racist jeremy lin espn headline poll

i saved 2 disk the original image of this thread because i think it might have an important place in the history of awful internet shit. keep the memories alive.

i'm not going to tell you how to feel, dayo - if you were offended by bretos and thought he should have been canned, then that's ok. i obviously can't pretend to be in your shoes. i do think it might be important to consider that it happened pre-headlinegate, because obviously no one would use that expression after what happened with the website. your point that the fact that his wife's asian means he should have already known not to use that phrase is maybe fair; i don't know what the history of using that phrase in a racist context is, tbh - i think it's equally as possible that he genuinely never thought about the phrase that way - i certainly didn't, before this.

i also think equating "my wife is asian and i would never dream of offending her or her community" with the tired "some of my best friends are black" claptrap is maybe not the most precise. but i can see how it might be interpreted similarly, and he probably would have done just as well not to mention that. he certainly doesn't have to apologize to his wife via twitter.

'some of my best wives are asian'

heh why is "some of my best friends are black" "tired claptrap"?

My take on him mentioning his wife was Asian was that he was using that as more evidence that he should have known better, not that he was trying to downplay or mitigate the offensiveness of that headline. (Basically, there's a non-negligible difference between "some of my best friends are [x] and it pains me to realize I may have hurt them" and "some of my best friends are [x] so of course what I did shouldn't be seen as offensive".)

You know, if anything, marrying an Australian has made me even more prejudiced against those bogans.

DJP, that's true in a strict textual sense, but the distinction is very easily collapsed, especially when put in the context of the apology. you might ask, so if your wife wasn't Asian, you wouldn't have been pained to realize that you hurt people in the Asian American community by your actions? and that's just not a good bomb to leave in your apology.

My take on him mentioning his wife was Asian was that he was using that as more evidence that he should have known better, not that he was trying to downplay or mitigate the offensiveness of that headline. (Basically, there's a non-negligible difference between "some of my best friends are [x] and it pains me to realize I may have hurt them" and "some of my best friends are [x] so of course what I did shouldn't be seen as offensive".)

― (thinks and smiles) (DJP), Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:05 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good point

man I never thought k3v and DJP would agree on anything - jeremy lin brings everybody together

You think the phrase 'chink in his armour' used as a phrase not as a headline "hurts the asian american community"?

in the context of the jeremy lin phenomenon, yes

You know, if anything, marrying an Australian has made me even more prejudiced against those bogans.

Racist against Australasians

DJP, that's true in a strict textual sense, but the distinction is very easily collapsed, especially when put in the context of the apology. you might ask, so if your wife wasn't Asian, you wouldn't have been pained to realize that you hurt people in the Asian American community by your actions? and that's just not a good bomb to leave in your apology.

Well first off, the "pains me to realize" wording was mine, not his.

Secondly, since his entire apology revolves around "I didn't think of the implications of this phrase when I used it", I think what he is trying to say is exactly what he wrote. I don't think he is trying to downplay the offense (which is the "some of my best friends" gambit), I think he's trying to magnify his remorse.

I acknowledge this may be hairsplitting. I also think the suspension is wholly appropriate and dude is lucky he still has a job.

DJP, that's true in a strict textual sense, but the distinction is very easily collapsed, especially when put in the context of the apology. you might ask, so if your wife wasn't Asian, you wouldn't have been pained to realize that you hurt people in the Asian American community by your actions? and that's just not a good bomb to leave in your apology.

― flagp∞st (dayo), Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:15 AM (14 minutes ago)

*exhale* you're right, obviously, in an academic sense. it just seemed genuine to me, and i guess i'm being unreasonably defensive of him when people try to attribute malice to what he did or equate his situation with the headline writer's

I mean, I'm pointing out that that part rang hollow to me, jeff yang & other asian americans are pointing out the same thing - and DJP's point is a valid one, but perhaps one that should be fleshed out in something longer than a 140 character tweet.

right, and i get that.

do you think he should have been suspended?

yep

buzzbissinger@buzzbissinger

Purposely put Vick item in to see what reactions I would get from the righteous PCers afraid of fucking everything. Spikey made my point.

political correctness is ruining america!!~~~~~~~~

I mean, I'm pointing out that that part rang hollow to me, jeff yang & other asian americans are pointing out the same thing - and DJP's point is a valid one, but perhaps one that should be fleshed out in something longer than a 140 character tweet.

The part in bold is unambiguously OTM. Twitter is the devil.

I am a righteous PCer and there are many things I am not afraid to fuck, but I am married and I take my vows seriously

it's speaks to buzz bissinger's privileged worldview that the people he's saying would be offended are righteous PCers.

btw dayo I hope it is clear that I am not approaching this from a standpoint that is attempting to excuse Bretos's original comment. I also think you are justified in finding his apology hollow; I'm mostly explaining why it didn't seem hollow to me (while obv doing a slight kneejerk "must share an opinion on this" because black people are being used as the gold standard stand-in example of racism)

oh yeah, not a problem - the distinction was there to make and I'm glad that you pointed it out!

ha, i'm always "must share an opinion on this" because I'm white and haven't ever said anything racist on national television.

yet

dayo, i feel like you're going easy on me because we're ilx bros. i want to apologize if i'm being insensitive

k3v, no harm no foul! I mean, tbh this is all kind of new to me too - this is the first time in my lifetime that the idea of asian american identity has been discussed on a national level - and a lot of bad stuff has bubbled up along with that, and a lot of good too, and I think it's good to get these things hashed out in the open rather than to wave them away.

yeah... one of the things I liked about the last article posted above was how the author admitted using lame, self-derogatory racial internet IDs in a sort of defensive way. I know some friends like this, and it was hard to exactly spell out why they would do this - I would just shake my head a lot of the time when I saw another handle that used "chinklovah" or "aznballa" type stuff. But I kinda got that when you're like the only Asian guy completely around it gets... weird? Or I wanted to blame it on being in the south? well, this is why I don't write political articles

Stories like this one are the reason fans devote so much time, money and emotional currency to sports. In many or even most facets of life, unlike Hollywood, the good guys don’t win and David doesn’t sling the rock that bops Goliath. Most people don’t even get the chance to play David or Goliath. Far more often that not, rather than an epic, Manichean struggle, one’s life is filled with half-measures, unsolvable or inscrutable problems, maddening inconsistencies and vast shades of grey.

So when a player like Jeremy Lin bursts on to the scene, each foray to the rim a whirling dervish of effort and improbability, and actually vanquishes seemingly far more powerful foes even though, as an extra added burden, he’s surrounded by the Knicks lesser (to say the least) offensive lights, well…one cannot help but feel as though his victory is truly ours, that he is we, finally acting with bravado where we had been timid, rising from obscurity and seizing center stage to become the city’s latest darling.

idk reference to whirling dervishes smacks more of orientalism than that

something about the words "whirling", "rim", and "smacks" in close proximity is making me feel queasy

the real crime tho is the really terrible prose styling

"whirling dervish of effort and improbability" wtf

second graf is one sentence with an ellipsis in it

and a parenthetical

only reason to write "he is we" instead of "he is us" is because you have some congenital fear that "he is us" is grammatically wrong somehow even though it sounds less stupid

"as an extra added burden"

pick one adjective plz

whose livejournal is this from anyway buzza

"Jeremy Lin is good at basketball therefore we are all Nietzschean übermenschen"

http://knickerblogger.net/some-additional-thoughts-about-jeremy-lin-yeah-i-know-hes-been-covered-seven-ways-from-sunday-but-inuldge-me/

no interest whatsoever in indulging this guy with further critiques of his shitty writing, going to bed now

I think someone was trying to sneak one through.

However, there are some early mornings at work where I'll hope through the RSS feeds of the national headlines and some of the headlines will say something like "Loser Coach Gets Booted". I'll click on it to see if that's really the headline and of course it's something like "Houston Nutt To Resign At End of Season".

So it may have been temporary copy, but it's still pretty damn stupid both on a racist level and on a technical level.

― pplains, Saturday, February 18, 2012 4:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Here's an example of what I was talking about. It's not racist, but still borderline wtf.

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/6158/screenshot20120224at851.png

That link with the logo on it goes to this story:

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/6158/screenshot20120224at851.png

Oh, and this is just one of the Top 10 high school recruits. (Signed with Maryland)

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/nghapLZI0ZmywbJdh0fIzw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/sptuspreprally/Stefon-Diggs-Jeremy-Lin-Tweet-Twitter.jpg

EGG ROLL and DUMPLINGS!.

At first I thought he was being tacky about Chinese food until I imagined what the two look like together.

then you realized he was being tacky about Chinese food and genitalia

fooditalia

Food and genitalia are separated in my brain on purpose, yes.

egg roll and DUMPLINGS! was made famous by jin

Asian American Journalists Association releases guidelines on Jeremy Lin media coverage