Who are the most prominent public purveyors of Asian stereotypes and ethnic language-mocking in America? The right answer is liberal Hollywood and Democrats.
The wrong answer is conservatives, which is what performance artist Stephen Colbert wants Americans to believe.
Last week on his Comedy Central show, Colbert resurrected his “satirical” 2005 “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong” skit, in which he speaks in pidgin English with a grossly exaggerated accent. He used it in a boneheaded attempt to ridicule Republican football team owner Dan Snyder and others who defend the Washington Redskins’ name.
‘‘Oh, I ruv tea. It’s so good for you. You so pretty, American girl,” Colbert, in his conservative talk-show host persona, jibber-jabbers in the 2005 segment. “You come here. You kiss my tea make her sweet. I need no sugar when you around. Come on my rickshaw, I give you a ride to Bangkok.”
Forward to 2014: To mock Snyder’s recent creation of a foundation to benefit Native Americans, Colbert replayed the skit and jeered in character that he’s “willing to show the Asian community that I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”
Last week, a group of diehard liberals, led by young Korean-American writer Suey Park, gave Colbert a hard time about his cringe-worthy act, which left the distinct impression that the real Colbert enjoys crude, ethnic-language mockery just a little too much.
Park and her liberal Twitter followers tenaciously questioned Colbert’s use of “satire” that ends up stoking the racism it purports to mock and abhor, using the incendiary hashtag #CancelColbert.
Park complained that Colbert and his defenders are race-baiting liberals who hide behind their self-professed progressivism. Absolutely. Progressives of pallor — hipster racists — have said and done some of the most bigoted things I’ve ever witnessed in my life and gotten away with it.
And, as one viewer noted, Colbert “obviously didn’t use satire very effectively, because most people aren’t talking about the Redskins issue or Dan Snyder.” Indeed, many of his fans were too busy tweeting non-satirical anti-Asian bigotry, misogyny and ugly death threats.
Colbert defenders “circled the wagons,” as Rush Limbaugh pointed out on Monday, by griping instead about Limbaugh’s 18-second imitation on radio of a Chinese government translator in 2011. “Notice how to get this guy out of the mess that he’s in — apparently they have to link him to me. Why? I don’t know.”
Blaming Rush (or lazily mocking my 2004 book on internment, profiling and national security, as Colbert did Monday night) deflects from the genuine offense taken by Park and other liberals at Colbert’s widespread dissemination of yellowface caricatures.
The Comedy Central political operatives need to make conservatives the demons so his audience forgets that liberal actress Rosie O’Donnell gratuitously mocked “ching-chong” accents on the mainstream ABC network show “The View” while her liberal co-hosts and audience laughed it up.
Or that former Secretary of State and leading 2016 Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton repeatedly has employed a degrading Southern accent to pander to black voters. (Google “I ain’t noways tired.”)
Or that mainstream Hollywood productions from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (Mickey Rooney’s I.Y. Yunioshi) to “Sixteen Candles” (Long Duk Dong) to the sitcoms “How I Met Your Mother” (an entire show in yellowface) and “2 Broke Girls” (Han Lee) have done more to disseminate and profit off of cheap, vulgar, bucktoothed Asian stereotypes than Rush ever did.
It’s not the outrage that’s manufactured, but Colbert’s sanctimonious myth of left-wing purity and his phony indictment of conservatives as the predominant forces of intolerance in America.
But what do I know, Mr. Colbert? Me so stupid. You so funny.