The Fox News Channel show "The O'Reilly Factor" has been under attack this past week for airing a Chinatown edition of the "Watters' World" segment that many people have been calling "vile," "racist," "xenophobic," and other brutally blunt terms. If you watch it, you'll probably understand why.
The whole segment is what would be called "cringe-worthy," from the kitschy introduction and jarring movie clips to "Kung Fu Fighting" playing in the background. It takes on a mocking tone, fueled by tired stereotypes.
It doesn't help that the only reason the segment took place in New York's Chinatown is because China was mentioned 12 times in the first Presidential Debate.
When Jesse Waters isn't making jokes at the expense of older, non-native speakers who can't respond due to the language barrier or have heavy accents, he's making insensitive comments.
"Can you take care of North Korea for us?" he asks, when the woman he's interviewing says that US-China relations are positive.
My biggest problem with the segment, however, is how alienating it is towards Asian-Americans. Grouping all Asians-Americans into one big monolithic community, talking to us as if we're visitors instead of actual American citizens, and drawing negative attention to our command of the English language (or rather, the lack thereof) is downright ignorant.
While show host Bill O'Reilly calls it "gentle fun," and passes it off as edgy, political humor, the only fun that can be taken from it is that the people at Fox don't seem to know the difference between kung fu, karate, and taekwondo, which all originated in different countries.
If they wanted to make a tasteful segment, it really would not have taken much to send a Chinese-American correspondent that Chinatown inhabitants could find relatable and with whom elderly Chinese people could actually talk to.
Since then, Jesse Watters has responded to outrage with an apology, although many still find it lacking.
My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense.
— Jesse Watters (@jessebwatters) October 5, 2016
Hopefully, "The O'Reilly Factor" — and on a bigger scale, the Fox News Channel — will learn from their mistake and offer better representation for our diverse nation.
