With the death count from last week’s earthquake in China at 51,000 and possibly rising, and with more than five million Chinese homeless, the following comments may sound cold and crass; but, please know they are not meant to minimize the horrors and sufferings of the victims and their families. For what it’s worth, my maternal grandparents came from China. End of disclaimers.

Those said, it’s time to get to the business at hand, which is the insensitive and incomplete reporting this week by National Public Radio that had a team in the People’s Republic of China preparing a series of reports in anticipation of this summer’s Olympic Games when the earthquake struck. 

The story in question aired on the May 19 broadcast of “All Things Considered”. The reporter led the feature on the start of the official three-day mourning period by calling the May 12 quake “China’s 9/11.”  My first thought, and the first thoughts of the folks I talked with who heard it, was unbelief that a major U.S. news organization, heard by millions of listeners each day, would insult the victims of the worst terrorist attack on our nation’s soil by comparing the events of Sept. 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 over Shanksville, Pa., to a natural disaster.

A former colleague from back in my television news days wrote in an e-mail: “I heard it on NPR while driving to work past the U.S. Capitol and nearly ran off the road.  China's 9-11?????  Unbelievable.”

If the NPR producers back home wanted to label the quake, why not call it “China’s 5/12”? Better yet, why use any hype or hyperbole? The death and destruction speak for themselves.

A woman I know took great umbrage, because it brought back painful memories of some of the condolences offered following her sister’s murder. “People meant well, I know that, but I was offended every time someone came up to me and told me they knew how I felt, because they had a close family member die of cancer,” she said. “Murder and death by natural causes are nowhere near the same. Why do people always try to trivialize things?”

Indeed.

The second problem with the story was NPR’s failure to put in historical perspective the loss of life from the disaster. One week after the quake, officials placed the death count at about 32,000, a number that goes up each day. Again, at the risk of sounding callous, and appreciating that even one death is grief beyond comprehension for a family, the May 12 quake did not approach the loss of life of other China quakes.

A quick online search by an intern back in the newsroom would have shown NPR’s producers and editors that three earthquakes alone in the 20^th century killed as many as one million Chinese: 180,000 in Kansu on Dec. 16, 1920; 200,000 in Nanshan on May 22, 1927; and between 242,000 and 655,000 in Tangshan on July 28, 1976. The toll from the Tangshan quake is the equivalent of the death of nearly the entire population of Plano, Texas, on the low end, or more than everyone living in Fort Worth, Texas, on the high end.

And then, there is the Jan 23, 1556, quake in Shansi that killed 830,000, which would be akin to everyone living in and around Indianapolis, Ind.

In fact, even at this writing, the May 12 earthquake would not rank as the 21^st century’s deadliest in a single country. That distinction belongs to northern Pakistan, when at least 86,000 (about the population of Denton or Tyler, Texas) died on Oct. 8, 2005. The century’s deadliest occurred on Dec. 26, 2004, when the Indian Ocean quake created a tsunami that resulted in 228,000 dead or missing in 14 nations.

NPR’s producers and editors, and all who gather and disseminate news and information, should make a greater effort to put the events of the day in their proper or historical perspective, without histrionics and exaggeration.  Their audiences deserve it.

 

On April 9, 2006, Internet sites that carry my column ran the following piece.  Events of recent days, and last night's debate against Bush by Democrat presidential candidates, made me consider reprising the column here.

No easy solutions to immigration’s Gordian Knot:
Just ask the Chinese

Before things get more out of hand, it is time for folks to take some deep breaths and think rationally about the next steps in undoing immigration’s Gordian Knot before it becomes our undoing.  This will not be easy (that’s why it’s a Gordian Knot!), and empty political rhetoric from Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and political pot stirrers will just add to the confusion and delay reasonable resolutions. 

A sane and productive debate does not use the fates and fortunes of people as opportunities for political head knocking.  Not to pick on Democratic Party jeffe Howard Dean, but he just happens to be the latest high-profile politician to unleash another contender for the Mother of All Ironies. 

During a visit last week to California’s Alameda County Central Labor Council offices, Dean accused the president and the Republicans of scapegoating illegal aliens for political gain.  Dean’s audience included labor, community, and interfaith leaders who have their own reasons for exploiting illegal aliens; reasons that include increasing sagging union membership and assuring the future employment of individuals who make their living by taking public and private dollars to perpetuate poverty and the idea of victimhood.  There is no need to go into the hopes for political hay on the parts of Dean and the Democrats.

And others are out there.  

Like the Spanish-language DJs who used their airtime to promote and encourage the first marches by Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking immigrants.  Did they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, or out of the desire to increase ratings, considering they were just coming out of the winter ratings period and entering the spring sweeps?

Like the people passing out large, new Mexican flags.  Sure, many Mexican families own their country’s flag and proudly wave it on Cinco de Mayo; but, no rational person would doubt the existence of Mexican flag foisters hanging out of the back of trucks.

Like the people who work behind the scenes to encourage middle- and high-school students to cut classes and march on city hall.  These political puppet masters are no dummies.  They know kids are safe and make great front-page photos and tv news video.  They also know kids are safe because no city official wants to see images of tear gas and attack dogs unleashed on children.

History has an uncanny ability to shake off the dust and smack us up the side of the head.  Look closely and you will see a dust cloud coming, and that rushing sound you will hear shortly will be the prelude to a mighty reminder that we have been down this ugly road before.

Just ask the Chinese.

(Disclaimer: My grandfather was an illegal immigrant who left China in the early twentieth century and crossed into the U.S. from Canada.)

Immigrants from southern China started showing up along the Pacific coast about the middle of the nineteenth century, because of natural and manmade disasters and China’s collapsing rural economy.  Most of them were men who left their families, hoping to make some money and return home.  The first Chinese included professionals and merchants; laborers followed. 

Everyone got along until Chinese gold miners started making money from digs abandoned as worthless by American miners.  Then folks started looking around and saw that Chinese were working as cooks, launderers, and domestic servants.  By the depression of the 1870s, a few years after the completion of the Chinese-built transcontinental railroad, Americans saw Chinese as serious competition for the limited job opportunities.  Violence against the “Oriental Menace” spread from California to Wyoming, led by an Irish immigrant in San Francisco.

Not everyone saw the Chinese as a threat.  In 1876, David Phillips, in his “Letters from California” (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html), wrote that to take the Chinese out of California, “its industries would be ruined, and the lands, now so productive, would be cultivated without remunerative results.  They supply, by their toil, nearly all the vegetables and much of the poultry.  They are doing a large share of the farm-work, and build all the railroads and irrigating canals and ditches.  They do much of the cooking, and nearly all of the washing and ironing.”

Mark Twain wrote in “Roughing It”, published in 1872 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/riseind/chinimms/twain.html), that “No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances . . .  Only the scum of the population do it – they and their children; they, and naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America.”

By 1876, a Republican Congress decided to investigate the Chinese immigration problem, which resulted in the Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, Senate Report No. 689, 44th Congress, 2d Session, issued Feb. 27, 1877 (http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Immigration.html).

The committee found that California and the Pacific coast developed rapidly thanks to cheap Chinese labor.  The committee also found, however, that “laboring men and artisans” opposed Chinese immigration because the Chinese worked for less money and, therefore, took many of the available jobs.  This attitude, according to the report, led to widely held fears that low wages would turn the white working class into a servant class. 

The future of the Pacific coast was clear to the committee:  It would become either “American or Mongolian.”

“There is a vast hive from which Chinese immigrants may swarm, and circumstances may send them in enormous numbers to this country . . .The Chinese do not come to make their home in this country; their only purpose is to acquire what would be a competence in China and return there to enjoy it . . . It further appears from the evidence that the Chinese do not desire to become citizens of this country, and have no knowledge of or appreciation for our institutions.  Very few of them learn to speak our language . . .”

The committee believed Congress had to act before the West Coast became a province of China instead of the United States.  The American population of the region was patiently waiting for Congress to act, the committee said.

Congress passed The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the nation’s first law banning immigration by race or nationality.  The law barred all Chinese except for travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States.  Congress repealed the law in 1943, when China became an ally in the war against Japan.

It is time for responsible people to replace rhetoric with reason and to learn from the well-meaning mistakes of the past.  Our nation’s current predicament did not spring forth fully formed like a border-crossing Athena of immigration.  It will not be resolved by political knee jerking.  Just ask the Chinese.

Imused (I-must) verb –  To lose one’s job, or to be pilloried, for lack of racial sensitivity or political correctness. 

Unless one is of Chinese ancestry or has a great interest in the racial hypocrisy that holds hostage our politically correct society, the indefinite suspension this week of the two nitwits who host “The Dog House with JV and Elvis” on WFNY-FM in New York City (www.923freefm.com/pages/13527.php) probably went unnoticed.  The pair aired a six-minute prank phone call to a New York Chinese restaurant on April 5, which the station replayed on April 19.  The call was filled with language that would make a (fill in the blank, or risk offending members of any occupation whose place of business may range from a street corner to the open seas) blush. 

The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/business/media/24radiocnd.htm) and Radio Online (http://news.radio-online.com/cgi-bin/$rol.exe/headline_id=n16465) are two of several news and information sites that carried stories of the suspensions that followed protests from the Chinese community.

As an American of Chinese ancestry (my grandfather was an illegal immigrant who later owned a restaurant in Chicago and who became the treasurer for one of the city’s triads), I find myself torn between feeling 1) outrage toward cavalier attitudes regarding racial slurs and 2) disgust regarding selective political correctness vis-à-vis humor.

Last year, it was encouraging to see a challenge to Rosie O’Donnell’s Chinese insults, even if her comments did not garner much attention from her sycophants in the mainstream media.  Given the lack of public outrage, one would surmise it is never okay to use the N word, but it is open season for the C word, especially if said on national television.

Here is what happened.  Rosie did not appreciate the media obsession regarding actor Danny DeVito’s apparent on-air inebriety, and she voiced her displeasure on “The View.”

“The fact is that it's news all over the world.  That you know, you can imagine in China it's like: 'Ching chong … ching chong. Danny DeVito, ching chong, chong, chong, chong. Drunk.  'The View.' Ching chong."

When confronted, she said she was doing it to be funny.  In other words, Rosie’s cool, so shut up and get over it.

New York city council member John Liu told reporters O’Donnell’s remarks hit a raw nerve for many Chinese and Chinese Americans who grew up hearing those kinds of taunts.  “We all know that it never ends at the taunts,” he said.

Rosie got away with her comments because they were pre-Imus.  JV and Elvis took their hit, because the Organization of Chinese Americans (www.ocanational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=207&Itemid=94)  promised to follow Al Sharpton’s lead and stage protests of CBS Radio and boycotts of the station’s advertisers until the station “Imused” them.

“It is apparent that not only did JV and Elvis not learn anything from the Don Imus scandal, but CBS and CBS Radio decided that Asian Americans are easy prey for racist radio broadcasts,” said Vicki Shu Smolin, president of the OCA New York City chapter.

And that brings me to the second point: disgust regarding selective political correctness vis-à-vis humor.

No one was safe on the Imus program.  The folks on the show referred disparagingly to the sports guy’s girth.  The producer donned a FedEx envelope to pretend to be a Catholic archbishop as he unleashed a string of dirty jokes about paedophile priests.  Imus referred to politicians and entertainers as morons and idiots.  A comedian who regularly appeared on the show made fun of Imus’ age and called into question the I-Man’s sexual preferences.  In short, they went out of their way to be politically incorrect in the name of humor.

Same is true for JV and Elvis.  Don’t think that their Chinese act was their first on-air humor at someone’s expense.  On March 27, the duo brought on a local, unsigned band, then “directed numerous vulgar anti-gay slurs at the band’s bassist,” as detailed in an alert put out by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (www.glaad.org/action/alerts_detail.php?id=3997).  According to GLAAD, the station’s program director defended the comments as comedy, and refused to apologize.

Did the Big Apple’s Chinese chuckle over the gay remarks?  Did the city’s gays giggle at the Chinese jokes?  And throughout these and other incidents, where was Sharpton, the self-appointed chief of the politically correct police?  Or, are Asian Americans easy prey for racist broadcasts, as the OCA’s Vicki Shu Smolin asked?

One part of me says “Right on, Vicki!” while another part of me asks, “Who has not told at joke at someone else’s expense?”  If you have not, then you’re a better person than I am.

There is a fine line between jokes and taunts, between comedy and cruelty.  And everyone of us, except possibly for the righteous and reverend Mr. Sharpton, has crossed that line.  It is good, therefore, to hold a national discussion about humor, mankind’s true sixth sense.
 

And that reminds me of my wife’s favorite joke that begins, “Two Yankees walk into a bar . . .”