Purdue Northwest chancellor apologizes after mocking Asian languages
A university chancellor apologized after mocking Asian languages in his speech
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/16/1143222095/purdue-northwest-chancellor-mocks-asian-language
So much bullshit.
I mean to refer to the article.
People are wearing their goddamn feelings on their sleeves, waiting for ANY opportunity to pronounce their faux dismay and disgust at some inane remark made by anyone about anything for any reason.
The chancellor referred to a portion of the commencement speaker’s remarks which may be found beginning around the :52 mark, which in context, was his statement of a silly little game he played with his grandchildren, in which he used gibberish as a concocted foreign language — and indeed, demonstrated the same numerous times throughout his address, speaking to his family, who were in attendance on the front row, and to the greater audience.
Commencement speaker: James E. “Jack” Dedelow, WJOB Radio and Founder, JEDTV
“I wanna’ first thank my family that gets to sit in the front row here, and I’ll just mention them, because when you give a speech, you gotta’ always do that, and sometimes you forget.
My wife Alexis — gave the commencement four years ago, my daughter Jackie and Tommy… my dad who went here in the late ’50s.
My son Steve, my granddaughter Lois is there.
Genie Viegal… yes, there she is.
We have a special thing, I’m supposed to play this straight, but ah… I have a thing on the air, if you ever listen.
I sometimes just roll off into a made up language, and I’ve taught it to my granddaughter, so if she starts crying, or this baby over here [gestures to his RIGHT] starts crying, I have something for them. It’s the ishgamaloofka language, and hopefully I don’t have to use it.
[continues remarks… looks to his LEFT — interrupts his remarks 58:53 with gibberish, gestures with LEFT hand as exclaiming]
Adama noris mo adis mor nisti!
[asks his family w grandchild]
Is the kid gonna’ stop?
See?
Did you see that?
Just try that!
[points with LEFT index finger to grandchild]
Just go in the shower and make up a fake language and use it on your kids. It works great.
[continues remarks, turns to LEFT and addresses his father]
My dad here, in 1959, 1960 — he’s right here. He looks… well, ah… I can say this:
[points with LEFT finger, breaks out in gibberish exclaiming]
Hadama mañyerist nor amnisti!
See?
Did you see that?
My dad here played basketball and baseball at PNW.
And he still does it today at the age of 83.
[remarks continue, and he again utters gibberish]
[upon conclusion of his remarks, he seats himself, chancellor returns to podium]
Well.. all I can say is ‘homja yayiyom, [turns to commencement speaker] bye arr.
That’s my Asian version of his… his ah…
Here’s the odd, even perverse thing about NPR’s reporting on that particular story — and it speaks, in my opinion — about fundamental hypocrisy.
But, there’s an even greater, even grotesquely bitter irony, one that many may have overlooked, including the author of the article — who, in that piece, injected her opinion — a CARDINAL sin in reporting. It was, in fact, an article wholly written about HER OPINION of one minuscule, picayune, so infinitesimally minute, and inconsequential thing, that, had it not been for the HEADLINE BLASTING HER OPINION, few, if any, would have read it.
But she, and NPR, understand what William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer understood quite well many years ago: Yellow Journalism gets people’s attention. Salacious garbage sells. In broadcast lingo, viewership and audience is colloquially termed “eyes on the set.” And today, in the online Internet realm, it’s called “clickbait.”
What’s saddening, is that the author most definitely has an impressive professional journalistic resume, and a first-class education, having “graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, where she was a fully funded Roy H. Park Fellow.” So, she most DEFINITELY knows better.
Naturally, there’ll always be people who are looking for something negative to write about, and this was no exception. The university’s Associate Vice Chancellor, Kris Falzone, spoke with the Chronicle of Higher Education and said that media outlets had blown out of proportion the Chancellor’s brief utterance by saying that, “Chancellor Keon was reacting to something that the speaker had said, and it was taken out of context.”
Citing statistics provided by Purdue, the author wrote, “Purdue University Northwest reportedly accepted one of its largest and most racially diverse classes of first-time freshmen this year. A combined 2.7 percent of students identify as Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, according to the university.”
The United States Census Bureau states that Indiana’s demographic profile consists of 3.7% AAPI individuals who are broken down into subgroups as follows:
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent 0.4%
Asian alone, percent 2.7%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent 0.1%
So, a 2.7% student body population, and a 3.7% state population are statistically insignificant, insofar as there’s only 1% difference between the two figures. But, if one genuinely wants to split hairs, that’s a 31.25% difference between the two figures. But again, as a reflection of that segment of the state’s demographics, it’s insignificant — de minimis.
If the NPR article’s author, Giulia Heyward, had bothered to watch the entire video (I do not know if she did, or did not), she would have heard Mr. Dedelow explain the reason why he does what he does — having given up a lucrative job and seats on the Chicago Board of Trade, to buy a radio station, change his cell phone number, and begin a new career path. His remarks in full, in that context, begin at the 1:04:54 mark:
“This is the part where I tell you guys something meaningful. And I’m 60 years old, I lived in a commune, I traded at the Board of Trade for 18 years. I’ve been on the radio and built a media network. And I’ve lived a life, quite frankly, of debauchery at just about all of those levels.
But I do wanna’ tell you why I sit there every day.
I get up everyday at 4 o’clock, I ride my bike over there. Sometimes Read the rest of this entry »