It was only a matter of time until something like this happened to Don Imus. It’s what happens when you put someone so old and out of touch behind a microphone every morning. Last Wednesday, the day after the Rutgers women’s basketball team lost the NCAA championship, Imus called the team a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” Monday, CBS Radio, who carries the nationally-syndicated Imus program, and MSNBC who broadcasts the video of his show suspended the disc jockey for two weeks. I suppose this was appropriate, and Tuesday the I-Man told reporters that he believed his punishment fit the crime. What he said about the black girls on the Rutgers basketball team pretty much struck every politically correct nerve I have in my body. He went way over the line arbitrarily drawn for radio disc jockeys. However, there are two interesting aspects of this story that jump out at me. First, Imus made the remarks on his Wednesday broadcast. The media waited about 4 days before the backlash began. Why did no one care when it happened? And why did it take so long for people to jump on Imus? And second, Imus went on Al Sharpton’s radio show to, I guess, publicly apologize to the black community. Who died and made Al Sharpton the arbiter of racial justice? Don’t forget this guy called Hasidic Jews “diamond merchants” during the Tawana Brawley ordeal. Nobody should legitimize Al Sharpton by using his radio show as a platform for forgiveness. But most important, as Imus explained to Reverend Al, Imus has a comedy show. Nobody calls for Chris Rock’s head when he uses the n-word in his HBO specials or characterizes white people in a demeaning way. Imus should not be held to the same standards to which America holds its politicians or journalists. While his words were terrible, it would be crazy if Imus were fired. He went too far with a joke and should be given the same chance to redeem himself as we owe anyone else. Anyone who listens to “Imus in the Morning” knows that there exists a racial undercurrent to his show. It may not be right, but this is the show. And in the same way Americans have the choice to not pay to see George Lopez, Sarah Silverman or Dave Chappelle make racial jokes, radio listeners can always just change the dial.

 
Correction: In my original post, I claimed Sharpton referred to New York City as “Hymietown.” Thanks to commentator Nat for pointing out that this was Jesse Jackson and not Al Sharpton. Sharpton called the Jews “diamond merchants.” I wonder why I got these two confused. Thanks Nat.

•AP: Imus Calls Suspension ‘Appropriate’
•SF Chronicle: What Was Imus Thinking?

Who ever said Chinese state television sucked? I mean besides me. Well, besides me or anyone who has ever watched Chinese state television. I actually do watch my y CCTVs. There’s CCTV 9, or as I like to call “The Niner,” which is the only English station in China. This one has some news, travel shows and a weatherman with some sort of substance abuse problem and a really odd sense of fashion. Then there’s CCTV 5, the state sports channel, that should be named “The Chinese Women’s Volleyball Network.” And then the rest is all dry Chinese-language programming that is neither provocative nor evocative nor, worst of all, funny. But there may be some hope yet for some original and interesting programming on state television. Xinhua reported Tuesday that last weekend, CCTV began filming a 40-part series on the life of Chinese martial arts legend Bruce Lee. “The Legend of Bruce Lee” began shooting in Shunde, the south China town where Lee’s Chinese father and grandfather were born. Producers plan on filming parts of the biopic in Hong Kong and in the US as well. The series, which will cost 50 million yuan (USD$6.4 million) to produce, is set to air before the Olympics so that “the drama will spread Bruce Lee’s ‘never give up’ spirit during the Olympic 2008,” said Danny Chen, the actor playing Lee in the series. China wanted the Olympic committee to add kung fu as an event in the 2008 Beijing games, but the request was denied. I guess you’ll just have to do the unthinkable and actually tune in to CCTV if you want to watch some kung fu in 2008.

•Xinhua: China Shoots TV Plays on Kung Fu Master Bruce Lee

One in every ten couples in China faces infertility problems, and smoking, stress and pollution are to blame says a report released Monday out of Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. Researchers were surprised to find that university students selected as part of a fertility study were shooting blanks at an alarming rate. The author of the report told a group at Jiao Tong, “A certain percentage of the sperm donated by seemingly healthy college boys to our sperm bank in Shanghai is not eligible in terms of sperm count or motility.” Reproductive experts are fearful that in a country with half of Asia’s old people, an infertility problem would create a sociological and economical crisis in the coming years. While clearly cigarettes, poor air quality and stress all play a role in procreative problems, perhaps China’s stance on abortion factors into the problem of infertility more than some bad batches of sperm. Reuters, in a story Monday, mentions that women that have multiple abortions, not a rarity here, show much higher rates of infertility. Perhaps, facing an aging population crisis, the old policies that controlled population do not fit today’s high-paced economy-driven culture. And if not for that, then China should aim to fix fertility for a different reason– to ensure the survival of China’s coolest demographic– the babies.

•Reuters: Pollution, Stress Blamed for Poor China Sperm Count

Someone once said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And with the two new YouTube-inspired video services that have recently hit the net, the founders of YouTube must be pretty flattered. The model is simple: make a video, upload a video, have the world watch your video. But until three former PayPal employees created the YouTube service in 2005, the internet had not yet realized the full potential of video sharing on the web. And nowadays, new video sites aim to exploit the YouTube model to target a more specified demographic. GodTube, founded in January by a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, is the crazy Christian version of YouTube. While YouTube’s slogan is “Broadcast Yourself,” GodTube uses “Broadcast Him.” So clever. GodTube specializes in funny videos about Jesus, church, holidays, abstinence, creationism, Satan and pretty much anything else relating to the Christian experience in America. Rivaling the religious video site is another YouTube offshoot called YouPorn. It is practically identical to GodTube except the only clips involving Jesus are videos with Latino men with the Spanish name “Jesus” engaging in some sort of lewd sex. That’s because YouPorn, created in August, is all porn all the time, the triple-x version of Google’s YouTube. While YouTube shies away from pornographic content, YouPorn encourages it, so much so that the site shys away from everything that isn’t porn. YouPorn’s vast pornographic library (I did a painstaking amount of research for this post) mixes commercial porno clips and users’ own amateur videos. Similar to YouTube, YouPorn displays its content based on number of views and how recent the clip was added to the site. Thursday’s top clips included “Oriental Hoes Part 1,” a video involving a baseball bat and “Gurkenfick.” According to Alexa.com, a site that ranks web traffic, the porno site gets about 5 times the traffic as the Christian site. Thus, while Jesus may be America’s God of choice, on the web, porn is still king.

•Times Online: Christians Have the Laughs
•The Big Picture: YouPorn!

The Chinese government has told the producers of China’s version of “American Idol” to cut the weirdness out. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television released strict guidelines for the upcoming “Happy Boys Voice,” the male version of the popular ‘Idol’-like “Super Girls Voice” that aired in 2005. Before I get to the guidelines, is that not the gayest-sounding name for a television show? “Happy Boys Voice?” It probably doesn’t sound so gay in Chinese. The SARFT said in a memo to Hunan TV that there should be “no weirdness, no vulgarity, no low taste” in “Happy Boys Voice” when it airs in May. The government also said the show should only feature “healthy and ethically inspiring songs” that do not result in screaming fans or losing contestants crying. Also, judges have been banned from mocking contestants and the host must speak of the contestants’ “inspiring stories rather than indulge in displays of poor taste.” So basically, this show will be nothing like “American Idol”– no screaming fans, no mocking by judges and nothing in poor taste. Look at this photo above of Sanjaya from “American Idol” and tell me what about this image is not in poor taste. Though he might be better served on a show called “Happy Boys Voice,” he would never make it due to his wild hair and the high likelihood of him crying like a baby when America finally votes him off. Although the finale of “Super Girls Voice” drew 400 million viewers (not only more than any episode of “American Idol” but more than all of America), the Chinese program was said to be indicative of declining moral standards and promoted the illusion of instant celebrity. Now that sounds like “American Idol.”

•Xinhua: Strict Rules Set to Rein in Reality TV Show

Update (4/6/07): While I sympathize with the two commentators who were dismayed that they were unable to see the Thai king video, maybe if you had visited the site on the day the clip was posted, you would have gotten to see it. The site is called “Flumes-day,” not “Flumes-every few days.” For those of you who are wondering why the video is “no longer available,” there is an answer. The video and the account of “paddidda,” the user who posted the video, have mysteriously vanished from YouTube as of Thursday. Here is an article in Thursday’s Bangkok Post:

The offensive slideshow video of His Majesty the King that triggered the government ban on YouTube disappeared from the video-sharing website on Thursday afternoon, and the anonymous user who posted it was banned.
When trying to access the 44-second video on the King, a notice on YouTube said that, “This video has been removed by the user.”
Meanwhile, the video site said of the user who uploaded the video under an alias of “paddidda”: “This account is closed.”
The video could still be found in some YouTube searches, but could not be played. In less than five days, the video was played more than 66,000 times, almost all of them after the sensational publicity created by Information and Communication Technology Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom and his order to ban YouTube inside Thailand.
It attracted at least 953 comments, almost all of them attacking the video, and most of them rude.
Presumably, full access to YouTube will be resumed, although most Thai users who wanted to see the video had seen it despite the occasionally effective “filtering” of the video site.

What’s with Google and censoring its international content? For a company whose slogan is “do no evil,” they sure do enable these governments around the world to censor the web. First, it was China with the censored search results on Google.cn and now they roll over when the Thai government doesn’t like a a few yuks at the king’s expense. Perhaps there is a new evil empire in the tech world.

Wednesday’s Post:
The Thai “government” has blocked access to YouTube in response to Google’s refusal to remove a clip mocking the country’s much loved monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Basically, the video is 44 seconds of pure ridicule– first it portrays the king as a clown, then with a beer bottle in his hand and then, the most offensive part: the king is shown with a pair of women’s feet above his head (gasp). Apparently, in Thailand, a pair of women’s feet is the lowest part of the human body, and for Thais, placing feet above the king’s head is like the equivalent of slapping a nun at the Vatican. Thailand’s communications minister told Reuters that YouTube had expressed to the Thai government that they didn’t find the clip offensive enough to remove it. And I must say, I’m with YouTube on this one. The clip is just foolish, not funny or offensive really, and not at all worth getting bent out of shape over. Luckily I live in China, where I am free to say what I want, when I want, where I want. About the Thai king anyway. Here’s the clip:

The always excellent Deadspin.com reported Tuesday on the fate of 2007 New England Patriots Chinese Cheerleader Swimsuit Calendar, one of the many Chinese-themed items offered to “celebrate the Patriots historic trip to China in 2007.” Except the Patriots are no longer making any historic trip to China in 2007 as their August 7th game against the Seattle Seahawks in Beijing was cancelled by the NFL Monday. So the cheerleaders will just have to sit tight and stay tight so they can fit into those swimsuits in 2009, when the rescheduled game will be played. Something that Deadspin didn’t note in its post is the strange description of the calendar at the Pats’ online store. First it says your typical bullshit description: “The 2007 New England Patriots Chinese Cheerleader Calendar is now available! This beautiful, reversible calendar features two Patriots Cheerleaders per month in high quality full color images blah blah blah.” And then in bold lettering, it says, “This special Chinese edition also has special photo inserts of each cheerleader in full uniform, not included in the regular calendar version!” What? What kind of sickos do the Patriots think Chinese men are? Why would special photo inserts of hot young cheerleaders in full football uniforms be some added bonus for Chinese dudes? For a Chinese guy thinking of paying the $19.95, will the girls in full pads push him over the edge? If they want to make the Swimsuit calendar more “Chinese,” I suggest making all the girls dress in one-piece bathing suits and not smile in any of the photos.

•Deadspin: The Sad Aftereffect of the Chinese NFL Cancellation
•Patriots ProShop China Collection

As the greatest scientific minds in the world once believed the world to be flat, we know that what we commonly believe to be a scientific truth is not always true. This week, Chinese scientists have cause to question the Out of Africa theory, the widely-accepted scientific theory that all modern human life originated in Africa and spread outward. The “Tianyuan skeleton” was found in 2003 in the Tianyuan cave in the outskirts of Beijing. The findings were published Monday in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The skeleton was found to be between 42,000 to 38,500 years old making it the oldest modern human skeleton ever found in China and one of the oldest securely dated findings anywhere in the world. According to Science Daily, the modern human characteristics of this skeleton, and younger skeletons similar to this found in East Asia, suggest that the first modern humans in Asia were not the same humans that dispersed from Africa. There is now reason to believe that modern man (and woman) originated in China. The Out of Africa theory contends that archaic humans spread to China 60,000 years ago and replaced the local population there. Wu Xinzhi, a scientist for the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleonanthropology, said “The Tianyuan skeleton is the earliest and the first secured dated fossil of modern humans across eastern Eurasia. The finding provides strong evidence that such entire replacement was impossible.” So if China is where it all started, it will be a serious blow to Africa, which somewhat revels in being the birthplace of humanity. And also, if China was, in fact, where the first modern humans roamed the earth, then it becomes much clearer why I get stared at so much here. I look like a mutant.

•Science
Daily: China’s Earliest Modern Human

This is one of the strangest videos you’ll ever see. It’s Alanis Morissette singing a poignant version of “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas. She’s dressed like a standard video whore and actually looks kind of good that way. My favorite part is when, over some very somber piano, Alanis belts out, “What you gonna do with all that breast, all that breast inside that shirt.” Good one, Alanis.