Tag: racism

Re: The Atlanta Asian Spa Murders

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic.  Very few of them coherent.  Every day since the news broke of a white guy too heavily armed, killing eight people in the Metro Atlanta region, way too close to where my family and I live, it’s been a shit show all over social media and the internet with all the news, opinions and just, overwhelming chatter going on.

There’s so much noise, that I can’t really find the capacity to formulate rational thoughts on the topic.  There’s nothing I could say that hasn’t already been said by someone else, from all ends of the spectrum.  I don’t know whether to be upset, mad, frustrated or annoyed, by all the perceived rhetoric, white privilege, seemingly fake and topical social activism, and all the sudden allies in arms for Asian communities.

Frankly, I just don’t have the time to think much about it, and I honestly would rather not, not because I don’t care, quite the contrary, but because I just have way too much going on in my life at home, that it’s really hard to find the capacity to think about much else that happens outside of it.

But because the internet doesn’t know how to ever shut the fuck up, it’s impossible to avoid and it’s impossible to not be exposed and revealed to fresh information as it’s constantly coming out, in spite of the embarrassingly high amount of empathy and consideration given to a mass murderer simply because of the lack of color in his skin.  So here we are, where I feel like I have to say something in spite of how much I really wish I didn’t, but I feel like if anything at all, I’ll look back at this post when the On This Day plug-in brings it back up in a future year(s) and go oh yeah, that shit DID happen, and America didn’t change one fucking iota as a result of it and all the non-Asian allies went back to their regularly scheduled lives the following Monday when Falcon & The Winter Soldier dropped on Disney+ and everyone moved onto the next shiny topic.

So all I’ll really say is that only in America can people get so misdirected by fighting over what the intent of murders were, that the actual murders themselves are basically rendered secondary in importance.  As if there’s any difference in a sexual motivation or racial one, when eight people are fucking dead, not to mention that it’s very fucking possible for it to have been both at the same time.

To once again say that America Sucks is among the grossest understatements there could possibly be, and this is one of those times where I just want everyone to shut the fuck up.  About their rage, about their convenient recency bias support of Asian communities, and just stop fucking talking and recognize that a bunch of people were gunned down by an angry white guy who was having a really bad day.

I fucking hate this place, sometimes.

Seriously, Eddie?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As an actual Asian person who earnestly cares about actual Asian representation in film, theFacebook has gotten wind that they can target me movie trailers for movies starring Asian people and I’ll probably actually give more than the passing glance or hide-from-X treatment that I give the fast majority of other targeted ads.

Recently, I saw this preview for this film called Boogie, which is the directorial debut of Eddie Huang, the guy who made Fresh Off the Boat, a series that I really wanted to hate based on the horrible title, but ended up watching way more of than I care to admit and actually liking a lot of it.  The premise of the film is pretty simple: charismatic and athletic Chinese guy living in New York, aspires to play basketball professionally, but has to overcome all sorts of stereotypes, oppression and racism to strive towards his goals.

I’m typically on board for all Asians vs. the World kind of plots, especially ones that feed the observational narrative of the racist double-standard that exists within all races in the world, towards Asians.  However, there was one thing that instead has piqued my curiosity, and really makes me skeptical of the, planning of the film, regardless of how the story and film actually pans out.

The titular character is played by some guy named Taylor Takahashi, and my very first thought was, really?  A Japanese guy to play a Chinese guy?  Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that concept, it’s just that this seems like one of those characters that I feel like would probably have been a little more appropriate if it were actually being played by a Chinese person.

Look, I’m all about guys like Randall Park and Ken Jeong being arr rook same’d and getting cast as Chinese guys, because they’re still getting paid and go get it if it’s offered, but the same rhetorical question applies to them as it does for Taylor Takahashi: were there seriously no talented Chinese actors to play these roles?  Or I guess more accurately, was there any genuine effort in trying to cast any talented Chinese actors for these roles?

Like, in the case of the Boogie preview, I’m having a hard time digesting and a hard time not laughing, when a Japanese guy is reciting lines about how stereotyped we Chinese are, and how he’s got 2,000 years of Chinese oppression on his shoulders that he’s trying to overcome so he can be what sounds like a fictional version of Jeremy Lin.

I know I clown on China a lot being Korean and all, but real talk here is that I’m very aware that in a country with a population of a gabillion, there are bound to be quite a number of talented, bilingual, and physically comparable actors as Taylor Takahashi, who probably would be slightly more believable and convincing to play the role of Boogie, than a guy that’s inherently of Japanese descent.

So egg on Eddie Huang’s face for what I think is kind of an embarrassing faux pas here.  Looking at all promotional material for Boogie, it’s embarrassing to see the three marquee names, being Takahashi, Paige and Jackson, in a movie that’s basically about Chinese culture living in New York.  But Huang’s kind of become a giant king of the twinkies anyway, or as what I saw a friend say on the internet being an Uncle Tong, so I guess it’s no surprise that he’s utilizing all these non-Chinese guys to promote his own stories of ironic appropriation and further exploitation of his own culture in order to stay relevant and famous.

Who changes their name first: the Redskins or Patriots?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Serious question.  Based on how often the phrase “patriots” has been thrown around unironically, I can’t help but wonder if people who work for the New England Patriots football franchise wince or cringe every time they hear it.  Obviously, there’s zero (I hope) correlation between a professional football team’s identity, and a legion of white supremacist fascists, but the word is the same and when enough people hear it enough with a negative connotation, the association tends to stick, even when used in completely unrelated context.

In a very short amount of time, the phrase patriots has mutated into this very ugly and unappealing definition, and I really do wonder if this keeps up, there will be enough of an uproar and backlash to the New England Patriots to where they will actually begin considering changing their entire franchise’s name.

Obviously, when it comes to the original question, it stands to believe that the Redskins are the lock to win this “race,” seeing as how the Redskins name has been put on the shelf already, but I’m not going to give them any sort of victory until they actually pick a new name and stop parading around as the interim “Football Team” they’ve used throughout 2020.

But lest we all forget, this much progress has taken almost literally my entire lifetime, so if there was any franchise that could get overtaken by lightning in a bottle, it’s definitely the Washington Washingtons. 

We live in a very fast-moving world now where there’s little patience and even less regard for repercussions and backlash, and if the association of the word patriots continues to spiral and become more solely linked to racism, white supremacy and people who would dare attempt to disrupt and overthrow governments, the sooner the New England Patriots might want to consider renaming themselves.

Think I’m going to have to rule this race, a jump ball.

Today was supposed to be a good day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeated Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue in senate races, one tighter than the other but the results the same, but Georgia basically saved the country from Mitch McConnell’s continued reign of tyranny, and now both the House and the Senate are controlled by team blue.

But then in Washington D.C., a substantially sized army of baked potato fanatics converged on, and then stormed the Capitol, many carrying arms, and interrupting the count of electoral votes to formally confirm the victory of Joe Biden.  One woman was shot and subsequently killed, the police did mostly nothing, and hundreds of ‘Murican terrorists trolled the federal landmark, forcing evacuations and hiding of numerous senators and the vice president of the United States too.

The actions of all these maniacs were all pretty deplorable no matter what way it’s looked at, but it’s the visuals alone that told a hundred different stories of one frightening reality, that among the 74 million racists that voted for the baked potato, there is an alarming number of them that are so fanatically devoted to their fuhrer that they’re willing to act in such extreme, militant ways and with such disregard to law and democracy, that they would basically participate in a flagrant coup attempt to basically ruin the entire country.

I saw this one picture of people scaling the walls of the Capitol, and all I could think of was how it reminded me of like, the white walkers that were crawling all over the walls of the cave of the Three Eyed Raven in Game of Thrones, or more accurately, the Battle at Helms Deep from The Two Towers, where orcs were scaling the walls trying to get in.  Metaphorically, there’s not much difference between all three of these comparisons; it’s a bunch of degenerate trolls trying to get into somewhere they shouldn’t be in, to do nefarious things.

A lot of fancy words are being thrown around to try and describe the whole scenario, but make no mistake that it was domestic terrorism at its very worst.  I’m not politically savvy enough to really expound on the more granular details of the whole situation, but ultimately what is prompting me to write is that despite the fact that I think that America just fucking sucks right now, it’s like a mom joke, where I’m allowed to say mean things like that, but it’s because at the root of things I do care, and the fact that we all had to bear witness to our country being so despicably disrespected and dishonored by such terrible people, it just makes me, really upset and sad.

Like, the words “it’s just sad,” escaped my mouth at least 52 times as the afternoon transpired and the sun set and we went into the evening, with baked potato trolls all still trolling around Washington D.C.  Friends of mine and I often wondering how only one of them was shot, knowing the obvious answer that them being white basically makes them bulletproof, and also wondering why nobody seemed to have been arrested, with the answer remaining the same.

But it’s because it really was truly saddening, that such a thing could even happen, and basically all perpetrators get away with it, and then we don’t have to look any further than the sore loser president with two weeks left on the job basically orchestrating the mother of temper tantrums, thinking-he’s-being-cleverly egging on his mindless goon followers to simmer down, knowing full well they really aren’t.  Everyone knows he gets off on knowing he has such a devoted following, and all people like me can really hope for is that their general protection disappears once he’s out of office.

Regardless, there’s no going back in time no matter how much we wished there was, and on this day, a legitimate coup attempt happened in America, and it was very much encouraged by a sitting president of the United States, jilted at the defeat he suffered in the last election, and would rather attempt to burn down the country that put him in power, than amicably transferring it over to his successor.

Just a day prior, the democratic process shone bright as a star in Georgia, as a record number of voters poured out, understanding that they held the more or less fate of the entire country in their hands, and people voted for the most qualified candidates to lead them forward.  And then one day later, one pissy orange oompa Loompa manages to take all that political equity, and burn it right to the fucking ground.

It’s just sad.

Oh, Georgia #745

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s election night in Georgia, and as fate would have it, the fate of the United States Senate rests on the results of what happens here, as the two Senate seats that will either solidify the Republicans’ control, or wrest power away from that gross old shithead that always looks like he’s shit his pants, Mitch McConnell, as the tie-breaker would permanently be held by vice president Kamala Harris.

But on a more base level, a level that is more relatable and understandable by all people, whether they’re American or not, tonight’s election is basically going to determine whether Americans would be eligible to getting $2,000 of coronavirus stimulus relief (Democratic win), or if the status quo of old white men denying all in order to deny black people and other minorities from getting any sort of financial relief (Republican).

Who really knows what’s going to happen.  When the polls closed, blue shot out to the lead from early precincts reporting, but with over 2,000 in the state, such points would be meaningless as all the racist hicks and rednecks who vote auto-red are tabulated in, and at the time I’m writing this, both Warnock and Ossoff’s leads have been slashed heavily, and we’re sitting on the tightrope margin that pundits originally predicted.  It’s anyone’s game at this point, and my only hope really is that more Georgians want a shot at $2,000 a head, to where blue remains in striking distance when all the precincts are called, and that the mail-in ballots that won the presidential election in November, can do the same thing over the next week or two as they’re counted last.

The thing is, red is still in the driver’s seat, as blue has to go 2/2 with victories for both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, while red only needs just one of Kelly Loeffler or David Purdue to win in order for the Senate to maintain their majority.  But I was pessimistically fatalistic about the presidential election and was pleasantly relieved, and like most Americans who would like the chance at $2,000 smackeroos, I’d much rather see blue prevail over two money-laundering mannequins.

Regardless, election night isn’t what prompted tonight’s brog drivel, but it is worth mentioning, because basically the fate of America really does fall into the prickly hands of Georgians. 

What did prompt me to start writing tonight was this particularly amusing article about how jobber former-president baked potato has decided that idiot Georgia bubba governor Yosemite Sam, cost him the election, and has vowed to campaign against him come 2022, when he would be up for re-election.

Continue reading “Oh, Georgia #745” →

All I want for Christmas is for people to put their fucking political signs away

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a house in my actual neighborhood.  Prior to the presidential election, all they had were the laughable “CHOOSE FREEDOM, VOTE REPUBLICAN” sign as well as the requisite Potato / Puppet sign that 74 million other racists in the country proudly plopped onto their properties.

Full disclosure, I deliberately went on walks in my neighborhood in many of the days after it was called that Joe Biden was the elected winner, because the weather wasn’t terrible, I wanted to get out of the house, take my daughter out in the stroller to get some fresh air, but most importantly, take inventory of all the racists in the neighborhood to see who was taking their signs down and who wasn’t.

At one point, this specific house took their signs down.  I was pleased.  If there’s one thing that the regime of the baked potato really exposed was that there are a frighteningly high amount of racists in this country, and are proud to tell everyone they are, and no more indicative than a sign for the potato and his puppet, and despite the fact that the baked potato losing isn’t going to magically take the racism out of all 74 million of his dumbass supporters, ignorance is bliss, and I’d rather all these assholes go back into obscurity.

But because Georgia has become ground zero for the next major battleground, the Senate, where two run-off elections that will decide the two remaining seats that will determine whether Mitch McConnell will have control or not, the political bullshit most certainly has not ended here, and has in fact, gotten kind of worse, than before the presidential election.  I’ve literally received mail from Democratic boosters in other states, bemoaning the importance of my vote in Georgia, and how the royal we control the fate of the country in our hands.

On the right, we have Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue, two literal sock puppets who have a tremendous track record for insider trading and other self-interests, but are firmly entrenched in their positions because the country has 74 million racists that auto-vote for the names that their lord kings tell them to vote for.

And on the left, we have Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff vying to oust their opponents.  I like Warnock, but I can kind of understand why Ossoff turns voters off, seeing as how he already lost a very public special election, but the reality is that I’d rather vote for a Vidalia onion and a boiled peanut over Loeffler and Purdue.

But once it was established that all eyes would be on Georgia entering 2021, not only has Georgia seen no shortage of political bullshit, the brainless Republican supporters are tripling down, digging their heels in, and continuing to root for their parade of assholes like Loeffler and Purdue, and the signs are popping up in droves.

And in the case of this clown in my neighborhood, not only did they plant their own Loeffler and Purdue signs in their yard, they went ahead and put back their baked potato sign, as if it’s like a Game Genie that will enhance the chances of these self-serving insider traders.

Continue reading “All I want for Christmas is for people to put their fucking political signs away” →

Have ad blockers become obsolete?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever since I got my brog back up, I’ve occasionally struggled to find a good groove in which to get back to writing.  Even being down for four years hasn’t really changed anything in that regard, in spite of how gung-ho and excited I was to get it back up, and thought that I could bounce back quicker than hoped.

Honestly though, it’s not so much the lack of want or desire to write, it’s just that I’ve had difficulty finding things that I want to write about.  Considering my life is basically like 85% thinking about baby, I kind of rely on the internet to feed me news, articles and stories to hopefully inspire me to write words, instead of me having to search for them currently.

But a large part of my difficulties these days is that all of the sites I used to go to, to look up local and national news, stories and potential inspiration, all of them have become neigh unusable for people like me who don’t want to be inundated with ads, because either sites all have anti-ad block blocks on them, or I have to white list them and I’m drowning in an ocean of ads that turns me off faster than seeing pictures of psoriasis on Google images and I leave disgusted.

I guess this is one of those points in my life where I realize how much of a parent I am because I don’t want to dig to find out or look for solutions, but basically I’m a Chrome user, and having Ad Block Plus on either makes the browser mostly unusable unless I whitelist all sites to which then the aforementioned drowning in ads becomes the norm.  I’ve given cursory Google searches to why this is the case but finding no real tangible proof of it, but all I know is that in the end it just discourages me from seeking news from once-reliable sites to seek out inspiration to write about, and it’s definitely contributing towards the struggles to keep on writing.

It’s frustrating because this is one of those situations where a little bit of give and take on either side might fix everything, but advertising has gotten so out of hand these days, which is what necessitated ad blocking to begin with, but with advertisers getting into bed presumably with the sites that shill them, they’re making it less possible for people to browse them without the luxury of blocking.  Maybe if every banner wasn’t animated, needed sound or autoplaying video, they wouldn’t be so obnoxious to want to block, but here we are.

Anyway, this is all mostly one big excuse to why I’m struggling to write more regularly, on top of the usual explanation that my kid comes first.  So I’ll leave it with this unnerving photo I saw on the AJC of some Asian women wearing MAGA caps and shirts that appear to state Asian Pacific Americans for the Baked Potato, and all it really does is make me wince, cringe, and shake my head at how disgusting such a thought is, and how I really can’t comprehend how any Asian minorities, much less those of the female gender, can support a guy who fucking hates their very existence.

What a perplexing and obnoxious ‘Murica we live in today.