Fox News personality Jesse Watters is getting justifiably lambasted for his racist Chinatown man-on-the-street report.
But the harshest takedown may be the one delivered by “The Daily Show” correspondent Ronny Chieng on Thursday night’s broadcast.
“Everyone’s been wondering who’d be the target for the year’s worst racism,” Chieng said. “I didn’t even know Asians were in the running.”
Chieng, a comedian of Chinese descent raised in Malaysia, said he’s especially angry that Watters relied on references to Pat Morita’s “Miyagi” character from the original “Karate Kid” movie for laughs.
“That’s like me making fun of America for ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and Mr. T.,” Chieng said. “Real topical stuff, buddy.”
Chieng isn’t saying Asians can’t be the targets of humor, but he wants to raise the bar.
“If you want to come at Chinese people, make fun of China’s high pollution or the fact they censor most of the internet which, in this case, is a good thing, since no person in China will have to watch your garbage attempt at comedy.”
Watters has been the subject of internet scorn since his five-minute segment on Monday’s “O’Reilly Factor,” in which he asked Chinatown passersby such questions as:
“Is it the year of the dragon? Rabbit?”
“Do they call Chinese food in China just ‘food?’”
“Do you know karate?”
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