divided we CAN'T

This article comes from the Asian-American magazine called Hyphen. i haven't posted anything political...but i think everyone knows where i stand. This recent finding just adds to why we need Barack Obama's leadership to guide this country back in the right [that's in correct] direction.

Why No Outcry Over McCain's Use of 'Gook'?

Written by Elaine Low

Friday, 24 October 2008

When rumor spread back in June that Michelle Obama had once uttered “whitey” in a rant captured on tape, the mainstream media and blogosphere alike went wild with speculation. Assured that this would be a blow to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, many waited with bated breath for evidence of the racial slur to surface. Today, with less than two weeks to Election Day, the incriminating tape has yet to surface, though whispers of the unfounded gossip still manage to make the rounds on cable news cycles. Yet Sen. Obama’s opponent, Sen. John McCain, who in 2000 once said, “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live” (to a reporter on his campaign bus, no less), hasn’t received half the scrutiny for an out-and-out racial slur that he uttered on the record. Though he eventually apologized for the anti-Asian remark, it appears to have had little negative effect on his campaign and is all but forgotten now. But as Huffington Post writer Raymond Leon Roker notes in his Oct. 20 column, the next president of the United States would have to engage in dialogue with a dozen Asian countries. Under a McCain presidency, open-minded interaction may prove difficult if, as the original San Francisco Chronicle story quotes McCain as saying, “gook is the kindest appellation [he] can give.” So why hasn’t the slur been better documented by the press? Straight Talk, Slur Talk In response to the buried non-scandal, Asian American scholar Irwin Tang recently published “Gook: John McCain’s Racism And Why It Matters,” a book “that goes through [McCain’s] history of voting records, statements, speeches and endorsements, and his personal and political life when it comes to race and war.” According to Tang, McCain has “disturbing attitudes that have stretched through most of his life” and has been unable to reconcile his experience serving in the Vietnam War with his present-day views on race. “It’s shocking to readers,” says Tang, who identifies as an independent, “since they don’t want to believe at first that McCain is connected to so many seemingly racist policies.” He cites McCain’s votes against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 and against the establishment of Martin Luther King Day in 1983 (and an attempt to rescind MLK Day in Arizona after it was created), as well as a 1973 first-hand account of the war in U.S. News and World Report, in which McCain uses the word “gook” no fewer than 12 times. Tang’s book also points out a few of McCain’s affiliations that have gone overlooked, reporting that the Republican senator actively campaigned in 2006 for George Wallace Jr., son of segregationist and former governor of Alabama, George Corley Wallace. Wallace Jr. made numerous speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that openly opposes “homosexuality and other perversions, [and] mixture of the races” in its list of principles. Except a reader post from political blog Talking Points Memo, that particular affiliation has gone mostly unnoticed. When the press does mention McCain’s slurs, it does so in passing. In another U.S. News and World Report story, this one published in 1999, journalist Roger Simon quotes McCain as saying “And then the goddamn gooks came into the cell and took three of my stars out!" during the retelling of a Vietnam war story. Simon then proceeds to write, “John McCain says ‘gooks,’ and who is going to tell him not to?” with all the jovial dismissal of a “Boys will be boys.” Among the Right’s charges against the “elite liberal news media” is that Obama has become the mainstream media darling, a perk McCain himself used to enjoy during his 2000 campaign. But even the liberal media have largely failed to explore this particular issue. The term “gook” is as offensive to Asian Americans as the “n-word” is to African Americans. Had McCain even accidentally—let alone deliberately—used the “n-word” or any similar racial slur, his campaign surely would have taken the Straight Talk Express straight to electoral defeat. So Who Is the Real Media Darling? In elaborating on McCain’s past uses of the racial epithet “gook” and his own seemingly suspect affiliations, the point is not to smear the presidential candidate but to question why the mainstream news media, which has so meticulously combed through Obama’s history of gaffes, has barely looked at McCain’s. Though the “gook” quote is over eight years old, the media has had few qualms about digging into deep background this election season. Senator Barack Obama’s ties to former Weather Underground member William Ayers are being rehashed and robo-called to death (they served on a foundation board and on a University of Chicago panel in 1997), and Ayers’ actions are being retried by the public all over again (the University of Illinois at Chicago college professor was once part of the radical anti-war group over 40 years ago in the 1960s). Why dig up every past interaction between Sen. Obama and Ayers, but not between McCain and George Wallace Jr.? Why spend such an absurd amount of time covering McCain’s ambiguous utterance of “that one” but not his blatant use of the slur “gook” (or for that matter, allegedly using the misogynistic “N-word” at his wife)? Tang says his book has sold scarcely over 300 copies, and one has to dig through newspaper archives to find out more about the McCain slur. But a Google search for “Michelle Obama whitey” leads to over 140,000 search hits, compared to “John McCain gook,” which only returns 65,100 hits. A feverish rumor rakes in almost twice as many results as a documented slur, and Obama’s alleged “whitey” comment continues to be provoked and debunked and provoked again as recently as two weeks ago. If Ayers and Michelle Obama’s purported slur are relevant to assessing who should become the next leader of the free world, then why not McCain’s repeated use of an offensive racial epithet? Perhaps this will be seen as gratuitous nitpicking in the days leading up to the election, but considering that the next administration will need to deal delicately and open-mindedly with foreign policy in Asia and the Middle East (not to mention a growing minority population at home), isn’t this nit worth being picked?