U.S. celebrity gossip channel TMZ is under fire over the “racist” comments of a reporter who mocked a K-pop star who spoke in English.
A video clip of the segment has gone viral among Koreans.
The TMZ segment, which mainly deals humorously with celebrity stories, aired last Saturday ㅡ showing K-pop girl group EXID member Junghwa greeting the TMZ crew in English, which the reporter mocks.
TMZ staff instantly show disgust at the reporter’s comments.
As of Wednesday, “TMZ racist” was among the top 10 searched words on Korean web portal Naver, with bloggers and news outlets blasting the U.S channel for its comments. [Korea Times]
As much as I don’t like the rioters in Baltimore comparing them to ISIS seems inappropriate to me, but that is what the Korea Times cartoonist has done:
Just when you thought things could not get any worse in Baltimore it does with CNN trying to push a narrative that US military veterans caused the riots:
In a pathetic suck-up interview with Democrat Congressman Elijah Cummins, Baldwin never once had the moral courage to ask the failed Baltimore City congressman if the left-wing policies ushered in by a half-century of a Democrat monopoly in Baltimore might have something to do with the city’s ills. Instead, she said of young military veterans who become police officers, “I love our nation’s veterans, but some of them are coming back from war, they don’t know the communities, and they are ready to do battle.”
The context was a discussion about increased training and retraining for the Baltimore police. [Breitbart]
Does she even know how many people in the Baltimore police department are veterans? Then those that are veterans how many have even deployed or seen combat? You would think a news reporter would do some basic fact checking before making such a sweeping statement. Here is how she tried to initially rationalize what she said:
Folks. Please don't misunderstand me. Dear friends/family of mine are veterans. I was repeating a concern vocalized to me lately. That's it.
So if someone made a inappropriate sweeping statement about the rioters with no facts to substantiate it would she vocalize that as well? Since then she has been forced to apologize on air for the remark.
What is ironic about this is that it is the military veterans in the National Guard that had to come in to restore order.
I happened to come across probably the only expat tech K-blog which has a lot of tips for people to check out. The blogger’s latest tip is how to send and receive Naver mail in your Gmail account:
When you’ve created your Naver account, you may decide that using Naver’s webmail client (네이버 메일) is difficult or bothersome, because it is entirely in Korean, and a bit cluttered. I personally prefer sending/receiving my Naver Mail through my G-mail account.
G-Mail has a setting to automatically forward all mail to another account, but Naver Mail does not. Worry not; it’s easy to get all your Naver Mail in G-mail using POP3. The process is super simple. [10 Won Tips]
You can read the rest of how to set this up at the link.
Lts (jg) L. Ron Hubbard and Thomas S. Moulton in Portland, Oregon in 1943 [Via Wikipedia]Wright says that one of the most interesting parts of the meeting came when he asked Davis about L. Ron Hubbard’s medical records. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had maintained that he was blind and a ‘hopeless cripple’ at the end of World War II — and that he had healed himself through measures that later became the basis of Dianetics, the 1950 book that became the basis for Scientology.
“I had found evidence that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war. … And so we pressed [Tommy Davis] for evidence that there had been such injuries and [Hubbard] had been the war hero that he described,” says Wright. “Eventually, Davis sent us what is called a notice of separation — essentially discharge papers from World War II — along with some photographs of all of these medals that [Hubbard] had won. … At the same time, we finally gained access to Hubbard’s entire World War II records [through a request to the military archives] and there was no evidence that he had ever been wounded in battle or distinguished himself in any way during the war. We also found another notice of separation which was strikingly different than the one that the church had provided.”
Furthermore, says Wright, the notice of separation that the church provided was signed by a man who never existed. And two of the medals that Hubbard supposedly had won weren’t commissioned until after Hubbard left active service.
“There were a number of different discrepancies on there that make it clear that [the Scientology document] wasn’t an actual record,” says Wright. “In the 900-odd pages of Hubbard’s war records, there were numerous letters from other researchers from over the years. One of them had inquired about [the name on Hubbard’s notice of separation]. And the archivist at the time said they had thoroughly researched the rolls of Navy officers at the time and there was no such person.”
Wright says he’s not sure what impact — if any — his article will have on the Church of Scientology.
“It’s hard to measure, because we’re dealing with a religion,” he says, “and people are drawn to it because of faith. And if it were simply a matter of reason, then one could put this [document about Hubbard’s service] down in front of you and say, ‘Here is conclusive proof that the founder of Scientology lied about his military record and lied about his injuries and lied about the fundamental principles out of which he created the Church of Scientology. But that may not matter to people who are involved in it, who may feel they are gaining something from their experience — either because they feel like the truths of Scientology enhance their lives or because the community of Scientologists that they live among is something like their family. So they intentionally shield themselves from knowing these types of things.” [NPR via This Ain’t Hell]
You can read more at the link, but L. Ron Hubbard reminds me a lot of Kim Il-sung who aided by his Soviet handlers used fictitious events to include lying about his military accomplishments during the Japanese occupation of Korea to start the cult of Kim that put him in power. The cult he constructed has been powerful enough to keep two generations of his family in power as well. Fortunately Scientology doesn’t control a country with a million man army and nukes. Could you imagine how strange a place a Scientology led country would be? It may even make the strangeness of North Korea seem tame in comparison.
Could you imagine what the media reaction would be to this if it was a white Republican claiming too many (enter ethnic minority) group was moving into public housing?
A Brooklyn city councilmember on Thursday made the bizarre claim that a wave of Asians has invaded public housing developments in her district.
Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo made the unusual statement at a hearing Thursday on the Housing Authority’s funding problems.
Addressing NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye, Cumbo — who represents a wide patch of Brooklyn from Fort Greene to Crown Heights — asked why “certain ethnic groups come in” to a NYCHA development “in blocks.”
NYCHA has a waiting list of 250,000 hoping for public housing, and tenants are picked strictly in chronological order, with preference given for homeless families and victims of domestic violence.
So a clearly perplexed Olatoye asked Cumbo to elaborate.
Cumbo then stated, “We have a large Asian population in our district — and we love them.”
Without identifying specifics — such as which development she meant — she claimed that this particular ethnic community “had the opportunity to move into a development in large numbers.” [NY Daily News via reader tip]
So I guess the councilwoman loves the Asian community, just not enough to allow them to move into public housing.
