reflections from self...
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In the spirit of celebrating our founding fathers, a quote from one of them struck my eye..." I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men..." I know you all have your own opinions to share like old Ben...what do you think is the 2010-esque ending to the above sentence in 10 words or less? The best responses will be featured in the next newsletter...
Happy 4th!
so what's new?
Guindians.
Since India or Pakistan never qualified for World Cup, and USA got kicked out after some very spirited games, what keep us desis not rooting for Netherlands excited? Fear not, Joel Stein steps in... So who is Joel Stein, and why hasn't his writings previously evoked so much furor? If you have been following events for the last few days, and/or happen to be marginally connected to the net/FB/desi email lists, you know that Stein wrote a piece in Time magazine about his hometown, Edison, NJ, and how it has been overrun by desis. The piece itself is mediocre, the only spark being the term "Guindians"...(you have to read the article, but if you have ever wanted a Jersey Blowout, you know what he is talking about). However, the trick which the Joelster, and maybe his editor at Time, played was playing on raw sentiments of desis - the story was making headlines on facebook, with every desi outfit worth its SAALT (sorry!) jumping in...petitions, magazine subscription cancellations, letters to the editors...you name it, just short of death threats...and what does the Joel Man get? Tons of free publicity...and a spike in people visiting Time.com...
If you have followed Stein's previous musings, like the one on Borat, you will notice a pattern..."That's Baron Cohen's awesome trick: preying on the fear, fascination and, most of all, patronization of the other--the foreigner, the rapper, the gay guy. For the trick to work, we have to believe that other countries are so inferior, it's plausible that their citizens would wash their faces in the toilet..."
So could it be that he is using the lessons from Borat...?
...or as Kal Penn puts it, "Critics might call Mr. Stein's humor super-tired or as played out as the jokes about that cheap Jewish car that stopped on a dime to pick it up, or that African American kid who got marked absent at night school. Although unlike Stein's Indian American piece, in 2010 those other jokes don't show up in mainstream media like Time Magazine. I wonder why that is..."
...and this, just when we were getting over the non-Asian lead casting of Prince of Persia!
On another enlightening note, "Anakin Skywalker's eventual transformation into Darth Vader might have more to do with psychological issues than the Force, researchers hint.
The tragic hero of the "Star Wars" prequels displays patterns of instability and impulsivity in the second and third films that make him an obvious candidate for borderline personality disorder (BPD), according to French psychiatrists and psychologists...
...The future Darth Vader would also still qualify as a "borderline type" under the revised guidelines of the DSM-V, which will serve as the new bible for psychiatry."
Wow! I gotta go eat some tomatoes now, and figure out if Jai and Veeru had any BPD...
Till next time...
The DFW Desi
Joel Stein's piece used just enough self-deprecating humor (talking about his own non-Indian shoplifting friends) as a smokescreen to allow his piece to slip by the Time editors. But even then the Time editors should have objected since Joel is in effect creating a moral equivalency between legal Indian immigrants and illegal teenage activities.
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