Letters to the Editor
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Nice One Joe
Joe Biden also has an accent, too. You can't get into the White House, Congress or Senate unless you have one. I'm not kidding.
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What Else is there to this Scandal?
Was Biden speaking to a group of people who are anti-Indian? It sounds like he was speaking to an Indian-American person.
Does Biden have a history of proposing or supporting legislation that somehow oppresses Indians or other minorities? Does Biden have a history of making racially offensive statements?
Is there a difference between a clearly non-bigotted person making light of racial stereo types and a bigotted person making insiteful statements?
I have no problem with Salon trying to prove that they are equal opportunity watch dogs, but try to pick something that has a little meat on it for crying out loud. You could write 50 stories like this a day in War Room if this is the standard of being news worthy.
Ken Mehlman over-seeing the sale of classified information to lobbyist Jack Abramoff does not equate to Joe Biden making an Indian-American 7-Eleven joke to an Indian-American.
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Even better...
I can't believe this didn't make it to your "I can't believe they said it" list...worse, is that this guy (Sen Stevens, Alaska) actually has sway over the issue of net neutrality --- and he donesn't come close to understanding what he's talking about...i copied this from blog.wired.com, but I am sure it's be reprinted.
"There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.
But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.
Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.
We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [¿]
The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [¿]
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?
Do you know why?
Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.
[¿]
Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.
Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.
It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.
The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.
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Candidates for Indian Stereotypes
Biden and Hillary should start a PAC: Presidential Candidates Who Embrace Indian Stereotypes. Remember Hillary's gaff a few years back when she "joked" that Mahatma Gandhi used to run a gas station outside of St. Louis?
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Biden's comment
As someone who lived in DE and helped to elect Biden to office the first time, I looked at this clip and wondered what the person thought was so offensive about it. I had also heard it crowed about yesterday on MSNBC, where it was made to sound so very offensive.
Well, the guy he is talking with seems to be ultra-supportive and does not seem phased by the comment. I realize that occasionally people rather laugh with someone to avoid being rude, but it sounds like (with the comments this Indian-American guy makes in the video) Biden has a very sound relationship with the Indian-Americans. It is not nearly as bad as anything coming out of Ann Coulter's mouth ANY time she opens it, and it feels just a little bit like nit-picking to me.
Besides, I love hearing the accents of Indian-Americans.
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acceptable sterotyping
Biden is not alone in this. It's very interesting that the only group that it is acceptable to stereotype and in some ways ridicule in this culture are people of asian and more specifically indian decent. I can point to numerous instances in the media, be it late night talk shows, cartoons or film where it is considered socially acceptable to fake a accent for humor. While I would'nt want to curb anyone's free speech, it's interesting that many people who would consider themselves quite open minded find humor in fairy negative stereotypes of indian-americans. As a second generation Indian american it's sometimes frustrating to explain why I sound the way I do instead of some western interpretation of an Indian accent.
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This is not a problem
In fact, if you listen to the comment, Biden was commenting on the industriousness and extremely entrepreneurial nature of Indians. He was commenting that they have a niche which they occupy very well.
Have you ever been in a cheap motel in CO, WY, NV, AZ, NM, and many other western states? They are almost all owned by Indians, and specifically by Patels. Why Patels? Because this large family/clan/tribe/group has identified this as a good niche market, because they sponsor immigration by relatives, because they provide apprenticeship training for new members.
So, when we go west, we stay in the Paki Motel Chain.