Friday links! Horrifying laughter of the Chinese edition

Yes, Big Trouble In Little China was on TV last night. It's not like I was gonna go right to bed after The Quick and the Dead.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the partisan anger of contemporary politics that we sometimes forget what we all have in common: fear. Why spend hours debating things like whether and how to be afraid of gay people when we all agree that we’re terrified of the Chinese? Fact: Chinese people live all over Asia. Fact: they are readily identifiable via their dextrous hands and constant smoking. Fact: their atonal yowling makes them utterly dependent on US supplies of pop music. And once I get my shirts back, they will have nothing that we truly need. My point is that we can still reverse current trends, which will lead to Chinese nationals riding us around sand tracks for sport, and return China to a manageable position in which they can only poison our children via lead toys. During this time of national crisis, our xenophobic resentment can bring us together. We just have to take a hard look at the Americans we currently have and make them more like the Americans we once did. First, though, we must identify the problem.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM&feature=player_embedded

I frankly did not consider Chinese people that much of a threat until I saw the above video—which aired between The Quick and the Dead and Big Trouble In Little China*—produced by the public-spirited folks at Citizens Against Government Waste. Thanks to Citizens United v. FEC, who knows what the fuck Citizens Against Government Waste really is, but they appear to be in favor of lower taxes and against spending. Okay, they’re obviously some sort of bottomless conservative money-spending machine and they’re against Chinese people, as evidenced by this room full of students at Future Chinese University laughing ruefully about their round-eyed employees. You know what ingredient this country’s increasingly hyperbolic and childish discussion of fiscal responsibility is missing? Racism. Please, let’s make macroeconomics into some sort of cultural identity thing, like we did with evolution, reproductive freedom, climate science and health insurance. And courtesy, apparently:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGpGoEMu2s&feature=related

 

America is weird. The actor who produced the original, now-infamous “Asians in the library” video was obviously a Chinese man dressed up as an offensive stereotype of a white girl, pursuing the same tactic the Klan used when they invented Martin Lawrence. The obvious foil for such a character is an American college student who appears to be of Korean* ancestry and follows the speech patterns of black stand-up comedians. Also maybe gay? Definitely wig-owning. The point is that there is absolutely no connection between a nineteen year-old UCLA student thinking it’s a good idea to record and distribute a video documenting her open racism and the ascendancy of terms like “real Americans” or commercials like CAGW’s.

Back when America was strong, we did not need to resort to the internet to resolve our personal disputes. We just shot one another in the neck, as this wonderful paean to American badass/probable sociopath/former President Andrew Jackson reminds us. Props to Tim “Double Plant” Gavin for the link, originally in the comments section. Fun fact: Jackson fought in over 100 duels, many of them related to my personal favorite bizarre historical anecdote, the Peggy Eaton Affair, and others stemming from the generalized belief that his wife was really into sex. Here’s Badass of the Week’s description of the lead-up to one such showdown, with career duelist Charles Dickinson: “Well this jerkwad bet against Jackson on a horse race, and Jackson won, so this guy did what any hothead douchebag would do and called Jackson’s wife a voracious cockmonger.  Well I’ve already mentioned that this was a sensitive subject for Andy, and he felt compelled by duty to defend his woman’s honor so he challenged Quickdraw McDickface to pistols at dawn.” Quickdraw McDickface is the new name of both me and my dick.

Our present crop of American politicos is less gallant. Continuing her panicked slide into people not looking at her anymore, Ann Coulter went on The O’Reilly Factor to claim that radiation is good for you. For example, it can make you a grotesquely deathless parody of both human sexuality and reasoning, although it’s possible she just has good genes. Her controversial new belief just happens to coincide with the disaster in Japan.* My favorite part of this little adventure in attention-seeking is how closely Coulter’s argument—”many scientists” have “raised questions” about the ostensible link between radiation and cancer/intestinal collapse/dying, but the media isn’t covering them—resembles the conservative campaign against the notion of global warming, both in contrarianism and complete unfalsifiability. Ann Coulter has gone on television to tell us all that scientific studies we can’t know about contradict basic medical knowledge, in the hopes of…what? Getting more people to expose themselves to radiation? The conservative plan for America seems to be to make us all so skeptical of knowledge that we accidentally kill ourselves and go to heaven.

Compare this attitude toward science with that of Founding Father and dedicated whoremonger Benjamin Franklin, whose daily schedule had him rising at 5am to “prosecute the present study; and breakfast.” Did Ben Franklin spend his days telling Bill O’Reilly about the small minority of 18th-century scientists who believed lightning was not really bad for you? No—he just set to luring that shit into jar with a kite like a boss. Also, he would not be seen talking to an Irishman. They were the Chinese of their day, and we stopped them, too.

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4 Comments

  1. I wish I could lure your writing talent into the bottle called my head.

    “Okay, they’re obviously some sort of bottomless conservative money-spending machine and they’re against Chinese people, as evidenced by this room full of students at Future Chinese University laughing ruefully about their round-eyed employees. You know what ingredient this country’s increasingly hyperbolic and childish discussion of fiscal responsibility is missing? Racism. Please, let’s make macroeconomics into some sort of cultural identity thing, like we did with evolution, reproductive freedom, climate science and health insurance.”

    Shit just got real.

  2. “Did Ben Franklin spend his days telling Bill O’Reilly about the small minority of 18th-century scientists who believed lightning was not really bad for you? No—he just set to luring that shit into jar with a kite like a boss.”

    Love it.

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