Today in the Twitterverse:
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitterSome people were rightly pissed off at the logo and posted about it here, which led to counter arguments on whether it was offensive or not. The whole thing descended into a flame war. One commenter reflected my own experiences :
As someone of chinese decent who grew up in an all austrian environment i can tell you why the cartoon and the slogan bother me. It reminds me of kindergarden when the other kids used to sing “ching chang chung chinesen sind nicht dumm, chinesen in die ecke scheissen….” the song was most of the time finished with a knock on my head, it also reminds me of middle school and high school where people who disliked (had a grunt against me temporarilly) greeted me with “schlitzi” (slantyeyed). It reminds me of the time when i served in the military (mandatory civil service time) when unteroffiziere and offiziere and fellow recruits greeted me with ching chang chung instead of hallo or servus which by the way i understand. "
Bottom line is I've had similar experiences so yeah I do find that picture offensive and you haven't experienced anything like that, then I can feel why other people don't find it offensive. Also having the surname wong, I've had to put up with the various rhymes too.
For balance here is an excerpt from a commenter who thought the logo was not offensive.
Honestly… chill out
It’s a picture portraying ONE man, and that’s it. It’s not trying to be racist. No matter how much you want it to, it’s not saying, “Hahaha all asians look exactly like this guy! Let’s make fun of them!” Sorry.
I’m a black guy living in America. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Georgia. I know what’s it’s like to be discriminated against, and sorry, this isn’t it. Like it or not, most Asian people DO have yellow-tinted skin and relatively slanted eyes. Those are physical characteristics associated with being Asian. The image of Mr.Wong is a perfectly acceptable caricutare. I mean, I’ll tell you straight up that most black people have brown skin, big lips, and curly hair. And it’s true. Whoop de do.
The logo has since been changed, to something IMHO looks equally as dumb. That reminds me of people who scrawl a jumbled lines together and pass it off as being a Chinese character (It only takes a little research to see what real characters look like). Usually you see this around Chinese New year when someone is making a display. I am not saying this is the case for the new logo it just reminds me of that.
After the terrible earth in China, people volunteered from other provinces and travelled far to help. The disaster brought out compassion. Yet others use the situation for they own benefit trying to con others into donating to them. That is the worse kind of human characteristic. It's like stealing from the dead, dying and those most in need. I don't understand it.
Israel has recently celebrated 60 years of “independence.” Images shown all over the news showed George W. Bush seated in the front row as if he was in a high school graduation ceremony. All the while, Israeli president Shimon Perez stood there praising America’s unshakable commitment to Israeli statehood and security; boasting that Israel is a democracy. Well, I pose this question: Is Zionism, which has an official policy of racism, apartheid, and segregation, reflective of democracy? Is a record number of UN Security Council resolution violations part and parcel of a democratic system; Perhaps the constant building of illegal settlements?
Perez said that he wants to fight terror? But what is the definition of terror? Is it not the unjust killing of innocent people? What some people want is for the Palestinians to face occupation, accept it, and refuse to resist? Then they claim that Israel wants peace? I’ve said this before… Until and unless Israel withdraws from all occupied territory, allows the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and allows the Palestinians to live in dignity, there will never be peace. Believe me, Pro-Zionist & right-wing bloggers won’t run out of things to talk about anytime soon. This will go on indefinitely. What the Bushies want is for countries like Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran to surrender in exchange for peace. It’s all about maintaining the upper hand and being a superpower.
If the Israelis really want peace, they would allow Palestinians to become citizens and part of their society. They would never do that simply for two reasons:
1. Palestinians would outnumber them and would control their own destiny
2. The philosophy of Zionism (not Judaism) does not allow for that.
Have you ever wondered what the blue stripes on the top and bottom of the Israeli flag symbolize? “From the Nile to the Euphrates.” It is a belief in the Zionist charter to take over all of the land between the two rivers. There are many Jews who reject the notion of Zionism and Israeli statehood. They state that God has forbidden them the formation of such a state and they must wait for their Messiah to do that. They also state that Zionism was first rejected by Jews living in Palestine because they viewed it as a racist ideology started by atheists.
When we ask, why is Iran a signatory of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty while Israel refuses to sign it? Why is Iran subject to nuclear inspections, yet Israel is not? People who speak like I have are quickly accused of being anti-Semitic. That’s the cop out they use. To those people, I ask why are we allowed to criticize the policies of the American government yet it is taboo to utter one word of criticism of Israel? This is my right to freedom of speech. If Israel does not change its policies, we will be discussing this issue 10 years from now. Also, one more thing… Why did Israel celebrate its 60th anniversary yet didn’t celebrate its 50th or 55th? I believe it’s all a PR stunt to make them appear strong. They should be mourning the deaths of Palestinians who have lost 30 times more people than the Israelis have. This is truly a sad day.
My husband just sent me a text saying that his work (a factory) is going to four long days a week instead of five eight hour days, to help the employees save on gas.
Oh, sure, everything's fine. The common man isn't getting pinched into oblivion. The middle class isn't eroding. Look at the statistics, our gross national profit is going up! There are less people on unemployment! Everything will be fine! Only our gross national profit includes everything from hospital fees to collections- so does it really tell us anything of value about how our economy is doing? And as for people going off of unemployment- you're booted off automatically after six months. So do we really know that all of those people got jobs?
God. I am so sick to my stomach right now.
I'm planning on visiting my grandma either today or tomorrow if she answers the phone (she doesn't always answer when she's quilting and the phone is in the other room). I guess I'll be walking.
Somebody's got to stop using all the gas. Might as well be me.
If you asked a four year old kid this question for their entrance test into school.
There are five birds in a tree, a farmer shoots one of them dead, how many birds are left in the tree ?
What would be your immediate answer ?
Well when the kid answers "none because they flew away scared from the sound of the gunshot.", you would applaud them for thinking outside the box. Instead the teacher's reaction was to berate the child, stating they were wrong and the insisting the answer was four. People like that should not become teachers !
I'm a great fan of MMA and i also watch women MMA as they display great skill and techniques because of the lower levels of body weight and power. Within the Pound for pound best MMA fighters, 1 or 2 women are in consideration as Josh Barnett ( famous HW MMA fighter ) has stated before in an interview. Having said this, i understand the amount of dedication and pain it takes to be a fighter. However i have witnessed many a night in the streets of Manchester and London supposedly "women" being drunk and getting in fist fights with each other.
Extract from BBC
"I've beaten a boy up with a stiletto high heel and left him unconscious," says one 17-year-old.
"I got locked up last year for putting a woman in a coma and she nearly died because I tried to throw her in front of a car," says another. "Then in October I got out from a sentence for nearly running a woman over."
What i really cant understand is why in the UK people have such an attitude of violence and alcohol? What even puzzles me even more is why people don't see it as a problem? Why do people in the UK feel it is acceptable for people to act like that. I'm a firm believing in human rights, but only if you act like a human!! To me these people are acting like animals and don't deserve the full rights that extend to humans. In other countries they dont have this problem so i guess the problem is cultural?
It really says something of a country when the women arrested for fight is up by 25% while the men only 3% over a 3 year period.
I remember when i was in Japan a conversation with my friend.
" Why don't you like the women in UK?"
" well basically they are just men in dresses"
I guess this is true mentally and now physically?
In the UK there is a case where a man was stabbed to death on a busy street in London during the daytime. When i first heard this i was pretty shocked but now the following news has been released about this individual.
"A man stabbed to death in Oxford Street this week was facing charges of raping a 16-year-old girl and pouring acid over her afterwards to hide the crime, police revealed yesterday."
I've always though that I had a small dose of compassion mixed with a large helping of ethics. I remember a discussion i had with my Spanish friend about when and if it was right to ever kill, going through the usual arguments of if you knew killing one person would save a million etc ( i.e new Hitler) anyhow we both came to the conclusion it was totally wrong to kill under any circumstance. But now after seeing so much violence and for want of a better word "$h1t", i shamefully feel a kind of "good riddance" to the guy that go killed, an almost another bad bug has been swept clean from our streets. Its a new kind of emotion and i think its probably best if i leave this place before i totally lose all my values by being numb to this hostile and violent environment i call home?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/oxford-street-gang-murder-victim-faced-trial-for-rape-828291.html
