Here’s how the world works. You go to a Unity:Journalists of Color convention mostly to catch up with old friends. In my case, that means seeing people like my old Asian American Journalists Association buddy, Farland Chang. An entrepreneurial sort , Chang left his reporting  at NBC in LA a few years back to conquer Asia. Now based in Hong Kong, Chang is covering the Beijing Olympics through his Olympic profiles series. They provide an Asian perspective that will give you some insight on why China’s so bullish for Olympic gold.

http://www.worldbizwatch.com/streaming/DHL/st-OlympiansDHL-2.html

http://www.youtube.com/worldbizwatch888

Yes, he did. And I’ve got it on tape.

The most visible Asian male news television talent in America, one third of the replacement parts for anchor Ted Koppel on “Nightline,” couldn’t help self-immolating at the Unity:Journalist of Color convention in Chicago Friday, July 25.

As the keynote speaker at the Asian American Journalists Association Gala Banquet, no one expected the super-serious, straight-laced Bashir to be any more than charming. His British accent does that. But he wanted to be more. He wanted to be Martin Bashir, strip club comedian.

I suppose it’s not enough to be master of “the get.” (Bashir is known for his one-on-ones with Lady Di and Michael Jackson).

But if you’re going to tell jokes, I suppose it helps if you tell jokes that people can “get.”

For example, Bashir commented on “difficulties the American media has had with the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.”

Said Bashir: “People have had problems with his name. So far we’ve had it described as Barack Osama. We’ve had Baby father Obama. We’ve had Barack Sadadam Hussein Obama….”

Not willing to quit while behind, Bashir said, “We should go a bit further…
I was wondering about a hip hop reference and connect him to the …Wu Tang Clan. And we can call him Old Dirty Bastard Barack.”

What is a mixture of polite laughter and shock? Whatever you call it, the room was filled with it.

But oblivious to it all, Bashir went on as if on TelePrompter with the coup de grace:

“Or why not the Great White Fear of the Dark Phallus…Big Black Barrack!”

Groan, shock, nervous titters.

But wait, Bashir was just getting warmed up!

“The great thing about this, it explains a mystery that I could never understand until this moment. And many people in Britain could never understand how America elected George Bush twice.

“This explains it. It’s his name. GEORGE BUSH.

“It’s easy for the anchors to say.

“George Bush.

“That’s why.

(Two to three SECONDS OF DEAD SILENCE)

“That fell somewhat flat, but I ‘ll go on..”

The room had its first moment of honest laughter as Bashir acknowledged his failure.

Looking back at the Unity convention, the Bashir speech had to be the strangest thing I experienced all week.

It was like watching someone like an Imus try to be cool by break-dancing and flashing gang signs to gain street cred. And at an Asian American Journalist banquet, yet.
It was just odd.

Hey, Martin, it really is enough to be “Mr.Get.” You’re on “Nightline.” You’re not Opie, Anthony, or Howard Stern. You’re stern, serious. Mr. News Guy Asian, the guy with the exclusives.  It’s not a bad stereotype, stick with it.
At the hotel bar afterwards, some said the Bashir performance rivaled Connie Chung’s embarrassing after-dinner speech at the AAJA Unity banquet in Washington four years ago, where Ms.Chung admitted to having a bit much to drink and then carried on loosely. It’s getting to be a tradition. High flying Asian TV news stars risking all credibility committing oratorical hari kari at Unity!

More on the Unity convention in the days ahead.

Check out this week’s column at:

http://www.asianweek.com/category/emil-amok/

The Olympics are about to begin this coming week, and isn’t it nice to see China take care of business arresting dissidents and making the country safe for visitors by limiting the freedom of its citizens?

I dread the coming Olympic games. Instead of the excitement over which drug-free athlete will excel in competition, I am more concerned about China’s use of the Olympics to sanitize its bad domestic and foreign policies.

Unfortunately, politics can’t be separated from the games. If anything, China’s negative actions in one arena–like human rights–can’t help but debase the overall spirit of the games.

http://www.truthout.org/article/china-jailing-dissidents-before-games

Picture Mr. Punahou, Barack Obama, standing tall on his board riding a nice wave holding HRC over his head.

“Sufin’ Safari” can be their theme song.

WaddyathinK?

I’ve talked about the notion of an Obama/Clinton ticket after B.O. pulled away and forced Clinton to withdraw. This may be an answer for Asian Americans who were primarily Clinton boosters. It may also be a decent answer for Obama who during this post-primary season seems to be unable to shore up a number of vulnerabilities.

Given the tightness of the race, I think he’d have to give Hillary more than a passing thought.

She can help him win. And he wants to win.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121745984626098717.html

Check out the weekly columns at:

http://www.asianweek.com/category/emil-amok/

Are things that bad in America that we can get undocumenteds, overstays and all those otherwise maligned by the Lou Dobbs crowd as “illegals” to self-deport?

Hey, they’re all outside Home Depot anyway, ICE can set up a “GO HOME Depot.”

Sounds like a bureaucratic cop-out: We’ll be nice to you if you leave on your own.

Actually, it’s about time ICE took that tack. Fear-based enforcement hasn’t worked for anyone.

Self-deportation shouldn’t be confused with “coddling the criminals.” It’s not amnesty either.

Instead, see this as ICE finally realizing that immigration overstays unless involved in criminal activity are not criminals. They’re bureaucratic nuisances who need their paperwork put in order, and failing that, need to be deported. Nicely. Civilly.

The feds got it wrong when the political winds politicized immigration into a nasty us versus them arrangement. they turned what should have been a traffic ticket type crime into a major ordeal.

Let’s hope self-deportation works with the normal folks who have these basic immigration issues. The bulk of these people aren’t devious drug dealers, gun runners or terrorists in training. They’re people when given a decent choice and treated with respect will stay within the law. And go home.

Given the number of overstays and the failing rate of enforcement, self-deportation sounds like a step in the right direction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121744672797097895.html

And don’t forget to check out my weekly columns:

http://www.asianweek.com/category/emil-amok/

It’s easy to be jaded about earthquakes when you live in California. These days, if you aren’t near the epicenter, chances are you will know about the quake not from feeling it, but from being buzzed on your Blackberry or other device.

That’s how I found out. My vibrating Blackberry rocked my meeting. News bulletin: This just in… Earthquake in LA.

But the immediate reaction from people around me in Northern California? They’re so jaded they don’t pay any attention to any quake that doesn’t ping the Richter at 7.

5.4? 5.5? A nice photo op of shelves strewn on a floor. Maybe some lights out at an intersection. Next.(Hey the Giants beat the Dodgers on Monday. I’m sure that rocked some Angelenos’ world).

The real headline here is that we take for granted that the world comes paved. We forget that for all our concrete refinements,we’re all in this together with nature. When you live on a faultline, every now and then we need a reminder that let’s us know who is and isn’t in control.

There are earthquakes up in the Sierras all the times. When it happens in SF or LA, it’s like an “urban burp,” a minor inconvenience until “THE BIG ONE.”

Until that happens, all Californians know we’re living on borrowed time.

But things were back to normal by evening.  Tuesday night, the Dodgers beat the Giants.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chinohills30-2008jul30,0,323146.story

I just arrived back from the Unity convention in Chicago and will be posting my impressions about it and  Obama’s appearance there, throughout the week.

In the meantime, check out the other entries here and, of course, my columns at:

http://www.asianweek.com/category/emil-amok/

With Bobby Jindal so adamant about not being John McCain’s veep, any excitement that he potentially represented to the Republican ticket is now lost.

Love him or hate him, the Louisiana governor represented political viagra for McCain.

But I guess Jindal feels he’s too new as governor to leave now.

Either that, or he doesn’t really think John McCain can win.

Besides, who wants to be saddled with a loss in such a nascent career? Jindal can wait it all out and develop some real experience as governor. He also avoids an unnecessary confrontation with Obama now as veep.

If Jindal plays his cards right and gives a glowing speech at the GOP convention this year, by waiting, he may well wind up exactly where he wants to be: in line to be the first viable  Asian American presidential candidate in U.S. political history.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/23/veep.talk/

At this Unity convention of about 5,600 journalists, there is more talk about saving the industry rather than saving diversity. But the digital age only exacerbates the problem of diversity.

Simply put, the digital divide is real when it comes to jobs in media. And the publisher of the New York Times confirmed what should be obvious from looking at staff lists.

Asians get more than their share of the new growth jobs, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times told a room of several hundred journalists attending the convention this week in Chicago.

“The people we’ve looked at and the people weve hired just at the New York Times… is more heavily weighted Asian than any other minority group,” Sulzberger clarified afterward. He said he knows the TImes numbers, and surmises the industry trend from talking to other newspaper officials.

While black, Latino and Native Americans were logically concerned about how to raise their digital representation, I was concerned about not hurting the numbers of qualified Asians who apply for and want those digital jobs.

I asked Sulzberger how he can avoid what’s happening with Asians in other areas, like being over-represented in higher education and the resulting backlash against Asian American applicants.

Not that I’m against affirmative action, of course.

But I’m thinking about all you Asian American geeks who might get passed over by an affirmative action hire.

“I can’t speak to that,” Sulzberger said. “All I can tell you is that from the New York Times perspective, we will hire the people we need to get the job done and we are going to choose based on skills and ability.”

I didn’t want to get into whether that would be enough to raise the numbers from the under-represented minority groups. But at least he’s on record that he’s not going to reverse the Asian trend, that is if the Asians continue to prove themselves based on ability.

I mean how can you have too many Asians in one place? Unless we choose to ghettoize ourselves.

Before going to another questioner, Sulzberger went ethnic on me.

“If we had this conversation 40 years ago, we’d be having it about Jews.”

Actually, Sulzberger hinted at something I’ve been saying for nearly 15 years: In many ways, Asian Americans are the new Jews.

The difference? We generally don’t have the same skin color of the people who were here before us.

How long will it be before we turn white?

I’m in Obama’s town–Chicago. And I just drove by an old beat up car on the South side that has “Obama” emblazoned on the rear windshield.

Me, I’m a bit more skeptical these days.

Last week, I admit I was caught up in the New Yorker’s “Obama as Muslim” cover like a lot of others in the media.

But now that that’s died down, I finally got around to reading the insides of that particular issue. Wouldn’t you know the most tasteless thing wasn’t the cover but on page 89: A picture of Santa Claus apparently involved in a sex act with a woman in a red dress who did not look like Mrs. Claus.

Honest. But not a peep from the taste mongers out there.

Shows you how sexy the Obama story is these days.

I also finally read the story in that issue on Obama by Ryan Lizza which may explain why the reporter found himself bumped off the plane at the start of Obama’s trip to the Middle East.

If you are one of those somewhat disenchanted by Obama’s compromises and failures to live up to the idea that he’s such a fresh radical departure from old style politics, then the article is must reading. It reveals how Obama painstakingly used Chicago as his springboard to develop his winning political persona, networking, stepping on toes, being critical of all that is bad, while reserving the right to partake in some way in the practice. (See Tony Rezko).

They are all hallmarks of the strategy of Obama’s to become the first black man to be president of the United States, by being all things to all people, all at once.

Of course, how does it all wash when you apply standards of integrity and consistency? That has become the problem with Obama for many of his supporters.

It’s not such a bad thing that he’s making it up as he goes a long. He’s smart. He has committees of other smart folks putting words in his mouth.

No, the disappointment is felt by those on the margins, among them the young and heretofore self-disenfranchised, who really thought Obama was something new and different. Dazzled at first by his oratory, I asked my 19-year-old yesterday how enthusiastic she was for Obama.

It’s not like it was after Iowa. Now she’s not sure who she’ll vote for. She realized something the New Yorker story points out in great detail.

Obama is nothing if not a super-ambitious traditional pol.

Slimy? Maybe it’s sunscreen.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?yrail