There's something inherently funny about kids cursing. I'm not advocating it, and perhaps it's borderline child abuse, but it just goes to show how much kids absorb (and how careful you should be with your words around them). Of course, in these videos, it's more about innocently picking up some phrases they've heard mommy and daddy throwing around (or, in Pearl's case, being told what to say phonetically. Adam McKay claims she never used those words again. You'll see what I mean if you click on the link below).
So I almost busted out laughing at work watching these two videos. Precocious kids can be creepy (read: Dakota Fanning, and those videos the news showed about a month or two ago of the toddlers who knew how to smoke pot) but in these they are just darn cute.
Cassie Kicks Ask
Pearl Demands the Rent, Bitch
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
I was an alien once
Watching the news has been truly depressing of late. In New York, a Columbia journalism student was brutally raped and tortured by a madman; a 5-year-old girl was found hanging in a closet in her Bronx apartment in what police believe was an accidental strangling; and, of course, the VA Tech shootings continue to resonate throughout the news.
The fact that the VA Tech shooter was Korean American caught a lot of us in the K-A community by surprise, and lots of people, particularly of my parents’ generation were afraid of a backlash, but aside from a few isolated incidents I had not heard of anything too bad that was happening. The truth is, it’s likely that those who already harbor racist feelings toward Asians will use it as an excuse to fuel their hatred, but they’ll use any incident, major or minor, to do so.
I was reading this Salon article written by Asian American journalist Jeff Yang about the general feelings within the Asian journalism community, and I was surprised to read that many people expressed some form of inexplicable guilt, that maybe part of the reason for his breakdown had to do with pressures typically put on second-generation students to succeed. Personally, I feel no guilt. To me, plain and simple, Cho was mentally disturbed and couldn’t deal with the normal pressures of daily life, including the struggles that come with immigrating to a new country. According to video of his relatives in Korea, he had issues even as a young child before moving to the states.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel some empathy with what he may have gone through. According to some articles I’ve read, he was made fun of for never talking, and when he did, the strange way he spoke would prompt taunts of “Go back to China.” All of us who are second-gen have experienced something like that throughout our youth. But by most accounts, a lot of his isolation was self-imposed, as he refused to interact with any peers. To me at least, it seems clear that these actions were done by a disturbed young man who was dealing with isolation, loneliness, and depression, and found a scapegoat for his malaise in rich white kids (though his victims were not, by any means, all rich white kids).
That said, I do take issue with the way he has been portrayed in the media, as Jeff Yang points out. When I read headlines that the shooter was from Korea, I initially thought that he was an international student who came straight from Korea. But when I read that he’d actually come over when he was 10, I realized he was a Korean-American—while not naturalized, he was pretty much second-gen, but the media’s initial reports all emphasized his “otherness” through their choice of description: a resident alien, vs. a permanent resident, the constant description of him as Korean, the way they put his last name first because he had a Korean name (i.e, if he had had an American name, he would have been Larry Cho, or whatever), and the way in which a race is never an issue when a killer is white.
I wasn’t a naturalized citizen until I went through the process on my own when I was 18. I had been going by an American name for a long time, even though it wasn’t legal. For a lot of my life, I could speak Spanish better than I could speak Korean. But if I had done some similar crime, I would have been branded as a killer from Korea. I suppose technically it’s true, but that description would have been highly misleading and wouldn’t provide the public with an accurate reflection of who I truly was.
Anyway, there is one thing I keep hearing thrown out there, and that is hopefully that this incident will urge Asian families in particular to get help for themselves or their loved ones if they sense any mental health issues—and to stop treating it like a stigma that must be ignored for fear of “losing face.” I don’t know if Cho could have been helped, but I wonder if treatment earlier in his life could have made some sort of difference.
The fact that the VA Tech shooter was Korean American caught a lot of us in the K-A community by surprise, and lots of people, particularly of my parents’ generation were afraid of a backlash, but aside from a few isolated incidents I had not heard of anything too bad that was happening. The truth is, it’s likely that those who already harbor racist feelings toward Asians will use it as an excuse to fuel their hatred, but they’ll use any incident, major or minor, to do so.
I was reading this Salon article written by Asian American journalist Jeff Yang about the general feelings within the Asian journalism community, and I was surprised to read that many people expressed some form of inexplicable guilt, that maybe part of the reason for his breakdown had to do with pressures typically put on second-generation students to succeed. Personally, I feel no guilt. To me, plain and simple, Cho was mentally disturbed and couldn’t deal with the normal pressures of daily life, including the struggles that come with immigrating to a new country. According to video of his relatives in Korea, he had issues even as a young child before moving to the states.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel some empathy with what he may have gone through. According to some articles I’ve read, he was made fun of for never talking, and when he did, the strange way he spoke would prompt taunts of “Go back to China.” All of us who are second-gen have experienced something like that throughout our youth. But by most accounts, a lot of his isolation was self-imposed, as he refused to interact with any peers. To me at least, it seems clear that these actions were done by a disturbed young man who was dealing with isolation, loneliness, and depression, and found a scapegoat for his malaise in rich white kids (though his victims were not, by any means, all rich white kids).
That said, I do take issue with the way he has been portrayed in the media, as Jeff Yang points out. When I read headlines that the shooter was from Korea, I initially thought that he was an international student who came straight from Korea. But when I read that he’d actually come over when he was 10, I realized he was a Korean-American—while not naturalized, he was pretty much second-gen, but the media’s initial reports all emphasized his “otherness” through their choice of description: a resident alien, vs. a permanent resident, the constant description of him as Korean, the way they put his last name first because he had a Korean name (i.e, if he had had an American name, he would have been Larry Cho, or whatever), and the way in which a race is never an issue when a killer is white.
I wasn’t a naturalized citizen until I went through the process on my own when I was 18. I had been going by an American name for a long time, even though it wasn’t legal. For a lot of my life, I could speak Spanish better than I could speak Korean. But if I had done some similar crime, I would have been branded as a killer from Korea. I suppose technically it’s true, but that description would have been highly misleading and wouldn’t provide the public with an accurate reflection of who I truly was.
Anyway, there is one thing I keep hearing thrown out there, and that is hopefully that this incident will urge Asian families in particular to get help for themselves or their loved ones if they sense any mental health issues—and to stop treating it like a stigma that must be ignored for fear of “losing face.” I don’t know if Cho could have been helped, but I wonder if treatment earlier in his life could have made some sort of difference.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Stars: They're just like us (Koreans)!
While searching for photos of hanboks (traditional Korean clothing), my sister stumbled across two photos of celebrities wearing them. She was researching different kinds and colors because our aunts in Korea are going to buy one for her so she can wear it at her wedding (the girl who claimed to want a low-key wedding is now going to change three times over the course of the night: she has a traditional wedding dress for the ceremony, a hanbok to greet our parents guests, and a casual wedding dress for the latter half of the reception. LOL).
Anyway, she found these photos. Of course, Britney's has to be garishly hot pink. She looks cute but those colors are horrendous, in my opinion.
When I first saw this one of Nic Cage in one, I busted out laughing. I find this photo disturbing. The hanboks themselves are actually quite beautiful. I think it's the thought of him with his nearly-jailbait bride doing a traditional Korean wedding ceremony that cracks me up. Well, at least you can't accuse him of not trying to embrace his wife's culture. I guess a man will do anything to get some young hot ass.
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