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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 former senior editor and writer at
Rolling Stone Magazine. This guy's our hero!
Ben
was a featured character in "Almost Famous," the Oscar and Golden
Globe-winning film by Cameron Crowe.
- 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 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.)
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.
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!
* 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.]
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.
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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