Tag: white people

Hate to see it, but it’s not like it isn’t deserved

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC: Fewer international tourists are visiting the United States; economic losses estimated to be ‘staggering’

Like the subject says, this is one of those things that most Americans probably wouldn’t like to see or know of, but at the same time, it’s not like it isn’t deserved, and I can only hope that there are more businesses whose owners and managers that voted for the dumbass orange turd in Washington are being affected by this over those who didn’t.

Like, America was no saint of a destination before dumbass orange turd took office again, but now that he is, I can’t imagine why anyone outside of the United States would have any real inkling of desire to visit it, save for experiences like, Disney World or Las Vegas.  But frankly, even those probably have better alternate options, like the numerous other Disney properties in Europe or Japan, and casinos in Macau or Italy.

I always go back to this particular story of how I came back from an international trip, and had a layover in JFK, and had to clear customs there before catching my next flight back to Atlanta.  I remember seeing these foreign tourists struggling immensely to get through customs because they spoke little-to-no English, and the customs agents were all salty New Yorkers who spoke nothing other than English and basically the faces of these tourists were miserable and scared, and I felt bad that this was basically how their trip was starting in the United States.

Meanwhile, mythical then-gf and I had gotten back from Germany or Korea or wherever we were, and the customs agents in all these places spoke English, weren’t miserable New Yorkers, and were by and not entirely unpleasant experiences getting past them to our destinations.  I remember when we got out of the airport in Munich, and there were already holiday booths and vendors and it was airy and pleasant, and compare that to walking out the door of JFK or any American airport, which is usually just a lot of unhinged drivers trying to pick people up, power-tripping security blowing whistles and screaming at people, and just a whole lot of ugliness, and I always wonder why anyone with a brain would actually want to visit the United States.

Furthermore, like the above photo shows, there’s a meme out there of all sorts of countries around the world, where people say they’re going to visit, when they’re really referring to small sections of each respective country; like all the weebs who say they’re going to Japan are really referring to Tokyo or Osaka, all Koreebs are really visiting Seoul when they say Korea, Paris to France, London to England, and frankly most Americans aren’t aware that Amsterdam is but a city in Holland and not the country itself.  The same applies to the United States, where most anyone from outside of it, when they say they’re coming to visit America, really is saying they’re visiting places like New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington DC, or Disney World (obviously not Orlando).  Everywhere else is pretty much not America as far as the eyes of the average tourist goes.

All the same, as much as I hope nobody I know is affected by the financial windfall of dwindling tourism, it’s one of those scenarios where it’s smirk-worthy with that I told you so kind of vibe, that this was inevitable to happen with the current political regime that basically has told everyone else outside the country to fuck off, and them being surprised that nobody wants to come visit anymore.

It’s like if people are getting hurt by this development on account of shitty leadership, a lot of people have nobody to blame but themselves for voting for a leader who’s so racist and xenophobic and is the chief reason why tourism dollars are evaporating and that nobody wants to come visit America.  But at the same time, it’s not like this should be anything of a surprise, once our glorious leader kept flapping his gums about America’s so-called superiority, so I guess all I can really say at this point is, owned.

Matthew Stafford’s wife put him into a no-win situation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

US Weekly: LA Rams QB Matthew Stafford judged by the internet for sitting in first class while his wife and four daughters sat in coach; unbeknownst to the many, it was arranged by his wife

Talk about a true no-win situation to be put in here, and the wonder if his wife set him up or not.  NFL quarterback sits in first class, while his wife and four daughters sit in coach; at first blush, it sounds like a chauvinistic asshole flexing his status as a man, a breadwinner, and a professional athlete against his wife and kids, plopping himself into the comfort and luxury of first class, while they all get to sit in the pleeb class.

Naturally, as the internet goes, first blushes and knee-jerk reactions are all any targets get, and Matthew Stafford is now branded an asshole, a douche, a selfish pig who has no respect for his wife, his kids, all women, etc, but then we come to find out that this whole thing was set up entirely by his own wife, who seems to like to tout that they have a no-nonsense travel policy:

I told Matthew, ‘Listen, point A to point B. There’s a flight. Let’s just get on it. It’s fine,’”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about marriage, a wife, or women in general, when a woman says to you “It’s fine,” the shit is already Chernobyl and there’s nothing you can do about it, except begin damage control.  The more I re-read this story, the more I feel like Kelly Stafford probably had some existing beef or receipt to give poor Matthew, and found this flight as an excellent opportunity to exorcise it.  And the most diabolical part about it was the fact that she didn’t tell him about it at all, until it was boarding time.

Poor Matthew even knew what was going to happen when once the jig was up and he learned that he’d be separated from his family in first class versus everyone else:

He was like, ‘I’m gonna look like the biggest a**hole,’”

Of course, the wife had to have known this as well, but at this point they were already past no-return, and she instead tried to play it off like it would be the fault of those who would choose, and undoubtedly would choose, to judge:

Listen, if people have time to consider you to be an a**hole because your 6’3” self is not gonna sit in the back with everyone in your family who is 5’3” and under, then they’ve got bigger issues.”

In the end, predictably, regardless of the facts and context behind the whole thing, Matthew Stafford looks like an asshole for sitting in first class, and Kelly Stafford and their four Stepford Children of the Corn daughters all look like martyrs, farming up pity and sympathy, sitting in pleeb class.  Probably not saying much to defend her husband to those throwing shade in person, as much as she’s getting to be quoted for a written piece.

Whew, piece of work that Kelly Stafford is.  Ain’t nobody going to convince me that this wasn’t wholly orchestrated as a result of some marital beef or microaggression that she felt that required retribution in a manner that was a no-win for Matthew, and a complete win for her.

No wonder Matthew Stafford was able to keep such a cool head for all those years he played for the Lions, because going home some days was probably way worse than playing in Detroit.

Happy Trails, Jonathan Joss

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Actor Jonathan Joss, shot and killed at the age of 59

Although falling through the ceiling of my attic really sucked, in retrospect it was nothing compared to finding out that Jonathan Joss was tragically shot and murdered.

And it’s not just because of the freshness of the incident that I say this, but the man was legitimately part of two shows that I hold in the highest esteem, in Parks and Recreation as well as King of the Hill, with the latter being where I knew him from the best, but then being super stoked when I got into Parks and Rec, and finding out that the guy behind Ken Hotate was John Redcorn.

Needless to say, my sadness is legitimate sadness, and not just sad that someone in showbusiness I liked is gone kind of way.  I didn’t need a refresher on the roles he played when I saw his name in the news as being a murder victim, and it’s all just really sad and tragic and fucked up in a variety of ways, and it boils down to the fact that guns in America are long past out of control, and shit like this happens way too frequently.

Frankly, I didn’t even know that Joss was gay, not that it matters at all to me, but seeing as how it’s Pride Month, and learning that the shooter was using homophobic slurs just adds to the infuriating tragedy of the whole scenario.  He was clearly a proud representative of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the oft-overlooked indigenous community, both of which take a sad hit in the loss of Jonathan Joss.

At this point, I don’t really have anything much else to say.  It’s just he was a guy whose work I loved so much, making me a fan of his by proxy, and I felt like I had to at least put some words down to express my grief at this senseless and tragic passing.

The whole John Redcorn joke was pretty much my favorite subplot on King of the Hill, and it was always a treat to see whenever he appeared on Parks and Rec, playing white people like a fiddle.  It’s all just a fucking shame that the world will never get to see him pop up anything else anymore, because aside from being such a strong advocate, man was just such an iconic talent.

When it comes to college application time, my kids are now ‘white’

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Chinese-American kid with near-perfect credentials and worthiness rejected by 16 out of 18 schools; family pursuing legal action

Firstly, I’m astounded how this story managed slip by me considering it appears to have originated back in March.  I suppose my Google notification queries weren’t adequate enough to have found about this kid sooner.  Secondly, regardless of the fact that I closed the book on #TRYHARDSZN2025, when I found out about the general context of this story, it couldn’t help but fire up the powder keg of my brain into wanting to write about this, because it really is a pretty astounding story.

We have a student who scored a 1590 on the SAT* and has a 4.42 GPA; typically those things alone are enough to get kids accepted into a whole slew of high-tier colleges.  On top of it, it’s a computer science whiz, was offered a job at Google when he was 13 because his code was so clean, he was assumed to have been an adult, and he founded his own e-signature startup, which really should have had most schools with strong computer science and/or engineering programs salivating to bring in a talent like this into their folds.

*I can’t help but wonder what question he possibly could have gotten wrong on the SAT to dock those ten points, and also wonder if his dad beat the ever-living fuck out of him for failing to miss a perfecto by one question

The problem is that he happened to be Chinese-American, and suddenly he went from diamond in the rough to being a gold flake in the sluice, and was turned down from nearly every school he applied to.  There are so many Asian whiz kids out there every single college application season, that it’s probably more exceptional to be mediocre and full of character like me, instead of being a monster in the books.  Even doing shit like creating startups, developing apps or other exceptional-sounding achievements have begun to sound cookie cutter amongst Asians and guys like this are left to pay the price for everyone being so fucking over-the-top #TRYHARD.

As Syndrome said in The Incredibles, when everyone is super, nobody will be.

And the thing is, it’s not like he was one of those #TRYHARDs that applied to every Ivy League school, in fact the only one he did apply to was Cornell.  With the exceptions of MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, the meat of his applications made it clear that he was favoring staying out on the west coast, with most of his applications staying in California primarily; they’re all good, noteworthy schools, but they’re not Ivies, and they still turned this poor kid down.

So despite my knee-jerk reaction being fuck this kid and his seemingly overzealous dad for going straight to threatening lawsuits, because frankly this happens every year, where a few wunderkind Asian kids get the shaft during college application time, because frankly Asians always get the shaft when it comes to succeeding in America, I’m actually rooting for them to hopefully make some noise and either get the college system in the country to change their racist acceptance policies, or flat out admit that they do discriminate against Asians for being too good at school.

It’s the Asian Curve at its best-worst, where Asian kids basically start the SAT with a score of -200, because without it, they’re completely annihilating the competition, but on a college-application level where Asians are getting rejected by schools because they’re unofficially trying to fill diversity quotas, as opposed to having their student bodies look like the Beijing Olympics.

The funny thing is though, in spite of the bullshit of getting completely owned by the college acceptance system, the kid in question is going to be just fine.  He’s already been hired by Google, and his story, as well as his previous rub with the company, you know he’s already pulling in serious coin, and the ironic best part is that he’ll be getting to do so without having a modicum of student debt to pay towards.

Granted, his parents will forever be denied the Asian honor dream of having a son that went to Harvard or Yale, much less any college at this point, but in a few years once he’s made some money, and has bought them some high-end cars and paid off their mortgage, I’m sure their songs will sound a lot less flat.

All the same, it was an interesting story that really puts the spotlight on how much bullshit #TRYHARDSZN is capable of being, especially for those of kids who are stalwart Asians, because they have to know that their plight to get into top schools is going to be thirty-times harder than those students of different colors of skin, regardless of if anyone will admit to it or not.

Things White People Like: Cars that are kind of like Broncos

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know that I’ve written several times about white peoples’ fascinations with the revived Ford Broncos, but over the last year or so, I couldn’t help but notice how many car manufacturers have slowly been creating their own vehicles to try to tap into that same market, of “white guys who are tired of how there are minorities that have the audacity to buy Jeeps, so they’ve all transitioned over to Ford Broncos, except now they once saw a black guy driving one, so they’ve been searching for something else.”

What finally spurred me to actually write about this after all this time that this general topic has been swirling around in my brain from time to time, is that this particular morning, I pulled up behind one of these Bronco clones, thinking that I was pulling up on a Land Rover  Defender or maybe a Hummer EV.  But then I saw the Lexus badge, and my brow scrunched and I was like, seriously, Lexus is in on this shit now too?

Sure, it didn’t help that the car had an aftermarket lift kit, and didn’t look exactly like the Lexus shown to the right, but the fact that someone would go through the trouble and finances to make their “luxury” Lexus look more rugged and, like a Bronco, by adding a lift kid and wide wheels was fascinating enough, and sure enough when I passed by him, it was a guy that basically looked like Adam Scott, which is to say a pretty generic looking white guy, no disrespect to Adam Scott I love Parks & Rec and Severance

The point remains is that Lexus is on the game now too, and now I can recall numerous vehicles that fall into the category of being Ford Bronco wannabes, targeting white people, and they are most definitely biting on the bait.

Sure, when I actually line them up like I have in this image, they don’t really look as identical as they seem to look when you see them one at a time in the wild, but the point remains is that they’ve all been inspired by the success of the Ford Bronco, and are all trying to get a slice of the pie.  Which is fascinating in the sense that Ford as a brand doesn’t really have a great reputation, seeing as how their cars are basically manufactured from recycled Rubbermaid parts and the cheapest metals they can find, but all these luxury makers are crawling all over each other in order to emulate a general shitbox, but with their own pretentious spins on them.

The Lexus RX550, the Land Rover Discovery, the Hummer EV, and the Rivian whatever, all have that general same look and feel as a Bronco, except that they’re probably $20K+ more than a Bronco.  And the only real bragging right a driver of a clone really gets is the insinuation that they have money because they plopped $20K+ more on their whip than they could have had a Bronco for, but then again, fewer things say white people more than flexing finances, even if it’s not always necessarily an intelligent choice.

It’s just so funny though, because the Bronco is a rip off of a Jeep, which is basically the greatest vehicle in the world at off-roading, but it’s beyond obvious that anyone in a Bronco, much less any of their egregiously more expensive poser-clones, the closest thing they’ll ever see to being off-road is when they go to a farm in the fall for pumpkin picking.

But then again, white people.

White Lotus S3 probably fucking with #TRYHARDSZN2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Here’s the thing, this article came up in my routine searches for #TRYHARDs to write about, about how Duke’s acceptance rate has hit an all-time low, where only 3.67% of applicants get accepted.  I mean, sports bias and perception bias on account of sports, aside, Duke is a fine educational institution, and the name holds a tremendous amount of weight in the world for those who have gone there, and graduated from the university.

But even outside of the world of sport, the Duke brand holds an abysmal reputation and is generally reviled by pretty much everyone except those people who have gone to Duke, graduated from Duke, or financially supported by someone who went to Duke.  There’s a general reputation that Duke is snooty, white-bred, arrogant, insufferable and all sorts of pejoratives meant to demean Duke, but it never really mattered, because all the people who are pro-Duke exist on some sort of weird island where nobody else seems to matter.

Which is why it seems so appropriate and fitting that Duke has seemingly decided to gatekeep to a new career high, accepting fewer students than they’ve ever done, and I have to feel that such is probably surprising to absolutely nobody at all, considering their general reputation and the political climate that’s emboldened racists to let their bigot flags fly high and proudly.

Why I decided to start a post about it is completely beyond me considering I don’t really have much else to say about the topic, but in all honesty the reason I wanted to, was so I could post a screen grab of White Lotus S3, where the character Timothy Ratliff, played by Jason Isaacs is basically losing his marbles, but every time he goes into one of his suicidal fantasies, he’s always wearing a t-shirt with a huge-ass DUKE wordmark on it.

After the last episode, I remarked to mythical wife that I’m sure Duke is (facetiously) thrilled to see their school’s name on the shirt of a criminal embezzler who is becoming suicidal, and as someone who enjoys seeing Duke fail in any capacity, it brings me great amusement to see it happening in the show.

And the funniest thing is that my hypothesis was proven correct when searching for an adequate screen grab to pair with this post, and Googling “Tim Ratliff White Lo-“ auto fills in the rest of “tim ratliff white lotus duke shirt” and all sorts of articles and spot-on screen caps of Tim Ratliff with a gun to his head with his DUKE shirt on are immediately returned, and there are numerous articles detailing the university’s general displeasure at the show that a Duke man is both a criminal and suicidal.

But yeah, I’m not surprised that Duke’s not happy about it, because the Ratliff family is proudly North Carolinian, and boasts how dad is Duke, mom is UNC, eldest son is Duke, I don’t remember which Piper went to, but how Lochte is still deciding between the two, but it’s clear that those who were Dookies are clearly vapid unhinged white people, with one of them becoming suicidal.  And I love the validation of my off-remark hypothesis.

So at this point, I have no choice but to continue on with making this post, because it succeeds at taking shots at Duke, as well as put over White Lotus as a show, because season 3 has been entertaining and has demonstrated HBO’s ability to get something that isn’t Game of Thrones or Games of Thrones-adjacent in order to anchor down that Sunday at 9 pm time slot.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: the Hispanic goalie.. in hockey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NJ.com: New Jersey teen accepted into 23 schools, amassing around $1.5M in scholarships

Finally, I’ve got our first #TRYHARD from outside the State of Georgia, and it does seem a like an interesting case.  The sheer number of schools this #TRYHARD got into kind of pales in comparison to all of the seasoned Georgia #TRYHARDs that I’ve documented so far, but notching $1.5M out of 23 schools is definitely a higher cumulative per-school average than everyone else thus far, at $65,217.  For context, there was a #TRYHARD or two in Georgia who hit the $1.5M marks, but they were also requiring upwards of 50+ schools in order to do so.

Interestingly, this article actually gives a little more context than any of the previously covered #TRYHARDs, in terms of some examples of why they’re qualified to be a #TRYHARD, as well as some factual numbers and names, as far as some of the scholarships are concerned.

$180K to go to Syracuse seems pretty impressive sounding, but I also have to remind myself that this isn’t 1998 when my sister went off to college there, and the cost of tuition has gone up considerably over the last 28 years.  If I had to guess, $180K probably covers a year, maybe three semesters, tops, and probably doesn’t include room, board, food and all the other incidental expenses that comes with attending college away from home.

Our boy is most undoubtedly looking for a free ride outright, as most of #TRYHARDs are, but if I had to guess, he might have to lower his bar in order to do so.  Considering he’s claimed to want to stay in the greater New York area, one of the fifty different SUNYs seem like a more likely destination for him.

But it’s not to say that he doesn’t bring something to the table; aside from the grades, the accolades and extracurriculars, the thing that stands out to me the most is the fact that we have here a kid of obvious Hispanic descent, but he’s a hockey player, and is actually the goalie for his school, and helped win a division championship.

I admit I don’t follow a tremendous amount of hockey, but I don’t imagine it’s changed that much over the last few years of being pretty much the least diverse sport on the planet when it comes to being rostered by players that aren’t white.  I have to imagine this factoid alone should be more than sufficient for a school to want to kill multiple diversity birds with a single stone by accepting a Latino kid who has great grades, lots of honors, and is a hockey goalie on top of it.

But then again, seeing as how the country has declared war on the letters D, E, and I, maybe some schools are afraid of being too openly accepting of DEI initiatives and will cool on a kid like this.

Either way, hooray for the first #TRYHARD from outside of Georgia.  He brings an impressive resume to the table, but he clearly lacks in the bragging game, and racks the aspirations to aim for a school in every single fucking state.  I do give him credit for being a Hispanic goalie in hockey, but when the day is over, this #TRYHARD didn’t try hard enough to out-do the other #TRYHARDs that are inevitably going to continue to emerge this #SZN.