The bullying anti-Asian racism of Fox News’s “Watters’ World”

[teach1st]

The bullying anti-Asian racism of Fox News’s “Watters’ World”
The New Yorker, Jiayang Fan, 10/6/16

The past year has not exactly been a good one for Asian-Americans. Back during the Republican primaries, fear-mongering politicians talked about Asian immigrants and their “anchor babies” in a way that portrayed an entire race as opportunists thronging to exploit America and its resources on behalf of their offspring. After predicating his campaign on deranged anti-immigrant rhetoric, the Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, gleefully mocked the Chinese and Japanese using broken, accented English during a campaign rally in Iowa. In August, he included Filipinos on a list of potentially terrorist immigrants and said, “We’re dealing with animals.” (There were also North Africans and Middle Easterners on his list.) During the first Presidential debate, China was mentioned twelve times, mostly by Trump, as a threat and hindrance to America’s growth.

Then, on Monday night, Fox News ran a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” that Bill O’Reilly, the show’s host, called “gentle fun.” It was so relentlessly odious and flagrantly racist that if you were a Chinese immigrant, like me (I came to America when I was eight years old, and am now a citizen), you began to wonder, with a twist of dread, if prejudice had somehow become infectious. How many of my fellow-Americans were laughing at the bigotry along with O’Reilly and his perennial sidekick, Jesse Watters?

This is not the first time that Watters, a Fox News reporter with a Stifler-esque swagger who does not tend to break actual news but has repeatedly praised Trump as the “winning” guy, has targeted minority communities. Back in April, he visited Harlem, ostensibly to investigate the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s success among black voters. He ended up posing hard-hitters like “Are there any downsides to having a woman President?” “Watters’ World,” as his man-on-the-street segment is called, seems an appropriate title for a correspondent who seems insistent on inflicting himself and his world views upon hapless strangers.

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[SunSeeker]

1. Racist bullying. I saw some of the stomach-churning clips.

They even picked on an elderly asian woman who clearly did not understand what they were saying due to language difficulties. Yet she still managed a friendly smile for them. And what did they do in return? They spliced in mocking videos of people making fun of how long it was taking for her to answer. Just appalling.

[Midnight Writer]

2. To be "fair and balanced", Watters is a total ass hole to everyone. Lots of editing in his "World".