Ohio, congressional primaries… I’ll let this story in the Washington Independent speak for itself:
With the Democratic primary just days away, state and local party leaders are ripping into David Krikorian, one of the hopefuls to challenge GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt in November, for disparaging remarks he’s made recently about his chief primary opponent, Surya Yalamanchili.
According to accounts given to local politicians, Krikorian has appeared at campaign events to ridicule Yalamanchili, an American of Indian descent, by dramatically pronouncing his name to emphasize its foreign nature.
“Now do you really think that a guy with a name like that has a chance of ever being elected?” Krikorian allegedly said to members of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Clermont County.
The comments — which Krikorian denies – drew a quick response from local Democratic leaders, who shot off a letter to Krikorian Wednesday calling his behavior “deeply disturbing.”
“Your comments on Surya’s name are are best insensitive and worse appear racist,” wrote Timothy M. Burke and David Lane, the Democratic chairmen in Hamilton and Clermont counties, respectively. “It is deeply disturbing to us that you would use his name, which is obviously derived from his ethnic heritage, against him in a denigrating manner, especially considering how strongly you value and celebrate your own heritage.” (link)
Now, there’s no excusing this comment (hmm, I have $10 burning a hole in my pocket; can I donate it to a Congressional candidate somewhere…? Aha.). But arguably, in Krikorian’s defense, “Yalamanchili” is a bit of a toughie as far as complicated Desi names goes.
Yalamanchili, of course, was already well aware of this, judging by his campaign slogan: “Vote Chili”.
Macaca. Piyush Jindal. D-Punjab. Gogol Ganguli. The mis-naming issue is surprisingly persistent.
Since Krikorian is a Democrat, there won’t be much traction to this story. Now if he was Republican….
Where did Krikorian take the opportunity to make fun of Chili? At a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering. That tells you something about Kriks but heckuva lot more about VFW – an organization that is usually AWOL on issues affecting veterans. VFW backed Saxby Shameless a country club idler while his campaign trashed Vietnam Vet McClelland for the Senate from Georgia 2002. It covered itself with glory when in 2008 it backed the self same Shameless over George Martin, a guy who with a bum knee who lied to get drafted VFW sat tight as a draft dodger and his college frat hall buddies trashed the rep of a veteran in the 2004 presidential campaign. When Tammy Duckworth a double amputee Iraq veteran was running for IL-6 her opponent Pete Roskam accused her of wanting to “cut and run” from Iraq shamelessly framing her position on Iraq. Who did the VFW endorse – Roskam of course!
shorty asks why all the voices from those places have such strange names and faces i told her das racist
also
@Double_Standards: Q_Q
http://www.facebook.com/votechili
What a sweet looking guy! Who wouldn’t vote for him?
Krikorian just got pwned by Subodh Chandra on Krikorian’s facebook page (Subodh ran for AG in OH last time around). Krikorian deleted the comment, of course. Here is Subodh’s now deleted response to Krikorian.
David H. Krikorian Subodh – I thought as a lawyer your were learned to not judge before seeing the evidence……I thought you had a good head on your shoulders but you have proven me wrong.
Subodh Chandra Mr. Krikorian, sir, this is not a courtroom and I bear no burden of proof. I draw my conclusions based on a number of factors including my personal experiences about the way the political world works and the way politicians who have an unhealthy sense of entitlement behave. I draw my conclusions based on traditional principles of assessing credibility. I simply do not believe you on this issue. That doesn’t mean you are a bad person. Let’s be clear about what we are talking about. You are not accused of “being” a racist or using a racist epithet; you did not engage in the crime of the century. You sought to persuade others to question the viability of your opponent based on his name. You did so to improve your own standing and prospects. Perhaps you did so because you sincerely believe that a big enough percentage of the voters are bumpkins that Mr. Yalamanchili has no chance. But when you could do it in the shadows, you had every incentive to do so I know Tim Burke and David Lane. I know them to be principled men. I know that if they publicly allege that you did this, then they have heard first-hand accounts. (And I also believe that Jean Schmidt, hardly a paragon of equal opportunity and caught on camera as an Obama “birther” enthusiast to boot, is shedding crocodile tears.) That you did this, sir, is actually not “shocking.” It is a natural human thing to do to try to advance yourself. It may have seemed innocent and “real politik” enough at the time. After all, I’m sure you thought, aren’t you just describing reality–the world as it is, not as you want it to be? I’m sure that State Rep. Jennifer Garrison, celebrated by the State Party for a time and still serving as Ohio Majority Leader, thought exactly the same thing when she looked me from head to toe like I was a turd (after I asked her for her endorsement) and said, “No one where I’m from would ever vote for someone who looks like YOU” and then turned on her heel and walked away. I’m sure Marc Dann thought the same thing as he made the point in his private meetings, trying to persuade others. And Bill Clinton, whom I love, I’m sure said the same thing to himself when he compared Barack Obama’s historic achievement and momentum in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s in 1984 and 1988: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Qqd2dfjl2pw But the statement shows moral cowardice. It shows an internal moral compass clouded–perhaps fleetingly, I concede–by self interest, a failure to say to yourself, “You know, there are some things just not worth doing even if I sincerely believe there is some truth to them.” It shows a failure to appreciate that, as Dr. King said, “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice”–a failure to say to yourself, “I could be wrong because Barack Obama proved a lot of people wrong–and that’s a good thing.” It shows lack of vision–lack of an ability to consistently “be the change that you want to see in the world.” I also think your first reaction to the reporter on the subject of whether you had ever disparaged your opponent for his name–“not to my recollection”–is revealing: http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100428/NEWS0108/4290352/0/NEWS0103/Top-Dems-say-Krikorian-crossed-line Perhaps you genuinely didn’t remember. Perhaps you don’t remember now or are in denial. Perhaps you were shocked that you were called on it. In any event, your first instinct was not to deliver an unambiguous “no.” That came in the press conference later. Mr. Krikorian, I am sure you are a good and decent human being. I choose to see the best in all people. But to paraphrase Michael Corleone, “don’t tell me you’re innocent” on this issue. You want to win. There’s nothing wrong with that. But enough so that you went there when you (at least now) know damned well that you shouldn’t have. I will say this. At least Chris Redfern, et al. are speaking up now. They didn’t care in 2005 through 2008. That suggests perhaps some progress.
Y’all are better human beings than I am. When I was first sent this story, my immediate, unfiltered, unchecked reaction was, “Because KRIKORIAN is such a WASP-y name? Since when do Armenians feel entitled to be stupidly racist?” I calmed down considerably and then started feeling all the same regret, displeasure and disapproval you civilized people feel and have expressed here, far more graciously than I have.
I shouldn’t assume anything; perhaps he’s not Armenian or anything else “ethnic”. Maybe he’s actually a Native American and thus entitled to being a curmudgeon about all of these newcomers, from the Mayflower onwards. Either way, I grew up with and still encounter plenty of people who’d have Krikorian’s unenlightened, “with a name like THAT”-reaction to the name…Krikorian. Vote Chili, indeed.
Kirkorian is not exactly a “mainstream” easy to pronounce name either. Don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house, buddy.
The National Review Online has a contributor named Mark Krikorian, who also heads some staunchly anti-immigration group (go figure). During the confirmation for Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year, he threw a hissy fit complaining that the media were pronouncing Soto’s last name the Spanish way instead of the “correct” American way (i.e., with the emphasis on the first and third syllables instead of the second and last).
I wonder if these douches are related to each other since they both seem hung up on furrin-sounding last names.
“Since Krikorian is a Democrat, there won’t be much traction to this story. Now if he was Republican….”
Actually Krikorian is a former Republican and now a self-described (on his Facebook page) “libertarian Democrat.” He’s running opportunistically as a Democrat and is on the record as anti-public-union.
The Democratic party chairs in the relevant counties, Hamilton, and Clermont, swiftly denounced Krikorian’s behavior:
http://news.cincinnati.com/assets/AB156652428.PDF
Contrast this with the Senator George “Macaca” Allen (R-VA) situation.
Come on, y’all, keep Krikorian busy deleting comments on his Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-H-Krikorian/16146966396?ref=ts
Some coverage including video:
http://www.wlwt.com/news/23298836/detail.html
http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100428/NEWS0108/4290352/0/NEWS0103/Top-Dems-say-Krikorian-crossed-line
http://nky.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100429/NEWS0108/4300349/0/NEWS010703/Krikorian-I-never-made-fun-of-name
Don’t get angry. Just get even, as we did with Senator Allen. Facilitate Krikorian’s karma by visiting Yalamanchili’s website and donating something. I did yesterday. It felt very good.
http://votechili.com/
Yalamanchili should employ some catchier slogans capitalizing on his name. Nothing like turning a “liability” into gold:
“Time for ‘Chili” (Re: The Simpsons, where Homer trips on insanity peppers) “Chili’s HOT!” etc.
And maybe he could get Rozonda Thomas (Chilli of TLC) to help campaign. She is half desi, after all.
Sorry, just checked- and YEAH! He’s a cutey!
Folks,
The correct response to an incident like this cannot be denigrating statements about Krikorian’s own ethnicity.
Comments like that will be deleted.
.
Thank you. My thoughts exactly.
The correct response to an incident like this cannot be denigrating statements about Krikorian’s own ethnicity.
Oh, is it the variant of the “take the high road” BS that we have been taught since school while dealing with bullies. Do not fight with them…take the high road and get the stuffing pounded out of you. Sorry, in some cases you have to pay back using the same techniques. What would be the correct response then? Just to shut up and take it?
Is it that hard to call the dude an asshole without dissing the country of Armenia?
*swoon
But yes, agreed. How juvenile. My own name isn’t terribly difficult to pronounce (I like to think), but it’s always interesting to see how much folks can mangle it. One of my friends from school swore he wouldn’t name his kids desi names b/c he was afraid they’d never be fully accepted by mainstream America. I always found that sad, because I rather enjoy the history behind my own name and those of others in my family who are ‘hard to pronounce.’
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
my dad has a horribly long 4 word south indian name. he has never left south india all his life. but when they made him md of his company he had to go to new delhi to meet other board members. in new delhi they convinced him to shorten his name. now everybody knows him only as “mr. iyer”. so this discrimination happens within india itself, cannot imagine what usa people must be going through. now iyer is such a generic, if you stand in middle of tamilnadu and say mister iyer, 99% of population would respond ( the other 1% is iyengar and can be safely ignored ) . so the name “mr. iyer” is a big joke, yet my dad accepted it because north indians have simple names like ravi sunny vj singh gupta etc. so he thought we should also fit in. so maybe it is not bad idea to change this yalamanchilli gandchilli to something simpler say “mr. smith”. surya smith is not so bad.
Yeah, it’s not like the Chili dude wore two shirts or something to deserve the mocking. Chill & Vote Chili !
i will share one true story here i thought. my friend kishore yalamanchili actually my classmate in osamania, as you know in india we all students have only initials so he calls me kp kp like that only so yesterday while in infosys campus he was onsite i spotted him i said hai ky he said you should not say ky because it is one sex cream k used by usa woman for sex purposes so from now on i have to call him kishore but that is not really possible because in infy so many kishores if i say hai kishore everybody will turn their head. but ofcourse all this problem in usa only in few weeks my onsite coming to end then i will go back to hyderabad and then i can still call him ky because in hyderabad we dont have sex cream and all it is a simple city.
Shhh. Don’t let pesky facts get the way of the cult of conservative victimhood and oppression narrative (TM).
How do you know he’s a former repub? I can only find that he ran as an independent before. But I get your larger point, which is why the denial of a marriage license to an interracial couple recently can be framed as an example of the democratic-party’s long history of racism.
Southern Strategy, Manju. Those former Dixiecrats are now Republicans, which explains the Party of Lincoln’s wholesale embrace of Confederate History Month (Republican governors of VA and MS).
Honest Abe must be doing sommersaults in his grave to see his party has become the neo-Confederate party.
if you stand in middle of tamilnadu and say mister iyer, 99% of population would respond ( the other 1% is iyengar and can be safely ignored ) .
You are an idiot.
For someone with a borderline personality disorder, that might work. For the rest, a barb directed at the individual (as yoga fire indicated) is correct.
Maybe so. Lincoln only cared about keeping the Union…unified. Slavery and emancipation were tangential to his ideology. Ulysses S. Grant, however, would undoubtedly be sick.
And Confederates were about, among other things, rending the Union. So Lincoln would would not like the modern direction of his party and their embrace of these people.
This is wildly inaccurate and part of a concerted effort by the democratic party to whitewash their history. The vast majority of dixiecrats, whether one means the original states-rights party or the southern democrats who voted against the 1964 civl rights bill, stayed with the democratic party. in fact the only name i know off the top of may head who switched were strom thurmond and arguably jesse helms (he wasn’t in congress as a dem).
the rest of the most vile racists in american history, like the dixiecrat leader richard russell or more recent names like John C. Stennis (who was in congress till ’89) and fritz hollings (2005) stayed within the welcoming arms of the dem party their entire lifetime, with the exception of the time they formed a 3rd party in ’72.
The Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s were a triumph of liberal ideology, not a party. Northern liberal Dems and liberal and moderate Republicans supported it. Southerners of both parties opposed it. Those people were and are conservatives. Conservatives were usually on the wrong side of history when it came to social movements.
My own name isn’t terribly difficult to pronounce (I like to think), but it’s always interesting to see how much folks can mangle it.
part of the issue isn’t the intrinsic difficulty of the name, but familiarity. i’m pretty sure when people here the name “alexandra” they recognize thel name from the first two syllables. my contrast, my name is pretty easy, “razib,” but people are confused because they don’t recognize the name like they do roger and robert. if brown names become common they wouldn’t be so hard, whether they’re amit or amitallallapali. new names which are unfamiliar also have the same issue.
Southerners of both parties opposed it.
there weren’t too many southern republicans in 1964 🙂 though your point is pretty much correct.
Part of it is also that they see “brown” and assume difficulty. I usually just give my initials when I ask for a table at a restaurant and at least 25% of the time they ask me how to spell it.
Part of it is also that they see “brown” and assume difficulty.
not my experience yoga. i am a mischief maker, and i went by two aliases in college. i had a science (biochem) and non-science major (history), and in latter classes we had discussion sections and i just gave a fake name (though i switched from one year to the other). the fake names were not “ethnic,” they were jason and claude. so if the class went out to dinner the service would use the fake name (most of the non-science people didn’t know that i had a different name because they didn’t know me in other contexts).
That’s a meaningless statement. By definition conservatives are conserving the social order. If the social order changes then [i]by definition[/i] the conservatives will have lost the fight and ended up on the “wrong” side of history being as how the winners write the history books.
If the conservatives win the fight then nothing will have changed and nobody really bothers writing chapter after chapter in history books saying “And life continued as it always has.”
Moreover, the Republican party is not a conservative party and we should really stop encouraging their hijacking of the term. They’re a reactionary party that seeks to roll back that past 50 or more years of legislation, cultural development, and jurisprudence. You can’t time-warp the government back into 1910 and expect it to adequately govern in 2010. If anything, the Democrats are the party that’s trying to conserve America’s role in the world, conserve American state institutions, and conserve the privileged status of the middle class. The USA has no politically viable liberal party.
Maybe fake names are easier than initials. But if I say “Y.F.” I get the suspicion they’re trying to spell it out like “Uwayeff.”
yoga, there are brown people with more common american names. perhaps they should pipe in. i guess brown people look distinctive, but we also can be confused for greek, black, or latino, and none of those groups have “hard” names. though i guess arabs might.
By failing to account that there were only 10 southern republicans in the house at the time while democrats had 94 and there was only 1 southern republican senator while 21 were democrats, your statement is tantamount to saying south africans were responsible for apartheid, not just whites. this is a form of denialism. You are aware that the south was a virtual one-party state post civil-war to 1964 aren’t you?
Those people were a famous part of the new deal coalition, helping usher in labor and child welfare laws and Social Security . in return, FDR’s agreed to ignore segregation and the lynching as jfk and lbj similarly did for voter intimidation/fraud, when they inserted a provision to the 1957 civil rights act calling for trial by jury in such cases knowing damn well all-white jurys in the south would never convict a white man (jury nullification). needless to say, they won the south in ’60.
they were certainly social conservatives, and anti-communists to boot, but they were aligned with liberals at least since Woodrow Wilson (the most progressive prez in US history, arguably) who segregated the US govt and help restart the klan, which itself was aligned with the progressive movement (mostly due to prohibition) and helped enforce the monopoly (via lynching) the more progressive party enjoyed in the south during the entire jim crow era, as they were an official part of the party for much of that time.
yoga, do note sometimes that history does not move in a whiggish direction. so reversals can happen. the early 20th century progressives had ideas about race on occasion which were resisted by more religiously traditionalist types who did not appreciate the tendency toward scientism (in particular, the roman catholic church). the marxist evolutionary biologist disavowed many of his older progressivist views about race in the 1920s after world war ii (he was one of the main scientific backers of the famous UNESCO statement on race) . a class-based version of this attitude in relation to secularists and liberal christians who were skeptical of lower class evangelicals’ effect on the quality of the white race is documented in Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity. and it is notable that eugenics legislation never occurred in more backward southern europe. social democratic sweden famously force sterilized the mentally unfit until the mid-1970s.
i see that we’re going to have a debate about liberal fascism on this thread. in general i’ll opt out, but note that woodrow wilson and teddy roosevelt were both progressives, and by today’s measure would be considered racists. but it is true that wilson, as a southerner by origin, purged the blacks from the fed gov. who roosevelt, as a member of the party of lincoln, has brought on. the connection between republicans and blacks persisted until FDR broke it, calvin coolidge’s wife caused some controversy when she had lunch in public with a prominent black woman.
I think that’s probably a better way to phrase it. It usually isn’t an issue of liberal vs. conservative. It’s generally a fight between the few and the many. Usually the “few” end up being conservative since, being privileged, they’d like to conserve their privilege, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
IMO having a robust middle class that can bridge the gap between people who work for a living (the Proles) and people with the resources to pull the levers of power (the Pats) is key to maintaining a healthy society. That way you can get the common-sensical wisdom to know that eugenics schemes are repugnant since you presumably interact with some of the perfectly decent people who would be effected, but you also have the political clout and influence to be able to talk to the people making the decisions and know how to argue with them about it persuasively.
That way you can get the common-sensical wisdom to know that eugenics schemes are repugnant since you presumably interact with some of the perfectly decent people who would be effected, but you also have the political clout and influence to be able to talk to the people making the decisions and know how to argue with them about it persuasively.
yeah, but doesn’t work for eugenics. the legislation passed precisely in areas where the population was higher on maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the northern USA and europe. it was blocked by traditional religious prejudices (not using prejudice to cast aspersion, but to indicate that it was less a matter of rationality than emotional aversion) in the southern USA and in the catholic monarchies and autocracies of southern europe. in france the reason that eugenics was never an issue didn’t have to do with religion, since anti-clericalism was a strong force, but the fact that france was the first nation to go through demographic transition and so always had a pro-natalist ideology so as not to get too far behind england and germany in numbers.
Basically highly urbanized countries where the people in the cities don’t interact much with the lower stratum of society? When I say middle class I don’t mean rich countries. I literally mean a middle class. Societies that are not too unequal.
Basically highly urbanized countries where the people in the cities don’t interact much with the lower stratum of society? When I say middle class I don’t mean rich countries. I literally mean a middle class. Societies that are not too unequal.
well, i’d have to look at the distributions & GINI coefficients. my main point here is that the areas where this progressive legislation passed are areas with the types of SES distribution that we consider “middle class,” while the areas where it did not were those with “pyramid” shaped distributions. correlation is not causation, but that’s how it is. i know that scandinavia was already a relatively egalitarian place before the social democrats came to power. and the northern united states famously had a more equitable distribution of power and income than the south, dominated by bourbon democrats and planter elites (though there were up country populists, even these were often from the scots-irish ‘ascendancy’). in fact, new england was arguably the world’s first middle class society (the rural poor and titled nobility were discouraged from settling by in the mass. bay colony).
anyway, my point is that in both the USA & europe it was the economically and socially advanced regions which passed the eugenics legislation, which was perceived to be progressive. perhaps there’s a way that you can save your definition of middle class society whereby the deep south and franco’s spain are more congenial to this conception than new england and sweden, but it wouldn’t seem particular informative or obvious on the face of it. a more parsimonious explanation to me is that eugenic legislation was based on a novel scientific framework which evangelical protestants were skeptical of, and whose scientistic implications the roman catholic hierarchy explicitly rejected (the same pattern btw is evident in china where progressive intellectuals of the may fourth movement promoted eugenics while more conservative traditionalists rejected it).
to give a flavor of the late 19th and early 20th century “radical” milieu which might confuse us, francis galton, the initiator of the eugenics movement, had a primary acolyte, karl pearson. karl pearson was born carl, but changed his spelling because of his admiration for karl marx. he was a socialist, atheist, political radical who favored women’s suffrage (unlike many professors pearson took on female students in the role of a mentor and would call upon them in classroom discussion). you can read about this stuff here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Pearson#Politics_and_eugenics
pearson’s views were not atypical for socialists of his era, h. g. wells wrote about the necessity and naturalness of the extermination of the coloured races in the struggle for fitness. this doesn’t mean that elite conservatives were any different. the point is that the primary resistance to these ideas were from isolated corners within the elites, hidebound adherents of the ancien regime, as well as the “torpid” masses who were incomprehensible to the beauty of the new biometrical truths.
p.s., and many intellectuals reversed course in the 1930s, and definitely after world war ii, from their earlier fashionable views. i cite j. b. s. haldane, but many marxists reversed course and left the eugenic society with the rise of national socialism and its enmity toward soviet communism and left movements in general. winston churchill was a member of the eugenic society, though i don’t know when he left, and he was all over the political map over his career (he spent some time as a liberal along with being a tory).
In the spirit of ‘I remember when…’ – I remember when a Southern Democratic Senator said out loud on national TV that ‘Dukakis’ (Democratic Presidential nominee 1988) simply could not win in the South on account of his name – the clip of Howell Heflin saying so in as many words on ABC News is frozen in my consciousness – especially the way he drawled out ‘Dukakis’ – Deewwkaaawwkis – in an interview during the Democratic convention.
Things have come very far since then, but let’s not get so PC that we cannot acknowledge that some desi names can actually be funny. ‘Y’all are being silly over Yalamanchilli’ 😉 with apologies to Howell Heflin.
well, do you know how many times i’ve heard about star trek ii in my life?
Denial is not a river…
that doesn’t count. khan sounds wicked. he has a wrath and everything. there was one Muslim kid in my high-school who came from pakistan and immediately became part of the cool-crowd (he was a good athlete and very tall). everyone called him The Haj, Haj-man, Haj-meister, etc. It was a cool sounding name.
meanwhile i was stuck with a cutsey first name rhying with foo and boo and a long goofy south Indian last name tho it fortunately got shortened to The Boss, which was cool. nonetheless, stop appropriating my oppression. check your privilege.
manju, lol. well, many black americans, not all muzzies, have taken muzzie names. so that ads some cool factor. but what about the name “raj.” that sounds pretty cool.
I think you’re right, but before I checked to see which congressional district Cincinnati was in I was liked to think that his slogan was intended to appeal to fans of a certain colorful and regional dish made with ingredients such as cinnamon, cloves and chocolate and topped with little haystack-like heaps of shredded cheese.
Wasn’t he also on apprentice?
I think I’ve settled on Gotham Zed.