Category Archives: Politics

I’ll Be Rooting For You, Kunal

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Via the newstab (thanks, KXB!) there’s an article on thirteen-year-old Kunal Sah of Green River, Utah, who will be representing the state in the upcoming Scripps National Spelling Bee at the end of May. Kunal’s story is unlike those of other brown spellers we usually hear about. His parents were deported last year after living in this country legally for sixteen years.

According to the article:

Ken and Sarita Sah were deported back to India last July after 16 years residing legally in this country. Ken Sah came to the country as a student, and later applied for asylum because the region of India from which he came was experiencing religious violence. Then Sah waited for an asylum hearing for nearly 10 years. Had 10 years passed without a hearing, Sah would have been granted automatic asylum. But three weeks shy of that 10-year window, he got a hearing, and was denied asylum. He appealed until he ran out of appeals last year. Tougher immigration laws after 9/11 made his request for asylum more difficult. He and his wife ultimately lost their battle to remain in the country.

Kunal, however, was born in the US, so he’s a citizen. His family owns and operates two motels in Utah. Kunal is currently staying with his uncle, who’s also overseeing the family business in the Sahs’ absence. The irony of this story, however, was not missed on a local journalist:

Patsy Stoddard, the editor of the Emery County Progress newspaper, describes Ken and Sarita as model citizens. “Our governor went to India to bring back a baby,” she says. “And yet here is a family torn apart, and nobody is doing anything about it.”

Regardless of anyone’s views on the immigration process, my heart goes out to Kunal.

In a telephone interview, Ken Sah is matter-of-fact. “It’s very tough. He calls every day, and he cries,” he says of his son. “He needs to live with his parents. But he doesn’t have that. We try to make him feel better and stronger.”

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Pac Picks Manny

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Pacman's brown lawyer.JPG

I work with twenty people, eighteen of whom are men; recently, I’ve been privy to outrage and debate regarding the following scandal (when I’m not ignoring boasts regarding bracketology, that is). I didn’t realize that there was a Sepia angle to the Adam “Pacman” Jones controversy until Anantha kindly alerted us to it, earlier today. I’ll get to that, but first, let’s catch up other non-ESPN-addicts with what the hell I’m going on about:

It’s Feb. 19 in Vegas and, two miles from The Strip at a club called Minxx, the three-day party that is the NBA All-Star Weekend is about to end.
With gunfire.
According to witnesses, Adam Bernard “Pacman” Jones sits in a VIP booth with seven acquaintances, six of them women, the other his bodyguard. They’re drinking Dom Perignon champagne and Patron tequila, which goes for $600 a bottle. Pacman watches as Cornell Haynes Jr. — America knows him as the rapper Nelly — and music producer Jermaine Dupri (whose girlfriend is Janet Jackson) “make it rain” dollar bills for several songs. Jones, the Tennessee Titans cornerback who considers himself a major player, wants a piece of their action. Pacman asks an employee to convert $3,400 in larger bills into smaller denominations and approaches the stage. Wide-eyed, almost childlike, he showers fists full of dollars on the dancers.
What happened next, in the context of the law, might not be determined for months, if ever. But when the gunshots ended, a security guard, a former WWF wrestler named Tommy Urbanski, was on the ground with his spinal cord shattered by a bullet. Two others, another bouncer and a female patron, were also shot.

To be clear, Las Vegas police consider Jones a WITNESS, not a person of interest; the trouble-magnet of an athlete claims he’s not the one. The club owner says he made threats and knows the gunman, who has yet to be found. But just in case…

Even though he hasn’t been charged, Jones hired an attorney, Manny Arora, from the same Atlanta-based law firm that defended Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis on charges of murder and aggravated assault in 2000.

The entire ESPN article is a fascinating read and I say that as someone who is almost entirely bored by sports (unless it’s something else fascinating…like cricket). I’m not saying I have any sympathy for Pacman (who got his nick because of the enthusiastic way he housed bottles of milk when he was a wee thing) or the devil for that matter, but after reading a backstory like this:

Misfortune is something that has touched Jones early, and often. His father, Adam, was shot in the back of the head and died when Pacman was 5. His mother, Deborah, spent three years in prison. An uncle died from a knife wound. He’s seen some of his peers die. He was raised chiefly by his grandmother, Christine Jones, and she died of cancer after he graduated from high school.

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Paging Betty Ford

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In high school I had a social studies teacher who was a HinJew. He was an old hippy who found eastern religion, and through that became more of an observant Jew (no, it doesn’t make total sense, but that’s how it was). I was just thinking that Mr. Steinfink would have been very busy last weekend with both Holi and Purim falling at the same time.

It’s funny how similar the two events are. They’re both great holidays for kids — you get to throw colored powder on people, dress up, and make noise — but they also involve the sanctioned or encouraged use of mind altering substances as well. A little something for for all ages, I guess.
Holi
Purim
Fun for kids You get to throw colored powder and water at people, no matter how important or old You get to use loud noisemakers (greggars), dress up in costumes, and eat pastries (homentashn)
Adult fun Drink marijuana in thandai, eat pot mithai It’s a mitzvah to drink wine until you can no longer tell the difference between the phrase “Cursed is Haman” and “Blessed is Mordechai”
Bonfires Holika burned in effigy (Traditionally) Haman burned in effigy
Somewhat bloody theological justification The Asura, Hiranyakashipu, tries to burn his own son, Prahlad, alive, but instead incinerates his sister, Holika. The vizier, Haman, plots a genocide against the Jews. The Queen, Esther, saves the Jews and instead they get to destroy their enemies.
How religious is it? There are different theological explanations for the event, so I would guess not very. The book of Esther is the only book in the Hebrew Bible that doesn’t mention G-d.

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On Reasons for Holi

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The LA Times has an article on a Holi festival that took place in southern California last weekend:

About 150 people from Southern California gathered Saturday at Arcadia Park to celebrate Holi — the Pan-Indian “festival of colors,” a holiday celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and some Muslims that rejoices in the coming of spring and the triumph of good over evil. It is considered a major Hindu festival.

According to whom? I’m a Southie, and as far as I know, playfully throwing water balloons and colored powder at one another isn’t really our thing.

The reporter also gives a run-down on the history of Holi:

One version of the tale tells of Prehlad’s father, Hiranyakshipu, an evil man who wanted Prehlad to worship him, not the Hindu god Vishnu. After many attempts to change his son’s mind, Hiranyakshipu decides to burn him to death, and his aunt, Holika, is to help. In the end, Holika is burned to death and Prehlad is saved.

A woman is burned alive to save her nephew — what a wonderful reason to celebrate!

Another story is about the Hindu god Krishna, who is said to have lived 5,000 years ago. He enjoyed dalliances with the milkmaids, especially Radha. On Holi, Krishna asked his mother why his skin was darker than Radha’s. His mother told him to rub paint on her. She retaliated and eventually, all the villagers joined in. Since then, Holi has also been celebrated with colors.

I always thought Holi had little religious significance and had more to do with celebrating the beginning of spring and the harvest. But maybe that’s just the Chicago grad in me talking. In any case, Professor Vinay Lal of UCLA has his explanation of Holi:

Holi is something anybody can take part in because you do not need anything, just water and color. You can go to the home of an upper-caste person and throw water at them and rub color on them. But the following day, everything reverts back to normal.

So it’s really all about having a day to whoop some upper-caste ass. On a lighter note, the last part of the article made me smile:

In the United States, celebrants said it was a good day to take time off from hectic days of work, relax with friends and family and to renew friendships. “If you are on bad terms with someone, you don’t need to speak words to them,” said Sonia Anand, 35, of Arcadia. “Sometimes the words hold you back, and all you need is some color and a hug.”

Sounds more like the Holi I know. Continue reading →

Mature Macaca Molested Montessori Minor, Maybe

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It’s only because Abhi doesn’t pay us I don’t have the time that I haven’t taken myself down to Manhattan Supreme Court to check out on your behalf, gentle reader, the ongoing circus that is generating press clips of this nature:

A city cop who testified he was seduced at age 13 by his East Side Montessori school principal suffered a figurative beating by the same headmistress in court yesterday. …

“Did that involve any noise?” Shargel asked. “Noises that are often attendant to the act of making love?” The cop answered, “The TV would be on loud.”

Backstory and Desi Angle (TM): Well, you see, the Montessori school principal in question is desi. Name of Lina Sinha, age 40. The alleged events took place about ten years ago. It seems something went down between the two, but just what, and how illegal, and whether it can be proved, is up in the air. He says she raped him when he was underage. She says they had an affair after he turned 17, which ended badly; that she had accused him of beating her and he, fearing this would lose him his job with the NYPD, turned around and accused her of rape.

Additional elements of note: Steven Soderbergh was almost a juror in the case. Too bad he didn’t make the final cut – there’s sex here for sure, and lies somewhere, and all we need is the videotape. Second element of note: Sinha’s attorney is Gerald Shargel, who is best known for defending mobsters. Damn! Maybe I will make it down to the court after all. The whole scene sounds classic.

Get your fix with these stories from the first day of the trial last week (Daily News flava; New York Post flava with photo of Sinha — go on, you know you want to; New York Times flava), and these updates. Looks like Shargel’s scoring some points, which is why he gets paid the big bucks. We’ll try and keep an eye on this tawdriness for you as the trial continues. Continue reading →

Virginia is for Lovers and Indians

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Guess what? Virginia ain’t just for lovers no more. It is also for Indian Americans. Well, at least on January 26th of every year:

Virginia will celebrate January 26 as Indian-American Day in recognition of the community’s contribution to the State.

A legislation to this effect was recently passed by its legislature.

“Over the past year, I have come to realize how much the Indian-American community contributes to the Commonwealth. In appreciation of their efforts and all they have done for the Commonwealth and its people, it is my pleasure to announce the creation of Indian-American Day in Virginia,” Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling said. [Link]

Let me rephrase that quote by Bolling so that it is slightly more honest. “Over the past year, I have come to realize that you shouldn’t refer to brown people as Macacas but rather, you should make dosas with them.”

Although this is bound to upset some of our more sensitive readers, I do wish they had been more inclusive and called it “Macaca-American Day” instead. The way I see it, we have nearly 10 months to plan. How are we going to celebrate our own day?

“The face of Virginia is changing and the immigrant community is a powerful force in urban and suburban Virginia,” Bolling said, adding that he wanted to do everything he could to reach out to the immigrant community and build a ‘better’ Virginia.

“During my campaign for Lieutenant Governor I made a promise to the Indian-American community. I promised to do my best to develop closer ties with them and involve them more in the leadership of Virginia,” he said. [Link]
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Ponnuru listens to straight talk

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Seems like that one time “Maverick” John McCain is falling like a rock (an old rock) in the way too early to matter polls. I still think that he would have won running away in ’08 if he had run as an Independent instead of sucking up to the Radical Right and the Bush administration. That ship has sailed, however. While hanging out at the National Review’s website (ahem…cough cough), I came across Ramesh Ponnuru’s cover story interview with McCain. Here is an excerpt:

The “maverick” pose

Sen. McCain: I got some encouraging news this morning in the USA Today.

Ponnuru (reading headline): “McCain firm on Iraq war. . .” (McCain flips the paper over.) “Despite cost to candidacy”: even better. . .

Sen. McCain: (Laughs) Yep. They’ve got a poll that says 33 percent are much less likely, and 11 percent somewhat less likely to [vote for me]


Ponnuru: So do you think that’s already been costing you? That that’s behind some of the slides in the polls?

Sen. McCain: First of all, I don’t know. But second of all, I can’t worry about it. You just can’t, with something like this you just can’t let it concern you. The issue is too important. The sacrifice that so many young Americans have made already pales in significance to any cost that it may mean to me. You’ve seen these wounded kids, you know how much they’ve given.


Ponnuru: But is the country prepared to give more? The Post had a story on the front page that people want a deadline.

Sen. McCain: Well, I think that it’s the job of people like me to explain to them what’s at stake here. It isn’t just Iraq. I really believe that chaos will ensue, genocide will take place, and unlike after we lost the Vietnam War when they didn’t want to follow us home, these people want to follow us home. I think what’s at stake here is this entire struggle we’re in — you know I hate to use the word war, because then you give people legitimacy as soldiers — but the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism.

And so for me to somehow trim my sails on an issue like this would be just a disservice to the nation. [Link]

By the way, as an interesting side note. This post I wrote when SM was first getting started accounts for a large chunk of visits to our site even still.

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Kenneth Eng Spills His Seed

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Speaking of unhinged people in media, we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the train wreck that recently went down at San Francisco’s AsianWeek newspaper, where a complete idiot by the name of Kenneth Eng, 22 years of age, wet behind the ears, hot under the collar, too big for his britches and bats in his belfry, has been allowed to write a column called, interestingly, “God of the Universe,” in which he spewed moronic racist rants against white people, fellow Asian people, and Black and Latino people, apparently unchecked until his most recent gem blew the lid off the whole damn pot. Entitled, “Why I Hate Black People,” it explained, well, why Kenneth Eng hates black people. Though he also likes to call them Negroes. The column has been pulled and AsianWeek, which ran this guy’s infantile bloviations for a number of months, has now issued a pathetic, simpering apology, but the text has been preserved for posterity in various places on the interwebs. Here is a wee sample:

Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It is unbelievable that it took them that long to fight back. On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War.

You’ll find a link to a PDF of the whole thing here. Anyway, at the risk of over-extending this fool’s fifteen seconds of fame, I also wanted to draw your attention to his soapbox at Amazon, where he’s also peddling some really atrocious fantasy writing (there’s a link to excerpts on this page). He writes on his Amazon blog:

Let’s look at the muslim religion. They believe that music, dance, naked women and other such things are “indecent”. They think that some creature called “allah” will bring them peace, yadda, yadda, yadda. They think that if they bow every day, they will somehow be transported to a place called “heaven”, where everyone looks conspicuously human. I don’t know about you, but I masturbate all the time. It’s not going to affect me in any way, aside from making me need to take baths more often. And listening to O Fortuna will not make my head explode. Nor will spitting at every church I see make my intestines burst out of my abdomen.

Furthermore, most religious people I’ve met tend to be incredibly stupid/poor. They are usually black/hispanic immigrants who do not have the brains or the balls to understand science and thus resort to reading retarded stories about saviors and saints. (Oh, by the way, for those of you who want to scream at how “racist” I am for mentioning negroes and hispanics in such a way, go to someone who gives a sh*t).

OK, that’s enough of that. So what’s this AsianWeek anyway? Here’s a take from Neelanjana Banerjee, who was once a reporter and editor there. AsianWeek’s pitch to advertisers says the paper is aimed at “1.5, 2nd and 3rd generation Asian Americans” — basically the East Asian equivalent of a lot of y’all macacas reading this site. You’d think someone there would have had the sense to sever young Mr. Eng’s ties to the paper a long time ago. I’m all for free speech, but I’ve rarely seen a more compelling case for blacklisting (pun intended! ha ha Kenneth, I said blacklisting!) — or maybe just an good ol’ fashioned beatdown. Happy Friday everybody! Continue reading →

A history of European vegetarianism

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I know that many SM readers like to partake in one particular cross-border skirmish we seem to have a lot here. You know the one of which I speak, right? It’s the herbivores vs. the carnivores (although technically we are all omnivores). Well, to throw a little fuel on to that fire I submit to you this book review over at Slate.com.. The book is titled “Bloodless Revolution” and is meant to be a sort of “history of European vegetarianism.” I haven’t read the book but the review was quite insightful. First the background on the book:

Here’s the story as he tells it in The Bloodless Revolution: In the 17th century, a fundamental question about the relationship between ourselves and the other creatures of the earth broke out into passionate debate, a debate that swooped over and around and through the culture, rattling long-held European assumptions about the very nature of life. There was no single word adequate to capture the ideas that were bursting forth, until the term vegetarian emerged in the middle of the 19th century. And with that, the battle was over–not because meat-eating came to an end but because European culture made a home for this challenge to dietary norms, giving it a local habitation and a name. Whether or not this constituted a victory for animal-lovers is hard to say. As Stuart points out early on, when the concept of vegetarianism became domesticated, it turned into “a distinct movement that could easily be pigeon-holed, and ignored.” But people did start thinking differently about animals, human responsibilities, and the rights of living creatures, albeit rarely to the extreme sought by such groups as PETA. Stuart sums it up well: Nowadays, he says, “negotiating compassion with the desire to eat is customary…” [Link]

The critic contends, however, that vegetarianism from a European perspective isn’t so much something they accept as a way of life but is rather a philosophy to be practiced off an on:

If vegetarianism has settled comfortably into Western culture by now, it’s because the term vegetarian has become so vast and shapeless that it describes just about everybody who isn’t on the Atkins diet. To be sure, there are vegetarians who avoid all animal food. But most are willing to eat eggs, and many eat fish. Chicken is fine with some because hey, it isn’t beef. Hamburgers? Absolutely not–or maybe just once in a while. And turkey because it’s Thanksgiving, ham because it’s Easter, pepperoni because it’s pizza–what on earth is a vegetarian, anyway? No wonder Stuart never tries to define the term. A huge, wonderfully entertaining cast of dietary rebels parades through his chapters, but all we really know about the eating habits of these pagans, scientists, doctors, scholars, theologians, writers, philosophers, and crackpots is that most of them ate meat. [Link]
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The economics of dating

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Two stories have caught my attention in the past two days, and both deal with everyone’s favorite subject: dating! Or rather, I should say the stories are more about the lack of suitable mating options that has resulted from the intersection of two topics we blog about quite often on SM: 1) the growing new economies of India and China; and 2) the messed up sex ratio resulting from female foeticide and infanticide.

Yesterday, PRI’s Marketplace sent a reporter in to the heart of “Parent’s Matchmaker’s Corner” in Shanghai. The corner is basically a trading floor where worried Chinese parents gather to trade biodata on their late-twentysomething children, mostly without the knowledge of said children. The story was set in Shanghai but it might as well have been Delhi, as almost identical market forces are at work. Among the many great insights (some humorous) in the radio story (please listen) are the following:

1) Chinese A-list men date B-list women because they don’t want someone as smart as them. They want a trophy wife.

2) Many Chinese A-list men go abroad to seek their fortune, thus restricting supply.

3) Chinese A-list women get screwed because they are in high demand (since there is an overall shortage of women), but only have B and C-list men to choose from.

4) A-list women throw themselves into work and/or fool around waiting for an A-list man that might never materialize.

5) B and C-list men grow increasingly bitter and frustrated because all the B and C-list women have traded up and the A-list women only want them for their bods.

This chain of events is set into motion for two reasons: 1) there is a skewed sex ratio; and 2) in the “new” economies you have as many or more educated women as men. Again, everything above seems to apply to India as well. You’ll also note that in America reason #2 is already applicable, but what saves us from the same spiral is that we don’t perform sex selection.

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