Being brown on bad TV

You know, after all those Metro PCS commercials (rant below), desi cameos in TV sitcoms, and Russel Peters jokes, I've come to accept that brown people are going to be ridiculed in this country for a good laugh. And ok, I laugh too. But there's an art to all the racially-regressive crap they spew out that at least makes the jokes bearable. If you're going to stereotype groups of people, at least make it funny. SNL didn't get that memo.

So here's a breakdown: young Indian boy (who is played by a girl) has started his own talk show due to his father's encouragement (read: orders). Alright, that's an entertaining premise. The Indian boy also seems to be very knowledgeable about everything (registered: the model minority stereotype). But then it just goes haywire.

Enter Jude Law with a clumsy and pointless role as the talk show's guest. The camera randomly turns to a sardar-ji uncle wearing a messy turban and drinking alcohol. The skit fails, miserably. The humor is lost (the audience didn't laugh), the American-raised desi boys has a heavy and painful Indian accent, the dad and uncle are both played by non-South Asian actors that don't add anything except to try to fill the role of an overly-zealous father and alcoholic uncle (as a side point: why is the uncle a sardarji when no one in the family is?). There was nothing to laugh about. Not even a "that's racist but so hilarious" moment. And just to make me cringe some more, in the last 10 seconds, three desi people entered the scene for a family portrait. Oh, and the Indian woman was carrying a baby.

I appreciate the effort, but really, couldn't SNL have at least TRIED for some humor? I'm not even sure whether to call it racist or just really really bad comedy.

________________________

Rant about Metro PCS:

Somewhere, some teenage boy is sitting on his couch, laughing hysterically at the Metro PCS commercial that has just come on TV. The commercial itself isn’t particularly funny, but the two Indian men enunciating every word with thick accents are comical. And it manages to provide enough sound bites to mimic later: “There is always a penalty” and “Cold…like an ice lolli.”

But because they are lacking in creativity, what Metro PCS really has going for them is mocking Indian men who accent every syllable of their 30-second script and reference stereotypes of Indian culture (for no obvious reason that I can find). In other words, Metro PCS tries to create humor by racially stereotyping Indians.

The cell-phone company features Ranjit and Chad in multiple commercials, and the scenarios are similar: the duo hosts “Tech and Talk” and informs their callers that Metro PCS is the best and most affordable cell phone plan on the market. That’s about 10 seconds of the commercial. The rest is a bizarre blend of exaggerated music and attempted humor that relies on making fools of the two hosts.

All of these commercials include stereotypes associated with a rural India: a snake charmer, heightened shame (over choosing the wrong cell phone plan), and even calling a newspaper “hot and spicy.” At one point, Ranjit admonishes a consumer by telling him, “You’re like my uncle’s goat, tied to the post, milking at regular intervals.” (What does that even mean?)

Just to create a further bizarre world, which starts to look more like a circus after about 15 seconds, one commercial concludes with two Indian women, clad in elaborate clothes, dancing around a white customer. [Check out the videos below]. Sure, some of it is funny, but the rest is completely unnecessary and offensive. Why does Metro PCS think it’s OK to exploit the stereotypes imposed on a certain group for comedic effect?

But if that wasn’t enough, Metro PCS goes one step further. It creates humor that relies not just on Ranjit and Chad making jokes, but also on the two humiliating themselves. In one commercial, for example, Chad displays his “dancing skills” that are purposefully abominable, and in another, both men are donning large sunglasses and feminine hats (quite randomly), which just ups the ridicule factor.

The portrayal of Indian men as socially awkward and heavily accented, with thick mustaches and who are completely oblivious of people laughing at them is…well, it’s racist. It further perpetuates an almost circus-like persona to a group of people, most of whom look and sound little like Ranjit and Chad.

I love diversity on TV, and wouldn’t mind seeing more South Asians on screen, but I find it hard to believe Metro PCS couldn’t think of a better storyline that used brown people in their commercials without requiring them to make fools of themselves and their culture. How about a bit more creativity than that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuSI0WSFok&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFytHoXdG3E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CErb461jHA&feature=related

Education protestors are whiners, while tea partiers are a movement

This country, at times, seems like it’s teeming with barrels of monkeys who are more inclined to spout nonsense than engage in productive dialogue. Take Peter Robinson, a fellow at Stanford University, a former White House speechwriter, and a regular columnist for Forbes.

On March 5, a day after thousands nationwide marched to protest funding cuts in education, Robinson wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that only indicated just how out of touch he is with reality. Labeling the protesters as the “Me generation,” he argued that these students were selfish and self-absorbed for demanding money when so many families have been hit badly by the recession. In short, they carry a false sense of entitlement.

Never mind the irony that Robinson himself received a top-notch education from prestigious institutions: Dartmouth College and then Oxford University, and that he also works for an elite university where many enrolled are a product of privileged legacies. But wait, according to Robinson’s logic, it is those students protesting for a fair chance at a public education that are entitled.

There are many glaring flaws with Robinson’s piece. First, the generation he calls entitled made up only a portion of the protesters last Thursday. The rest were an equally frustrated group of parents concerned about their children’s futures and teachers who have been fired due to cuts.

Second, his definition of “entitlement” is skewed. Not only because Robinson overlooks his own privileged background, but he also doesn’t acknowledge that the idealism that these students espouse is not an aberration from the idealism they have vigilantly and regularly fought for. It is this generation who strongly opposed the Iraq War in 2003, and who just recently began a series of protests against racist incidents at UC campuses. Indeed, the generation he calls “self-absorbed” is very likely to work in developing countries, raise funds for natural disasters and engage with their local communities.

Most glaring of all, though, is that Robinson seems to find all the faults in these young protestors who are fighting for an affordable public education as they have been promised, but tea partiers, who claim they are trying to save their country, are heroes.

In a Forbes article in January, Robinson fought for the little guy – the tea partiers who have led the front in protesting Obama’s stimulus package and healthcare reform that would unfairly penalize these Americans, and who are due credit for their efforts while supine GOP counterparts merely observed. Unlike the students, when tea-partiers protest against health care reform that would benefit millions n the U.S., they are not self-absorbed, just patriotic.

The sentimental end is what really drives Robinson’s point home (cue in blaring trumpets): “But I do know this – and by now Obama knows it, too: The most potent political force in America is still an ordinary citizen who has finally had enough.”

Here, Robinson makes the most interesting point in his writing – one he probably did not mean to: the ordinary citizen who has had enough is a label only reserved for a select few. More specifically, the political force in America who should be heard is a small group of Americans afraid of an imagined monster – socialist in the White House, not a generation across the country who has tangible reasons to be upset. So, who really is the entitled one?

Regardless of one’s position on education funds and whether demands of these education protestors should be met, it is difficult to argue that hundreds of thousands of people are frustrated, upset at the lack of resources distributed to them, and probably at the lack people listening to them as they attempt to hold their government accountable.

Yet, the idiocy that Robinson argues is a shared sentiment among many – both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives – who have been quick to recognize the Tea Party as a legitimate movement and yet disregard the education protests (among others) as a product of either entitlement or banal whining. While Tea Partiers are running as third candidates in many states, an entire group of citizens is being ignored in the national political discourse.

The recession has not just hit middle America, and certainly not just a group of conservatives who still question where our President was born. It has also severely jostled job and health care security for a younger generation who now has to worry about completing their education because of rising tuition costs. And if anyone needs a reminder, it is this generation whose endless campaigning hours and efforts helped lead the Obama movement into the White House. Not only are they citizens, but they are effective citizens.

The March 4th protest was not the first education protest, and it certainly is not the last. California has already scheduled another round for later this month. And yet, there is an invisible barrier that somehow separates these frustrated citizens from the political discussion about the nation’s priorities amid mid-term elections. Perhaps those like Robinson, so concerned about the rights of the ordinary citizen, should listen to their own arguments for including the American public in the larger national discourse. At least I’d like him, the man who once wrote the famous Berlin Wall speech, hear his own words: “tear down this wall!”

Calling Israel an apartheid system just fuels our imagination

As college campuses across the country recognized Israeli Apartheid week this week, they sparked debates in the media on whether the term is used fairly to describe the situation in Israel. In a recent Washington Post article, Roger Cohen argues that Jimmy Carter label of Israel as an apartheid system was an exaggeration, especially given that the situation in the West Bank is not reflective of how the rest of the Israeli state functions.

Thankfully, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald had a fantastic comeback, in which he sites one of Cohen’s glaring omissions: that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have both attributed the term apartheid to Israel.

But does the racial segregation that shaped South Africa’s political system effectively explain how Palestinians and Israelis are living?

Not exactly.

As a system, apartheid does reflect what is taking place in Israel now: the forced segregation of Israelis and Palestinians, and systematic practices that separate a group of people and limit their civil and political rights.

What Greenwald and others overlook, though, is that the term “apartheid” has inherited a weighty historical context. Many, including Nelson Mandela, liken the Palestinians’ plight in Israel to apartheid in the South African context, claiming it is similar to – if not worse than – the systematic racial segregation in South Africa.

But the racial dynamics between the oppressors and victims that were real in South Africa are imagined in the context of Israel. Israelis do not consist of one racial group, and the majority of the Israelis – those who did not migrate to the state – have inherited the same racial features as Palestinians.

According to the 2009 Israeli Census, the country’s Jewish population by continent of origin is as follows:

Israel: 37.5%
Asia: 12.2%
Africa: 15.5%
Europe-America: 34.8%

Although the number of Europe-Americans Jews migrating to Israel is consistently increasing, they still make up a minority of all the Jews living in Israel – a white minority. And yet, they have come to symbolize the identity of the Israeli population in the minds of most Americans, and sometimes even shape how locals perceive the conflict.

In March 2009, Swiss artist Oliver Suter published an advertisement in Haaretz newspaper that called for lookalikes to the 8 people featured in the advertisement. The eight were Palestinians. Among the photos that Suter received, he matched up an Israeli girl to a Palestinian boy, surprising both families by their impressive similarity and prompting the girl’s father to say: “[David] Ben-Gurion was right when he said ‘The Palestinians are not our cousins, they’re our brothers. Turns out, they could be twins.’”

Incredibly, amid the tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, the racism that occurs among Israelis is often neglected in U.S. media. According to the Israeli Census, Mizrahi Jews (those of Arab origins) and Jews from Africa often fall behind Ashkanazi Jews in education and employment. This is in addition to the racist backlash against Ethiopian and Asian Jews [here I wish I could provide data or first-hand accounts, but I am deferring to stories of friends who have visited Israel].

But racism is not a taboo topic in Israel. Haaretz, among other publications, and Israelis have discussed the growing racial tensions within the country. However, when it comes to the U.S., Americans have imagined a different Israel altogether, one in which the Israelis do not look or act like the other – the Palestinians.

The term “apartheid” perpetuates this imagined identity, and I myself doubt if we can use such a loaded term without framing it according to the South African context from which it originated. Yet, the debate about the term poses a rather interesting question about not what Israel is, but how we perceive this conflict, and who Israel belongs to. Who really owns Israel?

Well, here's a different take

Republican Senator Gary Nodler from Missouri has his own reasons for why Don't Ask, Don't Tell should not be repealed. According to him, doing so "would offend the terrorists" and would also be a "cultuaral [sic] affront to the Muslim in who's [sic] country we are opening."

He tried to make sense of his argument later when a blogger told him that U.S. allies do not have similar policies. Nodler's responded by implying that the UK has a high casualty rate in Afghanistan and Iraq because gays serve openly in the British military.

I may have respected Nodler a bit more if he had just come out and said he disagreed with repealing DADT because he doesn't want gays serving openly. At least, I hope he has a better argument than "I don't want to offend the terrorists and Muslims," because I'm pretty sure what's offensive to them are the bombs dropped on them.

Personally, what I find an affront are Nodler's weak spelling skills.

Pakistan: Obama's War

http://boomgen.tv/2010/02/pakistan-obamas-war/

When reality fails to reach, use fantasy

Palestinian protestors who dressed up like the Na’vi from Avatar last week almost looked like they belonged at a costume party. In fact, it may have even been a moment of humor in an intense and emotionally charged conflict. But I found it rather sad.

I should start by saying that I did find the entire episode quite brilliant. Palestinians have been protesting against this particular separation barrier in the West Bank for the past years, even after an Israeli court found the wall unlawful, and the annual ritual has become somewhat humdrum. Cleverly, they incited interest (however small) by evoking images of something that was talked about, Avatar: a worldwide phenomenon. And I imagine it caught the eye of a younger generation for whom the Israel/Palestinian conflict is an ongoing saga consistently playing in the background of world politics. (At least that was my view when I was in high school).

That said, here is why I found it sad: by posing as movie characters, these Palestinian protestors had to create a distance for the spectator from their actual conflict. Because the reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict is so emotionally charged, it required fantasy to provide some perspective, to be recognized as an “oppressed” group. No one is going to argue that the Na’vi in Avatar were treated unjustly, but when considering Palestinians, the concept of justice and victimization is blurry and questionable.

I doubt these Palestinians are looking for a “savior” – that ideology is both regressive and demeaning, because it assumes Palestinians cannot help themselves. But perhaps what these Palestinian protestors are calling for is a sense of perspective from the international community; different ways of understanding a conflict that is hardly straightforward.

For the record, few American publications reprinted pictures of the Palestinian protestors, which at some level indicates how taboo a topic the Palestinian viewpoint of the conflict is in this country. But this conflict is not localized to a strip of land in the Middle East; the United States is very much invested in the outcome of any peace process, which is exactly why actual discussion representing both sides needs to take place in this country. And I don’t mean news events that splash cable networks every now and then, but a dialogue that challenges our old perceptions of the situation.

Regardless of your position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is hard to argue that Americans have ignored the struggles of Palestinians. If drawing parallels between fantasy and reality is going to help people recognize this, then perhaps Palestinians have found a new tactic to employ. I, however, am glad they decided against posing as the aliens from District 9.

SOTU

President Obama may have vowed not to quit when it comes to battling the politics of the Hill in his State of the Union address last night, but his talk of foreign policy sounded more fatigued.

Outlining the ways in which he plans to protect and advance the country in the context of foreign policy, Obama seemed to have changed his tone towards the Muslim world from one of dialogue to one of control:

That's the leadership that we are providing –- engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We're working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. We're working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We're helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease -– a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad. [emphasis added]

Compare that tidbit about the need to enlighten Muslim societies to his famous Cairo speech given last summer to the Muslim world in which he acknowledges the innovation Muslim communities have already provided and pushes for more dialogue:

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam - at places like Al-Azhar University - that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

What the Cairo speech had done so well was recognize the complexities of the Muslim world that could help lead to prosperity. Obama essentially acknowledged that while some communities may foster fanaticism, others are pushing the limits of science, philosophy and politics. But after last night, it seemed as if Obama had reduced foreign policy towards the Middle East to one-sided action rather than two-sided engagement: Iran got an ultimatum, the discussion of Iraq mainly focused on getting the troops out, Afghanistan was spoken of in the context of terrorists rather than state-building, democracy and civil society.

It’s clear that Obama is desperately trying to regain control and leadership as his poll numbers plunge and the situation in Af-Pak grows increasingly dire. I can’t blame him. With a tough year of failures at home and abroad, Obama needs to remind others he is a leader. But like he said, leaders must do what is difficult, not what is easy. It’s difficult to engage in dialogue that test our assumptions and challenge our limits, but all I’m saying is, don’t quit.