In my humble opinion, no. She was imitating, in a funny way, how the nightly news must sound in China. Imitating how a foreign language sounds to an American ear is hardly racist. It's silly. And it's funny.
Perhaps it is the use of the word "racist" that's throwing me. Actors imitate the way people talk all the time: Italians (Joey on Friends), Latinos (Lucy on I Love Lucy), Long Island Jews (Fran on The Nanny), German (half the cast on Hogan's Heroes) and the French (lacking an example here, but the nasally 'faw faw faw' is always used to denote the sound of French).
• Rosie imitates her nanny with an Irish accent all the time. Are the Irish complaining?She wasn't saying Chinese people are bad or inferior, etc. because of their heritage. She didn't use a racial slur such as "chink". That would be something else entirely. I can see where Chinese people may have felt as though they were the butt of a joke. Big deal. We all are at some point or another. Get over it. We, as a nation, are losing our sense of humor.
• Rosie imitates her cruise crew with a Norwegian accent. Are Norwegians complaining?
• Rosie imitates her mother-in-law with a Southern accent. Are Southerners complaining?
• Rosie imitates the English with a stuffy English accent. Are the English complaining?
The Muppets have the Swedish chef imitating a Swedish accent ("Herska berden, ferden derden"). Are the Muppets racist? If not, why not, given this standard?
This is old-style comedy. I'm reminded of the movie Airplane! when we see the impending plane crash as shown on news broadcasts around the world. Remember the newscaster beating the drums and changing the direction of his view when the camera changes from one to the other? That's hilarious! And I don't remember an uproar from tribesmen.
Maybe a more relevant question would be, "If Rosie O'Donnell imitates a wide variety of accents when she tells stories in a funny way, what makes the Chinese experience different that they are the only ones who feel bad enough to charge 'racism'?"
I'm not here to be a Rosie O'Donnell apologist. In fact, I disagreed with her when she said that Kelly Ripa made homophobic statements about Clay Aiken.
Another thing I'm noticing in all of these news stories of "offensive" comments, whether it's Rosie or the Pope, is that the first apology is never accepted. The person has to make numerous apologies until the offended group feels as though you really mean it. Using the word "racist" heightens the discussion and accelerates the timetable by which the offender must apologize to the offendee. They don't want you to apologize, they want you to grovel for their forgiveness.
1 comment:
I think it was more of the way she responded to the whole thing than the initial act itself that is making people angry.
Her apology was pretty lame. "Sorry about it, but I'll do it again anyway." Uhh..ok, would she accept that kind of apology from someone who made what she thought was an offensive gay joke?
This is the thing that most people don't understand. Someone saying "ching chong ching chong" is NOT doing a Chinese accent - it's not the same as dong a British or French accent. Doing a Chinese accent would have been something like "Herro herro..." (or heck even the stupid "flied lice" joke) - saying something in English in a Chinese accent. And even if attempting pseudo-Chinese, well, it does not sound Chinese at all, certainly not Japanese.
A lot of people don't realize that the whole ching chong thing is offensive to a lot of Asian Americans, it has a long history of hurt and hate. It's not just a schoolyard taunt. Even as adults they have to deal with it from grown, non-Asian people. And when it's done, it's not in jest. It's been used, and still is, to denigrate and humiliate Asian Americans.
Unfortunately, so many people just don't get that, which is why so many still think it's okay and funny to use when joking about Asians. When Asian Americans say, "hey we don't like that expression because we feel it's offensive," then other people should not be telling them to shut up and lighten up.
There is absolutely nothing wrong if she wants to a Chinese or Japanese accent, attempt pseudo Chinese/Japanese or make a joke about Asians, but instead she resorted to an expression that is very hurtful for many Asian Americans. When people pointed that out to her, instead of just saying "Hey didn't realize it was offensive, my bad, sorry" she told people to get over it. This coming from a woman who accused Kelly Ripa of being homophobic.
I do think she really meant for it to be a funny joke. I don't think she was/is being racist, just incredibly ignorant.
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