DISGRASIAN™

BIRTHDAY CELEBRASIAN! William Hung

Happy birthday to William Hung, who turned 27 this week!

Hung like a... Shetland pony?

Though he hasn’t produced a record in years, Hung has somehow hung (ahem) out prominently in our minds–like sticky rice on the back of a wooden spoon–until present. Most Hung-related memories make us want to drag him out from his hole just to slap him silly, just because he so famously embodied for millenials every marshmallow-faced, Engrish-speaking, penis-shrinking stereotype we (like our hero, Bruce Lee) have ever tried to kick to the curb.

So here’s hoping now that Hung’s a little bit older, he’s also a bit wiser (and for all of you quick-draw commenters, I know he’s plenty book smart, but we’re talking wisdom here). Maybe he’ll find a way to channel all of that “attitude and charisma” into something wonderful, like medical school or law school (kidding)! Listen, we’re stoked as long as he’s not making us all look like clowns. Anymore.

[William Hung - Official Site]
[YouTube: William Hung American Idol Audition (VIDEO)]

Source

Filed under: American Idol, Birthdays, Book Smart, Bruce Lee, Clowning, Clowns, Engrish, Engrish as a Second Language, Fat Faces, Getting Older, Marshmallow, Never Resisting a Chance to Exploit Yourself As A Stereotype, Penis Shrinkage, Shame, Stereotypes, William Hung, Wisdom

We Get It Already, Blasians Can’t Drive Escalades

As Gawker aptly pointed out yesterday, nearly every hack comedian in America managed a take on this setup: “Blasian Tiger Woods crashes his Escalade.”

There are many versions, but the joke goes something like this:

Click here for the sampler flight of punchlines.

Surprisingly, though, not one comedian seemed to find a way to make the “joke” funny. ZzZZZzzZzzZZZzZzzzzzZzzzz.

[via Gawker]

Thanks, Jasmine and Colin!

Filed under: Asian Drivers, Bad Driving, Bad Jokes, Blasians, Buck Teef, Cadillac, Escalade, George Lopez Is Criminally Unfunny, Jo Koy, Lame, Stereotypes, Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods Crash, Tiger Woods Runs Car Into Fire Hydrant, Wanda Sykes, ZZzzzZzZzZZzzzz

Small Dick, Huge Balls [VIDEO]

YouTube sensation Tim Chantarangsu, aka TimothyDeLaGhetto2, may have a small dick, but, man, is he hung with some nards.

“For Asian dudes, this idea of the small penis joke is like our Kryptonite…that’s supposed to be the worst thing you could say to an Asian dude, it’s almost like this Asian penis joke is like the n-word equivalent for Asian dudes, cuz it’s like oh my god I can’t believe he just said that, I’mma get this Asian dude, I’m gonna either say he’s got a small dick or he eats dog or he eats dog with a small dick. By taking the power away from that, I’m doing kinda like black people did where they embraced the n-word as a word of love.”

For more of Tim’s videos, check out:

[TimothyDeLaGhetto2 YouTube Channel]
[TraPhik MySpace]

Filed under: Balls, Dicks, Funny Men, Nards, Not Overcompensating, Reappropriation, Small Penis Jokes, Stereotypes, The N-Word, Tim Chantarangsu, Timothy De La Ghetto, TraPhik

[Insert Asian Drivers Joke]: Korean Woman Passes Driver’s Test On 950th Try

Cha Sa-soon, a 68 year-old woman in Jeongju, South Korea, has finally passed her driver’s exam after four years, $4,200 in application fees, and 950 attempts.

Her written driver’s exam, that is. Cha still has to master the driving portion of the test behind the wheel of an actual car (okay, maybe like a Kia rather than an actual car-car) in order to get her license.

I know many of you are thinking, Commence the bad Asian drivers jokes *groan* or Granny’s undoing all my good work and the sweet rep we’ve been building since Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, but I’m really stuck on the fact that she failed her written test 949 times.

I mean, isn’t being awesome at test-taking our goddamn birthright?

[AP: SKorean woman passes driver's exam on 950th try]

Thanks to all the bad drivers who sent this one in.

Filed under: bad asian drivers, Cha Sa-soon, Driver's License, Driver's Test, Good Asian Drivers, South Korean Woman Passes Driver's Test on 950th Try, Stereotypes, Test-taking

Is Balloon Boy’s Mom, Mayumi Heene, A Victim Of Her Husband?

ABCNews.com–under its “Entertainment” section, it should be noted–posted a disturbing portrait Tuesday of Mayumi Heene, Balloon Boy’s mother. The story, “Balloon Boy Mom: Co-Conspirator or Abused Wife?” not only suggests that Mayumi may be a victim in this saga, but that her being Japanese has something to do with it.

The piece brings up the 911 call that brought police to the Heene house last February, when Mayumi appeared to have been hit in the face, and centers largely around allegations made by Richard Heene’s former business partner, Barbara Slusser, who worked with him on his “Psyience Detectives” web show. Slusser told ABCNews.com that Mayumi’s “Japanese background has kept her in a subservient relationship with her husband and three boys,” and also called the mother of three “the most stoic person” and “basically (Richard’s) slave.”

Another former Richard Heene friend and colleague, Scott Stevens, echoed Slusser’s statements.

It’s a cultural thing and (Richard) leveraged that knowledge,” Stevens said. “He believed that Asian women can be subservient and that’s what he wanted. But it takes two to tango and she was with him for more than a decade. Every day that was the dynamic in play.”

The story went on to note how, for the Heenes’ first of two appearances on Wife Swap, the show promo painted the following picture of the couple: “While Richard devotes every moment to his research, he expects Mayumi to cook, clean and run the house without any help.” And how, in that October 2008 episode, Richard screamed at the woman who swapped places with his wife for two weeks, “You’re a man’s nightmare. I’m so glad my wife was born in Japan.”

From Mayumi’s second appearance on Wife Swap

So, if we’re to believe this report, Mayumi Heene is essentially a sad, suffering-in-silence, subservient–a word used three times to describe her–Asian woman cliche (and Richard Heene, as everyone’s suspected all along, a gaping, raging asshole). There is, however, one startling revelation in the story that prevents us from writing off Mayumi as a total victim: she and Richard have SEPARATE legal representation. In other words, if the Heenes are going to go down like their little Mylar balloon for this hoax, they’re not going to go down together.

Lee Christian, Mayumi’s lawyer, said the accounts given by Slusser and others indicate that the woman should not be accused of being a co-conspirator in any alleged hoax.

“I can’t comment on the specific allegations here but if those statements are indeed true, then the district attorney needs to seriously think about whether to charge Mrs. Heene in this case,” Christian said.

Selling out your domineering husband when faced with criminal charges? That’s one helluva way to show him who’s boss.

[ABCNews.com: Balloon Boy Mom: Co-Conspirator or Abused Wife?]

Thanks, Elton!

Filed under: Balloon Boy, Battered Women, Clichés, Falcon Heene, Hoaxes, Long-Suffering Wives, Mayumi Heene, Media Frenzy, Media Whores, Richard Heene, Scandals, Stereotypes, Submissive Asian Women, Subservient Women

Racial Stereotypes Don’t Make Us Glee-ful

Despite being a former a cappella singing group dork, the show Glee has yet to win me over. So far it feels pretty safe and boring. Like, despite all the drama, whether it’s Terri’s fake pregnancy, or OCD Emma’s feelings for Will, or the real identity of Quinn’s baby daddy, or Rachel’s divatastic flip-flopping between Glee Club and musical theater, don’t you get the feeling that, eventually, every lie will be outed, everyone will end up with the right person, everyone who feels like an outsider will become an insider, and everything will work out neatly in the end, right before the cast busts into pitch-perfect 4-part harmony and wins nationals? It just seems a bit too predetermined and predictable.

Another thing that’s predictable? The cover art to Glee’s Season 1 DVD-set, scheduled for release December 29:

Jenna Ushkowitz as Tina Cohen-Chang

An Asian chick giggling with her hand over her mouth? Really? Why stop there? Why not show the gay kid sporting a limp wrist and the black chick rolling her neck, too? (Come to think of it, Amber Riley, who plays black diva-in-training Mercedes Jones, does appear to be doing just that.)

Ugh. Yet another reason not to be Gleeful.

Source
Thanks, Jasmine!

Filed under: A Cappella, Covering Your Mouth While Giggling, FOX TV, Stereotypes, We Aren't All Gigglers

We Don’t Care About White People, Apparently

Oh dear. It seems that we’ve ruffled a few feathers.

Last week, I wrote about a McDonald’s ad campaign in Japan featuring one “Mr. James,” a wacky gaijin nerd who speaks in broken Japanese (pictured), and the outrage that’s ensued over this depiction of white foreigners there. Regarding that outrage, I cited the blog Debito.org, written by an American who’s now a naturalized Japanese citizen, who 1) compared Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit–a reference that has since been removed from Debito’s post, although it was mentioned on Japan Probe, too–and 2) suggested that if McDonald’s put a “full-body ‘ching-chong-chinaman’ with funny glasses and protruding teeth saying ‘Me likee McFlied Lice,’” it would never fly over here in America.

But, of course, the ching-chong-chinaman with funny glasses and protruding teeth speaking broken English is a frequent flier here on TV and in corporate advertising, and I provided a couple examples of this (also, um, try reading our blog some time). After seeing my post via HuffPo, Japan Probe took my providing counter-examples of extant “Asian versions” of Mr. Jameses in American pop culture and advertising to mean that I “don’t care” about stereotyping when it happens to white people:

Over at the Huffington Post, a pair of Asian-American women who call themselves Disgrasian has written a short article about Mr. James. The authors seem offended by stereotypes of Asians they witness in American ad campaigns and they’ve also expressed disgust with stereotypes of Asians they believe were present in a recent Marie Claire article about Asian trophy wives. When they look at the Mr. James commercials they recognize the same kind of stereotyping, but don’t care because “Karma’s one wacky bitch, isn’t it?”

Japan Probe then put up a screengrab from one of our vlogs where Diana and I are both smiling, as if it were somehow photographic proof of just how blithe and smug we are about other people’s problems (guess they didn’t realize we were talking about burrito-fucking in that one). But hey, I’m not complaining, that photo of us isn’t half-bad!

I’ve enjoyed Japan Probe in the past, but here their reading of my post is just fatuous and dumb. It’s not that I don’t think Mr. James is an unflattering stereotype of white people in Japan. And it’s not that I don’t care. But I find the outrage leveled at this Mr. James character by certain people to be verging on histrionic. Comparing Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit? Really? Stepin Fetchit was an African-American stereotype popularized in the 20’s and 30’s. He was known as “the laziest man in the world,” and “a befuddled, mumbling, shiftless fool.” But one of these fools is not like the other. It’s important to remember context here, that Stepin Fetchit was a minstrel character created during the time of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the systematized oppression of African-Americans that followed slavery. I mean, slavery, okay? Over two hundred years of slavery. It’s morally bankrupt to put a fool like Mr. James on par with a fool like Stepin Fetchit; stereotypes like Stepin Fetchit were instruments, ultimately, in reinforcing the second-class status of blacks–and not just socially, mind you, but legally. Stepin Fetchit didn’t merely offend. Stepin Fetchit made the abuse of our constitution, the miscarriage of justice, the legalization of inequality, and the back of the bus only that much easier to live with.

(I can only think that Debito reflected on this, and that’s why the comparison between Mr. James and Stepin Fetchit has been removed from his original post.)

But let’s get back to me not caring. I provided examples of Asian versions of Mr. James in my other post so as not to say, And now we’re even, but rather, Open your eyes, racial stereotyping is all around us, and actually, it’s often tolerated or ignored or dismissed, and yes, it’s sometimes even tolerated or ignored or dismissed by YOU. And that’s why I call Mr. James the face of karma. He’s getting people who don’t want to think about race issues or don’t have to think about race issues to think about them. He’s getting people who can’t be bothered or don’t see what’s wrong with stereotypes so long as they’re stereotypes of other people–the very thing Japan Probe accuses me of–to suddenly declare that negative stereotyping is bad all-around and, by golly, everyone oughta do something about that.

Well good. It’s about time more people did.

[Japan Probe: Mr. James and racial karma]

Filed under: Histrionics, Japan Probe, McDonald's Mr. James, McDonald's Nippon All Stars Ad Campaign, Mr. James, Racial Karma, Stepin Fetchit, Stereotypes

Asian Women Aren’t Just Fetish Objects, We’re Brain-Dead, Too

What can I say about Ying Chu’s recent Marie Claire piece “The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women” that hasn’t already been said?

Our pals Joz at 8 Asians and Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious who’s guest-blogging at Jezebel for the next two weeks, have both written terrific posts on Chu’s story already, pointing out how, in an effort to dispel certain stereotypes, it only further reinforces them. (Click here for Joz’s post and here for Latoya’s.)

Not to mention the fact that “The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women” is just a hot mess of half-baked, garbled ideas: Asian women of different ages with incredibly diverse backgrounds and experiences are all lumped together as alike fetish objects; Chu quotes Richard Bernstein, author of the recent book, The East, the West, and Sex, as an authority on the subject–”author Richard Bernstein found that the Orientalist illusion continues to influence”–even though Bernstein’s book has been taken to task in multiple publications (here at Salon and here in the NY Times and here at Slate) for perpetuating that very “Orientalist illusion”; “globalization” is cited as an influencing factor in the fetishization of Asian women, but only some random collection of mumbo-jumbo about the popularity of Mandarin classes, Malcolm Gladwell’s theory on why Asian kids are good at math, and China’s dominance in world trade is provided to support that argument; oh, and how about the fact that this whole phenomenon is being presented as something that’s “new”?!

But, for me, the idea put forth in the Marie Claire piece that really chaps my ass is in its closing line:

“Asian women dating white men may never really know if it’s a fetish thing.”

Um, excuse me? Really? So Asian women are not only submissive Suzie Wongs and geishas, we’re also fucking brain-dead, too?

The complications of sexual politics notwithstanding, fetishists are easy to spot. They come at you with their prayer-bead bracelets and their suspiciously in-depth knowledge of your “culture.” They come with transparent dating histories, and many of them are more than happy to offer up that their last eight girlfriends have been Asian and unabashedly expound–based on their dating experience alone–on the fundamental difference between, say, Korean women and Chinese women. Fetishists tend to talk about you like you’re only a member of a larger group; e.g. instead of saying, “I really like your shiny hair,” they’ll say, “I really like Asian girls’ hair.” And, frankly, they’re creepy, like noticeably-remarkably-right-off-the-bat-creepy, like konichiwa-ni hao ma-what are you?-as-an-opening-line creepy, and stalk-you-on-Facebook-where-they-have-381-friends-who-all-happen-to-be-Asian-women-creepy, and follow-you-to-your-car-in-a-parking-garage-after-you’ve-shared-two-minutes-riding-an-elevator-together-creepy. It’s not rocket science, people.

And if we’re going to traffic in stereotypes here, did Marie Claire forget that Asians are supposed to be smart, too?

[Marie Claire: The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women]
[8 Asians: Marie Claire article declares: Asian Women are The New Trophy Wives]
[Jezebel: Stereotypes Run Rampant In Marie Claire's Asian Trophy Wives Article]

Filed under: Asian Women Trophy Wives, Fetishes, Geishas Are Tired, Interracial Dating, Marie Claire Asian Women Trophy Wives, Stereotypes, Submissive Asian Women, Trophy Wives, Ying Chu

We Don’t Want to Be on Your Damn Jury Anyways

A California Superior Court and the San Francisco public defender’s office are currently looking into an allegasian of juror bias made by a former intern at the public defender’s office, who wrote in September on her MySpace blog that her bosses once told a colleague to keep Asians off a jury in a case involving a drunk guy getting a public blowjob, because “Asians don’t drink, they love Jesus, and they’re creeped out by everything.”

Well, well. You lawyers have clearly never met us. Nor, I imagine, have you met any real, red-blooded Asians outside of the people who obsequiously serve you dim sum, which seems impossible in San Francisco of all places, where almost 19% of the population is Asian-American. You must also not be aware that Asians are actually more likely than non-Asians to get totally shit-faced. Or that there are just as many of us who believe that Jesus was this hot long-haired hipster with a trendy beard who was not, I repeat NOT, the son of God–as if there were such a thing–as there are those of us who identify as Catholic, the dominant religion among Asian-Americans. As for the “creeped out” comment, I have to wonder, have any of you nerds ever seen your run-of-the-mill Japanese porn? We invented mutant love, tentacle porn, and hammock fucking–which, by the by, is way weirder than it sounds–and once you look up all of those nifty little fetish-concepts while popping a vein in your forehead from the painstaking effort you’re making to quiet the inconvenient boner you’ve gotten at the office (imagine your dick encased in ice, imagine your dick encased in ice), will you still think that we creep so easily?

That said, let’s keep this info entre nous, ‘kay? We kinda want it to stay on the QT. We know jury duty is our civic responsibility and all, but despite our loving of Jesus and our hating of alcohol, blowjobs, and creepy stuff, when we get those dreaded jury summonses, all we ever think about, really, is how to get out of it, just like everyone else.

Source
Thanks, John!

Filed under: Binge Drinking, Carrie Wipplinger, Creeped Out by Everything, Inconvenient Boners, Japanese Porn, Juror Bias, San Francisco Public Defender Juror Bias, Stereotypes

"I Don’t Date Out of My Rasian"

The third season of Bad Girls Club, a reality show about girls in ugly, low-cut tops who like to fight (or something like that), begins tonight on the Oxygen Network. Here’s a clip from the season premiere, in which the two Ambers discuss dating:

I laughed out loud when Amber M. tells Amber B. that if she dated a black guy, she would be “surprisingly surprised.” That’s going to be my new euphemism for “humongous cock.”

[via Jezebel]

Thanks to my Skenny Betches for dealing with my ineptitude!

Filed under: Amber B, Amber M, Bad Girls, Bad Girls Club, Big Cocks, Interracial Dating, Oxygen Network, Reality Television Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel, Stereotypes, Stupid Chicks, Surprising Surprises