For my op-ed pitch, I am going to write about the uproar of protest after the Jesse Watters segment in Chinatown. Jesse Watters, a Bill O’Reilly commentator that has his own segment called “Watters World”, ventured to Chinatown after Bill O Reilly claimed the word utilized the most in the second Presidential debate was China. O Reilly sent Watters to investigate the political awareness of residents in Chinatown.
Not only did Watters mix up the segment with movie clips from The Karate Kid and Chinatown, he indulged into asian stereotypes by asking a vendor “is that watch hot” as well as going around practicing karate, receiving a message and putting subtitles on the bottom of the individuals that he interviewed.
The people that stopped to do his interview on political awareness in the Election were either English speakers with an accent or individuals that didn’t speak English at all. The scenes that provoked most Asian Americans were the interviews of the old man and woman. The interviews were separate but had the same content. Both interviewees didn’t know English and it was evident with their silence. Instead of cutting that out of national television, they decided to have a “lighthearted segment” of silence with an additional clip of a woman shouting “Speak!” and sounds of grasshoppers.
I am going to contact Mr. Wellington Chen of CPLDC (Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation) and schedule a meeting with him, because he has a lot of initiatives and ideas pertaining the whole situation that developed.
