Another important issue I want to address is how mainstream media stars deal with race in either their TV shows or stand up acts. These videos are often shown on YouTube and also bring about interesting discussion topics in the comments written bellow. A topic that is often brought up is the stereotype that all Asians are good at school. The three comedians standup / tv skits I want to focus on are "Average Asian" with Bobby Lee “ YouTube Link”(click here to see it), Carlos Mencia talking about smart Asians (click here to see it), and "Margaret Cho - Asian-American" from "The One That I Want" (click here to see it). All three of them are famous comedians dealing with the race issue. The MadTV skit with Bobby Lee goes through many different stereotypes that a teenage Asian boy has to deal with. In this episode, Bobby’s character has people cheat on him in a test, forced to play music and take pictures, and in the end he crashes his car which shows he is a bad driver. Many people just find this funny but it is scary because others actually take this as fact which perpetuates stereotypes. In Carlos Mencia’s standup comedy act he talks about how Asians are good at tests but also sheds some light on why Asians tend to do better in school. He brings up the fact that Asian parents often have higher expectations of their children and how even from the first day of school the pressure is on to do well. After being relatively nice to them he goes on to make fun of their driving just like most standup comedians “wtf is a car Asian kryptonite”. He then goes on to say “God … gave you Asians great fucking minds and a hard work ethics but a little dick … see how that balances out.”
The last comedian I want to bring up in this project is Margaret Cho. In our class we read her biography and studied her stand up comedy. We were even able to meet and listen to her talk to our class. In this comedy act she brings up many issues of race that she has dealt with over the years. The first thing she brings up is that some newscasters wanted her to address the public in her native language (assuming that it was different then English) and so she of course said the line in English probably to their surprise. She also talks about meeting her fiancés family and how she was the only Asian in the room. She said they were too nice to her. In a sterotypical Asian accent she says,“this is my host family, I come to America (bowing along the way) America is number one”. She then goes on to say that “it was the most Long Duk Dong experience” which is another funny throwback to the "Sixteen Candles" movie that we saw for this class.