Accents, politics, and double standards
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Have you heard about the latest overwrought tempest in a P.C. teapot on this post-Super Bowl Monday morning?
It’s over Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra’s “insensitive” Senate campaign ad using an Asian-American actress portraying a Chinese worker gloating over incumbent Dem. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s big spending habits.
Watch:
Black ministers and Asian activists have decried the commercial.
Both left and right are up in arms:
The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.
GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.
“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”
A media consultant who has advised Democrats also thought it could prove problematic.
“Some Asian-Americans may be offended by the stereotype that is portrayed in the spot,” said Robert Kolt, who teaches advertising part-time at Michigan State University and had previewed a number of
Sunday’s Super Bowl ads. “Pete seems like a nice guy in the ad, but I think he is wasting a lot of money now. … It’s just not Super Bowl-worthy. It’s not cute, it’s not funny and it’s not memorable.”
Is the ad less than tasteful? Yes.
Is it “xenophobic” to point out that China is benefiting ginormously from our fiscal recklessness, indebtedness, and outsourcing of jobs? Certainly not.
Oddly enough (in other words: predictably enough), there was little uproar when Vice President Joe Biden — a serial P.C. offender — mocked an Indian accent in decrying outsourcing of call center jobs just last month:
Back in 2006, Biden joked about Indian accents and Dunkin’ Donuts and gas stations — with a hardly a peep from the Sensitivity Police:
Liberal Democrat Bob Beckel mocked GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal’s State of the Union response address and likened it to a “call center ad in Mumbai:”
The P.C. police, as always, are P.C. only when it’s P.E. — politically expedient.
As for all the lefties decrying the ugly nativism of the “Buy American” message that resonates with Rust Belt voters, I remind you that it’s not just Republicans who have channeled Pat Buchanan for electoral gain:

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