Fox News knows exactly who their audience is -- and it's not Asian Americans. The Asian American vote is overwhelmingly going to Hillary Clinton, and in a forfeit that only a playground bully would pull, the GOP-leaning network's response was to make fun of the people who will never have the poor judgement to watch their station or vote the way they want them to.
Their recent segment, which features correspondent Jesse Watters roaming the streets of New York City's Chinatown sort-of-but-not-really asking the public for their thoughts about the election, is bigotry to begin with. The whole thing was constructed from a place of smug detachment; there was never a handshake exchanged, but there were karate kicks, nunchuk swings and foot massages shown in an apparent homage to everything Asian the host could think to do and talk about, instead of actual issues. To a soundtrack of stereotypical gong and pop songs, it did not illuminate the audience to the area's culture, but rather pigeon-hole the real people on the streets as a caricature of Asian-ness, whatever ethnicity it may be. Fox News probably thought that they were protected from all the blatant ignorance and racism because of the fact that nobody in Chinatown was probably going to see it. They were wrong on so many levels.
With their broadcast -- and the crickets that the station gave about it even after the segment was blowing up with complaints -- Fox News demonstrated their complete ignorance of how today's media actually works. For a segment with no other agenda than to gently amuse its racist constitutents (host Bill O'Reilly later defended the piece as "gentle fun"), it received far more attention than bargained for. In the same way that the Communist Chinese government was wrong to think they could detain a Hong Kong teen protestor without causing widespread repute and hence spreading the dissident's message, Fox News seems to cling to an outdated ideology that they can contain their message, however repugnant to international audiences it may be. Or maybe they actually have no clue about their offense, that's how narrow-minded they are. But this is the shallow media of yesteryear, of controlling and insulating their audiences inside their narrow worlds -- so much so that they've even insulated themselves. This is also why Fox News' relevance continues to wane, reserved mostly for poking fun at on social media and by millennial-leaning broadcasts like The Daily Show.
No doubt, thanks to all the shares and deserved anger that this little segment received, it has garnered much more attention from Asian Americans than anything Fox News has probably produced in decades.
Fox News isn't smart. But then we knew that from the beginning. That they even thought to produce and air a story like this is telling of an immature, flippant attitude on the media. I worry for the time when networks with an agenda learn to use the sharing angle to their own benefit and to great effect, constructing ridiculous falsities that catch the attention of not just their own sneering base of bigots, but other people who fall into the trap of seeing it. Let's hope that then we will be all the more equipped to call it out. And even though Fox News has yet to issue a formal apology for this Chinatown segment, let's bet that the racist easy shots are way too purposeless to get past whoever the hell is in charge of looking at things before they air.
And just for good measure, relating "China" being mentioned twelve times during the first presidential debate with New York City's "Chinatown" is neither here nor there, although Bill O'Reilly gave a brief introduction to the segment equating the two. Perhaps nobody watching Fox News who didn't come across this bit from articles like these might care to know the difference. But many of them did. And that makes all the difference.