Ha ha! People magazine just made a **HEADDESK** of a gaffe. From Radar (internal links omitted):
People Magazine Thinks All Asians Look the Same
Apparently the editors of People have a bit of a problem differentiating between Asian males. On page 38 of this week’s issue, in which an interview with Korean Speed Racer actor Karl Yune is accompanied by text identifying him as Korean pop star Rain.
As a Korean-American, myself, I probably should be offended — should be, but am too busy laughing.
Re-live the whole beautiful Stephen Colbert-Rain rivalry here, or watch the video below for the highlights:
Haha, I was reading that issue over the weekend. I saw the photo and thought it didn’t look a thing like him. I thought it was just me, though, or just a weird picture. Guess I was wrong, lol.
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Oh DUH! How could such a multi-million dollar publication be so incompetent – have they no fact checkers at PEOPLE? Sheesh.
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I guess People writers are Colbert Nation too.
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I meant the fact checking, not the racism, btw!
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Oh ouch! Looks like someone’s staff needs to be a bit more diverse (or watch the Colbert Report!).
You’re an awful good sport about it, MsI!
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Believe me, I’ve heard worse. I can’t help but laugh, most of the time, because a person could go nuts otherwise.
And a lot of it *is* funny. When a guy tries to pick me up by telling me that he took a tae kwon do class once — this really happened to me, btw — how can I NOT laugh? If anything, it maybe says something about me that, faced with this unbelievable ignorance, I’d sooner laugh at the poor wretch than take the time to disabuse him of his misconception.
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Oh my goodness! That’s not that far off from what Stephen was parodying in “Singin’ in Korean” (M*A*S*H*, Hyundais, kimchee … what else is Korean?)
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On a side note, given the recent terrible earthquake devastation in China, I winced at the China TCR segment yesterday, rather unhappy timing IMO.
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I was a little confused by that segment since news of the earthquake would have been released hours before the show was taped. I guess they might not have had the time to rewrite or replace that segment.
Had the same feeling vigwig.
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I feel fairly certain that the TCR writing staff meant no insult to the nation of China nor the people who suffered through the tragedy. I imagine it was just a punchline.
To be quite honest, it didn’t occur to me until you said something that showing a picture of China would be offensive in any way, and I’m imagining that it didn’t occur to them, either.
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my 2 cents:
When the point of the “ching ching” China joke is that “SC” is an ignorant/insensitive racist, then I would say that just amplifies the joke.
Actually I didn’t make the connection because the focus was on the Cold War and SC is stuck in the past and largely disconnected from reality anyway. I immediately thought of Jerri Blank, who dished out that same Chinese sing-song a couple of times in SWC.
(I’m not being defensive – you’re the one who’s being defensive. It’s him, right? [etc.] (C) Martin Short)
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I thouht about SWC too! I found that segment to be very funny. I doubt the writers were thinking of the earthquake when they wrote it, especially since the the show was taped so soon after the earthquake.
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I didn’t take offense to it. The timing was just odd.
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I understand that the SC character is an insensitive racist out of touch with reality but in the wake of 9,000+ dead, I thought it was pretty tasteless and a misstep on the part of the show.
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May be a little off topic here (new blog post?):
I don’t consider a little Chinese sing-song to be over the line. But when Carlos Mencia said in October 2005 that the people of New Orleans were stupid to live there and got what they deserved — I’d say THAT was over the line. And he got NO flack for that.
Does anyone think they should have cut out the entire Cold War piece and lost 3 minutes of the show? I really don’t see how they could have. (I’m giving TCR staff benefit of the doubt and assuming they did not have an eye on the news Mon afternoon.)
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Here’s the thing – you have to let Stephen’s humor go everywhere or he can’t go anywhere. You can’t say, “I love his dark humor … until it offends me.”
In my personal view, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “misstep” or even tastelessness in comedy. (There is unfunny comedy [Mencia], but that’s a matter of taste and opinion). He may be guilty of bad timing, perhaps, but again you’re taking it like he was insulting China personally when in reality that was probably a story that had been in the pipeline for days.
And it’s not even like he was trying to insult China, like his Ching-Chong character. It was simply, as another commenter said, an oddly timed piece. Your argument of it being an insult to the 9,000+ people dead cannot be used, or he has to take back all of his Nazi jokes, all of his Native American jokes (and I’m a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, so that one hits close to home), or any other joke that features the misfortune of others. Which is pretty much all of them.
Tragedies happen, and I honestly don’t feel that what happened on the show last night had anything to do with what happened in China, and I don’t think that the tragedy in China should have stopped them from doing any joke. Putting any limits on comedy is asking for trouble and self-censorship.
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In response to FGC and DB,: in other cases, the ching-chong song would be over the line, because it’s a racist caricature of a group of people. It’s just not racist in this case. We know SC the person better than that.
SC’s humor doesn’t come from that. It comes because the audience (hopefully) gets it. A high school punk who does the caricature is in a completely different context from SC- it’s apples and oranges. A racist does it at the expense of others; SC the person does it because he knows it’s stupid.
As for the earthquake, the timing was odd, but not knowing what went on at the drawing board, it’s really hard to comment on or do anything except speculate.
I’m confused about the assumption that self-censorship is a bad thing.
In the meantime, though, my heart goes out to the victims.
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Headdesk indeed! Ouch.
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D#mn! That’s more than a big “Oopsie”. Someone got fired over that, for sure.
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Funny how they made that mistake. It says a lot more about the editors at People than about Rain’s popularity
I just saw the new Speed Racer movie and Rain had a very good part in it. I was suprised at how well he acted in a subtantial role.
From that I’m betting he’ll get better parts in other movies and become more widely known.
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I totally agree; People is the one in the doghouse here. In light of the whole Colbert Report rivalry, though, it was just more fun for me to go with the “influential” angle.
What’s even funnier (or sadder) about this is that a commenter on Radar pointed out that Karl Yune isn’t in Speed Racer, either.
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Yes Karl Yune is in the movie as a bodyguard but I’m not sure if he actually had any lines.
While Rain certainly had a lot more screen time and dialogue to handle.
I did read on imdb.com that Rain is filming for the lead role in a moive called Ninja Assasin for it was definitely a stepping stone for him.
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Thanks for the clarification; at least that lets Radar off the hook this time!
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Yeah…they don’t even look alike. People magazine is obviously just lazy when it comes to basic research.
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I saw that over the weekend and thought “Ewww!!
Someone got fired at People”.
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*stretches eye slits with fingers*
That is all.
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To clarify I didn’t say he was insulting China but the timing of the joking in the immediate wake of the magnitude of the Chinese earthquake was, IMHO, in poor taste. I don’t think the Daily Show even came back on the air until a week after 9/11 so allowances for sensitivities have been made before.
I kiss the ground Stephen and his staff walk on but they are as liable to missteps as anyone else.
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It goes without saying that you are entitled to the opinion you have expressed.
I found nothing insulting about the joke, myself, and do not blame the show’s staff for how others perceived the timing. I find your comparison to The Daily Show‘s remaining off-air after 9/11 one of apples to oranges; to say that most of The Colbert Report‘s audience would react to a natural disaster and humanitarian crisis in China, however appalling, the same way that they would to a targeted terrorist attack on domestic soil is questionable, I think.
Regardless, since varying viewpoints have now been expressed, I am going to request that further comments on this topic be moved to the Free-for-all thread, if people find it necessary to continue the discussion. In the interest of keeping this a happy site (and my post was intended to be happy, not to generate analysis of whether and when the Colbert staff has been insensitive), further debate on the topic on this post seems ill-advised.
Thanks.
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hhahhaa wow. People magazine needs to get on that “basic research” thing.
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Hey, I get mistaken for Jet Li all the time and I say… keep those freebies comin’!
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That’s just sad.
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