The Council of Korean Americans Tuesday joined other Asian American groups in blasting Jay Leno for his recent joke about dog eating Koreans.
“These narratives put forth by Mr. Leno are offensive and propagate false perceptions of Asian Americans as suspicious, uncivilized foreigners engaging in repugnant practices. Despite repeated requests by Asian American advocacy groups to stop these pernicious statements, Mr. Leno has remained undeterred,” the group said in a statement.
Last week, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans called on NBC to severe ties with Leno. Jay Leno’s Garage airs on NBC’s business network, CNBC. John Yang of Asian Americans Advancing Justice called Leno a repeat offender with a long history of offending Asian Americans.
The joke which never made air was uttered during a taping of America’s Got Talent. It only came to light after Gabrielle Union spoke about the toxic culture on the set of the program.
Union, who has been fired as a judge on the reality program, has drawn praise from many on the red carpets of Hollywood to social media.
“I mean, the only way change happens is if people speak up It’s an industry that tries to make women and women of color stay in their lane, and I think we’ve gotta veer out of our lanes sometimes. We have to lift each other up,” Constance Wu told Variety at the Unforgettable Gala. “I really admire her for everything she did and everything I know she’s going to do.”
“I mean it’s really about the fact that we all face the same struggle,” said actor Simu Liu who will star in Marvel’s first Asian superhero movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. “I think so many of us have grown up feeling othered.”
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RE: Council of Korean Americans denounces Jay Leno. Asian American celebrities in solidarity with Gabrielle Union: Over a million dogs are raised for human consumption yearly in Korea. Seriously, I hope Asian Americans have a sense of humor and are not part of “denouncing” Jay Leno. Crazy world we live in now, where it takes so little for feelings to get hurt.
The 1 million figure you quote is on the high end of the estimate from animal rights groups. Even if true, there are 51 million people in South Korea. So basically that’s 2 percent of the South Korean population. That’s about the same percentage of sexually active people in the US who participate in kink sexual activities in the U.S, Yet, deviant sexual behavior isn’t the narrative about the American population-is it? We don’t need someone like Jay Leno to tell our stories. The argument that if its true, then its OK doesn’t have merit. Please keep things in perspective
Council of Korean American denounces Jay Leno. Asian American celebrities join in solidarity with Gabrielle Union: Randall – actually I picked the lower number that I googled, and that was just dogs raised for the purpose, I’m sure there are many more. Did you know that during the Olympics the government asked restaurants to remove dog from the menus? (they did). You bring up “deviant sexual behavior” and you tell me to keep things in perspective! How is that even remotely relative? Also, how would YOU define “kink”? You are way off the subject.
Of all comics, Jay Leno is about as softball as they come and treats everyone relatively equal (except he might be a little harder on Italians). Anyway, it’s just humor, not serious, don’t be offended so easily, ignore it or offer your opinion and move on, instead of trying to tear someone down.
Thanks for the exchange and best regards,
RE: Council Of Korean American denounces Jay Leno. Asian American celebrities join in solidarity with Gabrielle Union:
I don’t know what you’re googling since you don’t cite a source. My one million figure comes from this article in wikipedia which clearly states the consumption of dogs in South Korea is declining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat_consumption_in_South_Korea. My point is kink (defined for these purposes as BDSM) is more common in the United States than the rest of the world. See this article from the Smithsonian Institute. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/americans-are-more-bdsm-rest-world-180949703/
Why is that relevant? Because you and a few others seem to think that Leno’s joke is ok because dog eating is real. So is BDSM. But yet, you don’t see comedians making jokes about BDSM in the US, do you?
RE: Council of Korean Americans denounces Jay Leno. Asian American celebrities join in solidarity with Gabrielle Union: Proud of Gabrielle she stood up to intimidation and bullying and low key bigotry! How many of us can say that if the joke was about blacks?