but I was doing an image search for this post by googling "three asian babies" and a picture of Ella popped up as the 6th top find. Like whoa.

--O.W.

WHAT WAS VOGUE THINKING?

smoking gun?

Harry Allen - the OG Media Assassin - has been on top of this LeBron/Vogue controversy for a minute now and recently posted up what he claims is the original inspiration for that Vogue cover.

There might be some teensy wiggle room that this could be "just a coincidence" but that's a hard argument to tow and what Allen points out is especially damning is the silence coming from the magazine and photographer themselves.

Question: this is a real suspect look for Vogue and Leibovitz but when's the last time the fashion industry really made a good look when it came to race? Or gender? Or class? The idea that Vogue would do something racially inane is about as surprising as, say, gender inequality in mainstream Hollywood film. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't be outraged and pissed off and vocal but what's the realistic end game here? I get the feeling that Vogue and the Leibovitz will just ride the storm out unless this somehow gets elevated to Imusian levels (paging Oprah! Paging LeBron's political consciousness, if it even exists!).

By the way, do listen to that NPR piece by Peter Sagal, bashing Horton Hears a Hoo for being yet another example of Hollywood's rampant and oft-ignored sexism. Daughters of the world, unite!

--O.W.