Chinese Learn American
April 25th, 2008 — LiamFrom the newswire:
- Two women upset with anti-Chinese comments CNN anchor Jack Cafferty made on the air filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit in Manhattan Thursday, seeking $1 for every Chinese national they say was offended.
- Retired Beijing elementary school teacher Li Lan Li and Flushing beautician Lydia Leung say Cafferty’s comments disgraced Chinese worldwide on the eve of the Summer Olympic Games, a historic moment in the country’s 5,000-year history.
- The lawsuit cites two offending comments Cafferty made on April 9. “They’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years,” Cafferty said, according to the lawsuit. He also referred to Chinese imports as “junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food.”
A couple points:
While it’s more than fair to say that all, or even most Chinese are not “goons and thugs,” it’s hard to think of Mao and the Cultural Revolution without using those adjectives, and then some (like “violent totalitarian ideological madness,” for example).
But in the end, I think the judge is going to have to throw this out on a technicality. Clearly these women are no longer Chinese. They’re 100% American.
A lawsuit for hurt feelings?
AMERICAN! Nothing says “U. S. of A.” like frivolous lawsuit. It should be on our coins: “Sue Somebody - It’s the American Way!”
The other problem is the amount of the damages sought in the lawsuit - One dollar, U.S., for each Chinese citizen. As far as I can tell, that’s more than China values its own people.
Maybe the teacher and the beautician should sue the government of China, (not CNN), for the damages now being done to the people still living there?
Who knows? Maybe Beijing will respond favorably to a lawsuit put forward by a couple ex-patriots, so that they can return home?
Maybe they’d like to sue the United States government for allowing freedom of speech?
Maybe the ‘emotionally-scarred’ Chinese ex-patriots, hoping to make a billion dollars for their bitter, bitter tears, can go on to sue the families of the Founding Fathers for the First Amendment to the Constitution!
(Oy!! Who was it who said, “First thing we do…“).
So what are we doing, exactly, with China? Friends? Enemies? Who knows.
Major trading partner? Yes, we are that. And why? Universal love and freedom? Healthy-lifestyle clean-drinking-water no-trans-fat smoke-free love-fest for-all?
Or cheaper (but not much cheaper) electronics than the ones we used to make here?
It’s the great experiment of the age…It’s called: “Can you buy and sell yourself to a better world.”
It took ol’ Ronnie Reagan, if you can believe it, outspending the USSR, racking up a tremendous national debt, and ending the Cold War, to get the Russian Prime Minister, Gorbachev, to put “human rights” on the Soviet agenda.
But for Beijing, we want to outsource manufacturing, we want continued, if treacherous, investment; we want a jointly-held banking system; we want the benefit of cheaply produced clothing, food and electronics. We want the “marketplace to equalize all…”
Is it a neo-Lib pipe-dream? Is it Libertarianism run to Utopic delusion?
We’re finding out. Maybe. Maybe, not.