...passed as I sat in front of this macbook screen, typing a long entry about my thoughts on a few subjects. However, blogspot decided to be a 'nappy headed ho' and deleted my entry.
I'm too aggrivated to type it all out again, so I will be brief and concise.
1) Don Imus, Hip-Hop & Oprah.
Don Imus called a female basketball team "nappy headed hos" and then goes on to say that black rappers say it all the time and they don't get a penality. Get the fuck outta hea IMUS. Imus deserved to be fired. That's like white people saying 'Black people use the word 'nigga' all the time, why can't I?!' So of course, in predictable fashion, the white media decides to shift the whole focus onto hip-hop culture and its horrible effects on society and mainstream culture. What do I say to that?
STOP BLAMING HIP-HOP AND STOP BLAMING RAPPERS. Y'ALL KNOW YOU'RE USING HIP-HOP AS A SCAPEGOAT. Misogyny didn't pop up when hip-hop was born! Misogyny has been deep rooted in this country's history since those ships escaped from the British. Don't get me wrong. I acknowledge that there is a problem in the hip-hop community, but you know what? It is not the fault of rappers. The problem is with the music industry. They are the ones that promote these songs degrading women.
What's the solution? Bring balance to the airwaves. Play the shit that makes money, but make sure you play the shit that sends a message. Trust me. There is so much hip-hop out there that y'all don't know about, yet y'all are quick to judge on shit you don't know. I like the songs about bitches and hos and I like the songs sending positive messages. There is a market for both! Get to know this OPRAH.
Oprah's two part 'town hall' meeting was such bullshit. Nothing got resolved, she had the hip-hop panel cornered and everyone in that show didn't listen to the one sensible man who pointed out the real problem (shout outs to you, Mr. Entertainment Lawyer). If you wanted a real panel, you invite Snoop, Ice Cube, Ludacris, Lyor Cohen, Jimmy Iovine and the VP of BET! You don't call in Russell Simmons and Common! Your critics on your stance were Ice Cube and Luda, not Common and Russell. Come on Oprah. Stop worrying about the soccer moms who desperately want to 'understand' this and try to actually create an environment for intelligent discourse and discussion on the show. I love what Oprah has done for the world, but come on. COME ON.
*edit* If you don't want your kids listening to these songs and watching these videos, be the parent and stop them from doing that. It is ultimately your responsibility as a parent to teach him about the world as best as you can. If your kids are developing an understanding of women through rap, then you fucked up.
2) Cho.
Why are Koreans apologizing on his behalf? Okay. I can understand that you don't want a bad public image, but what do you have to be embarrased about? Does Cho define who you are as a Korean American? No, he doesn't. Stop making this about Cho and make it about the victims of this tragic event. Cho made a stupid decision that affected many lives. Don't be selfish by making this about the embarrasment of the community.
Another thing. THE WHITE MEDIA DOES IT AGAIN. They take everything and spin it out of control. NYTIMES saying that Cho could have been influenced by violent South Korean movies like 'Oldboy'. Jack Thompson saying some bullshit about Cho playing violent games like Counter-Strike which trained him through hypervirtualreality. GET THE FUCK OUTTA HEA! What happened to being CRAZY? If y'all saw those videos that NBC had up for a good couple of hours, you can obviously tell that the kid missed a few hugs growing up. Counter-Strike, Oldboy and (it better not come to this) music had nothing to do with Cho.
Another thing part2. He's been in the states since 8. Accept it. He sounds like Napoleon Dynamite for God sakes. Stop saying 'Cho Seung Hui from South Korea.' Also, whats with putting the last name first? It's Seung Hui Cho, Korean American male.
If anything, the lesson we learn from this event is that crazy people come from all backgrounds, and we have to work together in recognizing the signs.
Also, these types of mass murders happen 3 times a day in Iraq. Register that.
3) On A Brighter Note...
-I think I have a hemorrhoid.
ijoke.....*cough*
-Let's see. Don Imus is happy that the news is off his ass.
-I will soon be rolling in the pound sterlings. It will be painful, but the rolling will commence nonetheless.
-I hate academia. I feel like I wasn't meant for this.
-I WANT TO BE IN LONDON. OR AMSTERDAM. OR PARIS. SOMEWHERE.
-I'm nervous about going back home. It will be quite awkward.
-I'm going to reinvent myself in the next 2-3 years. WATCH OUT WORLD!
-I think they should give me a radio show.
-I hate the American news programs. I do. Donald knows what I'm talking about.
-I'm never gonna get any work done.
-THE WEATHER IS SO NICE!
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7 comments:
you are much missed here *hugs*
just want to put in my thoughts on the V-Tech incident...
My own peeve is with the fact that they keep connecting what this guy (I'll call him Seung) did before, with what happened---i.e. his writings for the english class being reflective of his supposedly dangerous/threatening tendencies. Well, heads up: there's a WHOLE LOT of kids who are writing worse shit than that out there. So why not lock them all up, just to save us from being shot to death? No. That's not how it works...and so we shouldn't so simply, so naively connect what he did before with what happened. The truth is, if people just don't know it already, that there are countless numbers of people all around us who are teetering at an edge of some sort. For Seung, it was apparently an edge to committing some violent actions. IMO, it just takes a few tiny little things to push people over the edge to doing whatever it is they're vaguely (or not vaguely) thinking of doing. So if that happens, it happens. What can we do, to "prevent" people like that from really going over teh edge? I don't know. But one thing that individuals can do for each other just because we live around each other---is to give a minimum amount of respect and understanding to anyone. Yes, even that really strange guy who keeps looking away every time you talk to him and wears the strangest clothes. Oh, whatever, now I know I'm stereotyping people, but I think you know what I mean: why not just throw our expectations of our fellow human beings to always be "normal," and just accept that we're all slightly different (some of us more insane and sane, whatever THAT means, than others), and thus that to expect "normality" is to expect something abnormal.
I had no idea they were stretching things as far back to the movies Seung used to watch. And you know what, immediately after everyone found out that the killer had been a South Korean, people got together in South Korea (incl. diplomats) to talk about what they could do; people worried about Koreans' (and Asians') image, etc....Well, so, fine, the concern of diplomats in Korea must have been to prevent relationships w/ foreign countries from going sour, esp. economic ones. I understand that. But to apologize for Seung's actions, or something ridiculous like that...isn't that actually pretending that South Koreans CAN even take any responsibility for what happened? We're all different people. I think I'm missing something----HOW can it be that his identity as a "South Korean who immigrated and was a Resident Alien" could be so integral to what he did? Why don't you look at the, like, tens of thousands of other Asians who immigrated too?
*sigh*
so much hate yo. so jeewon, i fundamentally disagree with you, sort of.
so let's say that cho seung hui killed all those people, but he didn't commit suicide. say he was taken to court. should the prosecutor not use his past writings, disturbing behavior, etc. to characterize that he was not normal and could have done this? people are 'nurtured' to become who they are. people don't just become who they are by chance.
obviously the counter-strike and old boy influences are probably a stretch, but the crazy writings and stuff aren't. a lot of people write crazy stuff and all that. i know all of them aren't capable of doing something like this, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't recognize the signs. just b/c of the possibility of people over-generalizing and fear of stereotyping doesn't mean that you should ignore things.
and i think the the whole abnormal normal thing is postmodernist thinking. let's face it. a lot of people are not normal. it's not all bad. strange is not normal. it might be interesting and cool and create cool trends, but it's not normal. i know that what's normal changes, but call me conservative, but i just don't think you should call everything normal.
and i realized something yesterday. i don't like the whole saying sorry b/c cho was korean either. but i think it was a good thing for a lot of us koreans that he was korean. a lot of koreans would not have cared much about what happened at va tech had it not been a korean who was responsible for the atrocity. the korean american community is very ignorant of or apathetic to what goes on in america, for whatever reason. i think this got a lot of us thinking.
i for one was pretty indifferent of what happened. i just wondered whether it would be as big news as columbine was. i remembered that baseball games were cancelled b/c of columbine. when i found out that the killer was 'korean american,' i began to research a lot more into it. i think most koreans in america would not have cared much about va tech had cho been chinese like first reported.
on a sort of side note, i am appalled at the lack of 'knowing what's going on' by koreans in america, or just people in general. nobody i talked to knew about the iran-british sailor crisis, not even jason. that's HUGE news, and nobody heard anything about it. i mean...the news isn't just for poli science majors and white ppl. get with the program yo. stupid korean americans. korean americans are all complaining about how they're underrepresented and how they need to start caring about the korean american community and all that jazz. how about korean americans start reading or watching just a little bit of news instead of wasting their lives away on cyworld and youtube and all that other cute stuff. how about korean americans start caring about ppl other than themselves. there are more ppl in the world than koreans. koreans are so self-centered, self-concious...etc. that they so easily reduce the va tech atrocity to a korean issue.
haha...i started my last comment with the line 'so much hate yo,' but i think my comment was full of bitterness, too.
oh yeah, nobody i talked to knew anything about the don imus thing either. ppl are so ignorant, but i've accepted it. i still like to rant about it though. we only think like this in america b/c we're a democracy. ppl were not meant to all be aware and participate in politics. there will always be a gulf between the informed and the uninformed, whether you live in a democracy or not.
btw. all that crap about getting ppl to participate is mostly political propaganda. at least when politicians talk about it. all they want is to get elected...stupid politicians trying to start political dialogue in yahoo forums and youtube. all the responses they get are angry and stupid comments. i think the youtube thing is a good idea, but the yahoo forum questions are ridiculous. if you've read them, you know what i'm talking about. questions like..."how can we get more people involved." they know that they're going to get retarded answers. they're not trying to get to know what people think and use their ideas. at least bush ignores people's opinion very directly, although he does use that 'people' mumbo jumbo sometimes, too. but his actions show so clearly that he doesn't care what ppl think. i like that. ppl are stupid. ppl don't understand how things work. don't get me wrong...i'm not supporting bush. he's kind of way too much slanted toward ignoring ppl, but yeah whatever.
so i strayed from what i was going to talk about. so i think it was a good idea that don imus was fired, but i would have been fine if he hadn't been fired either. i think the media made way too big of a deal out of this. i understand that it's a big deal b/c everyone's sensitive about racism. however, this wasn't anything close to as racist as the kramer rant. NOT EVEN CLOSE. it was just a stupid racist little comment. i make way worse racist comments a few times a week.
this was way overblown. he should have been punished for sure, but he's on the radio for hundreds and hundreds of hours. stupid little racist comments are bound to come out. another reason this thing got so big is that don imus insulted a girls' college basketball team. 'nappy headed hoes' is a small comment. but the racist/sexist interpretation was huge b/c it was about females in general, black ppl, college girls, etc.
i think the whole thing became way bigger than don imus or his comment. don imus was not a horrible guy for saying what he said. he was just used by the media and the black community for equal rights/racial posturing.
i think the overreaction can be seen in the hypocrisy of rev. al sharpton and rev. jesse jackson. they are notorious, at least in my book, for overreacting and jumping on issues. they are like train hoppers. calm down yo. calm down equal rights and all those rights and whatever groups. al sharpton and jesse jackson are or at least were crazy racist. considering the scandals that they went through, they should be able to empathize with don imus. they should understand that don imus' comment was not deserving of the big reaction that it got. but noooo, they jump on the bandwagon, they doggie pile it.
don imus should have been quietly dealt with by cbs and nbc. he apologized and was to meet with the team. a reaction was necessary to get cbs and nbc and all his sponsors to punish him, but still, this was made way too big of an issue. if i were insulted by don imus on his radio show, i don't think i would have deserved to have a press conference where i would say about how appalled i was and how affected i was. that's bs.
when racism is overblown, our society is hurt. it's like there's a racism-aphobia. although ignoring racism can also hurt our society, it'd be much better for society if activists didn't overblow every issue that needs to be dealt with. get real with issues. don't overblow them to get what you want.
p.s., i don't like a lot of activists.
comments well taken, Donald. i wanted to mention, though, that i'm certainly part of the crowd of people you call ignorant. That is, i often don't know of news until it's made to be big by the media, which is not a good way for me to know the "truth" of things. I don't know about the Iran-British sailor crisis (but, haha, now i'm interested so i'm gonna look into it in news archives). Do you think it's possible that some people are ignorant of current events because they're busy doing other things that count as 'humanitarian' or 'worldly' causes?---IOW (in other words), i'm asking if people are 'justified' in being (sometimes) ignorant of current events when they're busy being involved with current problems, maybe in one area/sector?---or does that make them more ignorant, because as people who care (enough to act) about the world's problem, they SHOULD follow current events closely?
I definitely don't think that people become who they are by chance. But i kinda believe that there's so many things that go into creating you (and maybe my metaphor of being pushed over the cliff by little bits and things happening to you makes it sound like I think we are made who we are by chance, so apologies for that) into who you are the present state, that it's impossible to simply state that i've been nurtured by my environment, thus i am who i am...there's just seems to be more gray area, where i don't know who i am, i'm not sure where my future steps will be, and i don't even sometimes know what's lurking around underneath my calm exterior, so that if something sets me off, i'll perpetrate some action. Not that everyone is like this. and i talk in extremes, to illustrate my point.
Point being--while you're right that there are a general set of characteristics that we label as being pretty normal--normality is much more complicated than we think. Violent and disturbing writings might be a sign of abnormality or simply expressing oneself (albeit in a disturbing way). Where would we point out clearly that person A's disturbing writings led to violent actions, whereas person B's disturbing writings led to an output of self-expression in art/music/literature/etc.? And I'm not saying this to 'protect' the liberty of the arts...Just that, to argue in hindsight---yeah, in that courtroom, for the prosecutor to use those materials to argue---seems to me to make sense too, until I think of the countless others who expressed themselves similarly but didn't make the decisions Seung did.
IOW it's basically up to ourselves to make that decision in the end right? Even when you are pushed over the edge, and you're about to pull the trigger on the gun, WHATEVEr, it's still...still your decision. So to argue that Seung's writings and behavior before were so indicative of his future actions...just seems like plain bullshit to me still.
I don't mean to attack what you say, Donald...sorry if you feel that way. I guess i feel strongly about this (for ONCE i feel strongly about a current event. i know, i know, it has to do w/ that i'm korean am) and wanna express that to someone (sorry you guys have to read it/actually you don't have to).
Well...so I was talking to m yparents earlier today about South Korea's response. They mentioned how last year (i think) two US soldiers in south korea had ran over two teenagers by backing up into them w/ their army tank. Was totally an accident..i'm sure you guys remember the incident. Remember how south koreans held candlelight vigils and demos and basically made a very big ruckus about it, and having US soldiers out of korea? Now that this happened...apparently some Koreans are feeling slightly strange about their behaviro with that past incident. Because even though in a lot of US media, you read immediately lines like "Seung was an immigrant from South Korea from 1992.." etc., I personally haven't heard such a big ruckus being made by americans about how South Koreans should get out of here, or that Seung had done what he did because he was particularly South Korean.
So...maybe now i understand more why S. Korea gov't was quick to apologize and try to even come over (i don't know if it was the pres) for the memorial service of those who died at VA Tech.
Anyway, that was freakishly long, sorry.
jeewon, i'm sorry i sounded mean. i think when i rant, i get so into it that i don't know what i'm saying. haha.
i think what you were saying about how we shouldn't connect certain things with why he killed everyone relates to the whole heat that nbc and other networks have been getting for airing cho's video. for those who don't know much about that, some families of the victims were appalled that networks decided to air the video, and so they decided not to appear in on-air interviews. a lot of ppl complained at how insensitive the news networks were for airing such a disturbing video. there was also talk of how the networks were playing into cho's plan to become (in)famous by airing the video, and how such videos create copycats.
nbc's network response was that they considered all this carefully and that they had decided that the public should know why cho did what he did. cho's being a loner, his disturbing writings, etc. all are signs that help us to understand why he did what he did. sure, a lot of ppl are loners, write disturbing things, etc. and are not killers or potential criminals or potentially suicidal. human beings are extremely complex, so maybe certain ppl have learned to cope better.
reasons have to be found for certain behavior. human behavior can be extremely complex, which is why we simplify it into things we can grasp. sure, we don't know everything about why cho came to do what he did, but the video, his writings, etc. all help us to understand.
i know the media and a lot of ppl are talking about how can we see warning signs and prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. i think that's just a natural human reaction. i mean, we can try to prevent this from happening, but we most likely can't predict that someone would do this, unless it becomes obvious.
but i think that all this background info about cho is being talked about more than just to generalize or characterize what a madman looks like, but to just help explain who cho was and how he was different from most of us. so i don't think most ppl or media outlets are focused on predicting behavior. like A can cause B, but not always, but B cannot be without A.
this is all my opinion...i guess i could be wrong. i'm not the psychologist or philosopher.
i like your comment on how the media may be simply trying to explain who he was, and how he was different for us (part of that might be w/ comforting ourselves in thinking, he was distant, and cold, and abnormal). I agree...I had no idea about Cho's video. Now i'm going to go online to look for it. I ugess it's disturbing. Hm. Knowing about the video does make it more sense for the media to focus more on his other habits/writings.
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