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Radio Cheers and Jeers
by
Ben Fong-Torres
AsianConnections is proud to present the adventures of Ben
Fong-Torres, our Renaissance man, author, broadcaster, and longtime writer
and senior editor at legendary Rolling Stone Magazine. This guy's our hero!
Ben's a featured
character in "Almost Famous" premiering mid-September, written
and directed by Cameron Crowe. (A true story written and directed by Crowe
- his first since writing and directing Tom Cruise in "Jerry
Maguire.")
- AC Team
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There
are plenty of books about growing up Asian American, and
it's impossible to read them all. (And isn't it amazing
to be able to say that, given that, just a few years ago,
there were no such books?)
But
if I could recommend just one, for now, it'd be Helen Zia's
Asian
American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. It's
two books in one, and both are knockouts. Zia, a native
of New Jersey, tells her growing-up story, and tells it
well, candidly chronicling the pressures she had as a kid,
wanting to fit in as an American, but finding it impossible
because of how she looked.
She
weaves her story with that of Asian America itself. With
a mix of diligent research and her personal activism, in
college (at Princeton) and as a director of the Asian American
Journalists
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Association,
she chronicles the ups and many downs of yellow-skinned
people, from the very first Asian Americans in the 1500s
to recent times. Those times, of course, include the murder
of Vincent Chin in 1982, the "yellowface" casting of Jonathan
Pryce in Miss Saigon, the struggles between Korean merchants
and African American communities in New York in 1990, and
the Wen Ho Lee case. (This just in: Helen has been contracted
to work with Lee on his book, to be published by Hyperion.)
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Some
of the stories may be familiar, but the journalist Zia finds
and adds telling details and voices. Conversely, in relating
her personal story, she weaves her life into the larger fabric
that is Asian America, and that is America herself. |
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Winners
and Losers On the Radio
Theo
won big at the recent Billboard Radio Awards in New York.
The afternoon DJ and master mixer at KKBT (The Beat), the
hip-hop-dance-Top 40 station in Los Angeles, got the trophy
for Local Air Personality of the Year in the Major Market
R&B category.
The
triumph of Theo--full name Theo Mizuhara--is a nice bit
of good news; a break for an industry that has historically
not hired Asian Americans as disc jockeys and that has used
them as big, fat punching bags on the air.
Think
I'm exaggerating?
*
October '94: KFRC, an oldies station in San Francisco, apologizes
for its morning show after DJ Gary Bryan produces and plays
a song satire, "Ito Ito," in which the judge in the O.J.
Simpson case talks in fractured, heavily-accented English,
mixing his l's and r's, and singing gruffly about eating
sushi in his judge's chambers. The apology follows previous
public mea culpas for a Bryan remark about gays and lesbians
and for derogatory comment by his news commentator, J. Paul
Emerson, about Chinese people.
Slam!
*
December '94: After using the phrase, "dirty, stinking Jap,"
saying he'd hate Japanese people till the day he dies, and
that America would eventually go to war again with Japan,
Emerson is fired--on Pearl Harbor Day, ironically--but almost
immediately emerges with his own morning-drive show on conservative
talk station KSFO.
Pow!
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April '95: New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato, on the syndicated
Don Imus show, talks about Ito and puts on a Japanese accent.
(Excuse me, but didn't most everyone see and hear Ito at
some point during the Simpson trial?)
Oomph!
*
September '95: KKBT (Yes, Theo Mizuhara's station) feels
the heat of protests after more than a year of morning show
offenses to Asians, greeting Asian American callers with
a gong sound and talking with them with fake accents. Whenever
they used Asian American personalities and newsmakers in
skits--whether Judge Ito or local TV news anchor Tritia
Toyota--they automatically had thick accents.
Groan...
Want
more? Just keep listening. Morning shows, both talk and
music, have found that shock works. Just ask Howard Stern,
or watch as his roster of stations and his earnings continue
to climb. The problem is, Stern is singular. Most of the
imitators are punching in the dark, and it is out of the
darkness that we get jokes devoid of context and shading.
It's humor based on differences, but it's no mere acknowledgment
of differences; it's a mockery of differences, and, intended
or not, it places distances between groups of people.
Confronted,
they'll say their critics are overly sensitive; that Asians/gays/lesbians/Hispanics/African
Americans (choose one) aren't their only targets, that they're
"equal opportunity offenders.
"Well,
now, that makes it OK, doesn't it?
Equally
stupid are some of the executives, anxious to excuse their
high-priced talent. Oh, they're just putting the personality
back into radio, they say. They're just joking. It's an
isolated incident. Most of them will issue apologies or
discipline the offenders when forced to, by organizations
like Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) in
Los Angeles, which got The Beat to promise to stop beating
on minorities.But most of the DJs and talkers are unrepentant.
They're like people caught shoplifting or spraying graffiti.
They move on to the next store, the wall, the next victim.
John
London, the KKBT DJ targeted by MANAA, was offended by the
complaints he and his crew drew. "You know what really gets
me about this Asian group?" he said on the air. "They're
trying to put themselves on a list of oppressed people.
And it's like, 'What are you talking about? If anybody's
made it in this country, it's Asians! You don't know what
oppression is!"
To
which, in the radio industry trade magazine, Gavin, I wrote:"Well,
John, tell that to the friends and family of Vincent Chin,
who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by fellow Americans
who thought he was Japanese and blamed him for taking jobs
away from Detroit auto workers."Where did those killers
get that notion? Maybe not from some hot-collared right-wing
commentator raging against "dirty, stinking Japs."Or maybe
so.There are no easy answers. For now, be grateful for the
vigilance of organizations like MANAA. And the occasional
flashes of good news from the too-rare likes of Theo.
[Originally
published, in slightly different form, in Gavin and Channel
A, in 1996.]
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RANDOM
NOTES: Congrats to Cameron Crowe, whose film, Almost Famous,
got four Golden Globe nominations. That, of course, is the
coming-of-age rock movie that includes me as a real-life character.
Cameron is up for Best Movie/Comedy and Best Screenplay, while
Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand have to battle it out for
Best Supporting Actress. |
| Hey,
how come no nom for Terry Chen, who played that AsianConnections.com
guy?Speaking of films, my pal, the singer-songwriter Jackie
DeShannon (www.jackiedeshannon.com) saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon, and was beside herself. "It's the best movie I've
ever seen," she said. "I cried. Bruce Lee must be so proud"It's
getting near to Chinese New Year again, and, for the fourth
year, I'll be co-anchoring KTVU (Fox 2)'s coverage of the
parade in San Francisco. |
| photo courtesy of Robert Altman |
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| Sydnie
Kohara, who went from KGO-TV to Singapore and to CNBC in London,
is back in the Bay Area, on CNET TV (seen on CNBC). And she's
getting married, to another Bay Area resident who was in London
a year or so ago, computer executive George LaPlante. They'll
wed in New Orleans, Sydnie's home area. I'll be officiating
the ceremony, and a bunch of their pals are making the trip
from the Bay to the Bayou. Watch out, N'awlins! |
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Ben Fong-Torres, long-time writer and editor at Rolling Stone
magazine, is the author of four books, including his memoirs,
The Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American, and his latest, Not
Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll. He
was editorial director of myplay.com.
Click to Ben
Fong-Torres Articles Index
Visit Ben's Official Site: www.BenFongTorres.com
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