Going Beyond the Cover

PHOTO BY JUDY PARKS

Julie Lee grimly holds up a photograph of herself and SFNA leader Rose Tsai, center, that was altered to show the two in aprons serving up Willie Brown's head on a platter. With them is the Rev. Arnold Townsend, a friend of Brown's.

Accusations, threats surface after newspaper hits stands

BY BERT ELJERA

Two Asian American women recently featured on the cover of a local weekly said they have received threats and have asked the San Francisco Police Department to investigate.

At a press conference last Thursday, Rose Tsai and Julie Lee, leaders of the San Francisco Neighbors Association (SFNA), said they received the threats days after the SF Weekly featured their images as part of a photo illustration for its March 25-31 issue.

The digitally produced illustration portrayed Tsai and Lee in aprons holding the head of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown on a platter with an apple stuffed in his mouth. Critics said the characterization was "racist" and an indication of SFNA's growing hostility toward the mayor.

But Tsai said to blame her group for the cover is ridiculous. "It was extremely disturbing and in bad taste," she said of the cover photo. "But we respect the freedom of the press. We had absolutely no part in the portrayal of the cover and content of the story."

She said SF Weekly put an exaggerated spin on SFNA's policy differences with Brown. The two have clashed before, most notably over the successful initiative to rebuild the Central Freeway.

"We believe in democracy and the ability to change government and public policy," Tsai said. "It does not mean that if we disagree with the mayor on an issue, we're against the mayor."

The threats were allegedly made by telephone to a radio station, KEST AM 1450 at the China Basin Landing, where Tsai and Lee run a news and commentary program in Chinese-language.

Station manager Andrea Yamasaki said three calls were made into the station March 31 from a man--speaking with no accent--and looking for Tsai or Lee.

"He said someone is bringing an umbrella with HIV virus attached to its tip, and this someone is going to stick it to them," Yamasaki said.

She said she alerted the Police Department's Hate Crime Unit to the threat. Officer Ronald Morrison, one of two officers to responded to the complaint, said the incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime.

"Race was mentioned, so we're looking at it as a possible hate crime," said Morrison, adding that so far, he can't say what the initial investigation has yielded.

But he doubts the HIV virus infection threat is plausible. "I'm not an expert on HIV, but the virus dies quickly outside the body, unless it's found in liquid," he said.

Tsai said she is taking the threat seriously. "I don't know if this is just bad humor, or the person intends to do it," Tsai said. "But we don't know what people are capable of."

A friend of the mayor, Rev. Arnold Townsend, who attended the press conference, said efforts are being made to mend fences between Brown and the SFNA. "Differences are a way of strengthening bonds among people if we discuss them together," Townsend said.

PHOTO BY JUDY PARKS

John Mecklin, editor of the S.F. Weekly, defends his decision to run the altered photo on the March 25-31 cover.

"I don't think anyone here is a racist," Townsend said, with Tsai and Lee by his side. "It was bad journalism."

But SF Weekly editor John Mecklin is not backing away from the cover, nor has he apologize for it.

"The people who called it racist are evil," said Mecklin, who spoke with reporters following the SFNA news conference. "It's wrong to drag racism into this."

He said the cover was a play off the political adage of wanting your opponent's head on a platter. "It's a time-honored tradition that dates back to the 1800s. It dealt with a story about a political conflict," he said.

Sonda Andersson Pappan, SF Weekly's design director, said the cover photo was not intended to hurt anyone, adding she was surprised by the reaction.

"A strong image was needed, especially with two women who profess themselves to be homemakers" and who are taking on a politically powerful man, she said.

The reporter who wrote the story, Tara Shioya, who is of Japanese descent, said she had "no problem" with the illustration.

Her story stemmed from a March 22 press conference called by Chinese Americans, in which Rose Pak, long-time leader of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, was castigated as a gatekeeper preventing Chinese Americans from gaining access to Brown.

Pak has repeatedly declined to comment on the press conference. Calls to her office at the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce were not returned.

Those at that press conference, held at the Grand Palace in Chinatown, also highlighted policy differences with Brown, but as one speaker said--and the SF Weekly article reported--there was no concerted attack on the mayor.

Tsai did not attend, but Lee was there, along with Supervisor Leland Yee and several other prominent Chinese Americans.

Aside from the SF Weekly, the event was reported in Warren Hinckle's column in The Independent, which is owned by AsianWeek's parent company.

Hinckle wrote about some Chinese Americans' displeasure over what he called Pak's heavy-handed tactics of "operating a bulldozer to push some people out of the way, rather than a turnstile to let them into the mayor's inner sanctum."

Hinckle also wrote about the Residential Builders Association condemning SFNA for "participating" in a racist portrayal of Mayor Brown.

He said he thinks it's wrong to invoke press freedom on this issue. "It's ducking the issue," Hinckle said. "The issue is whether the cloak of press freedom was used for a racist cover."

Hinckle quoted the builders association leader, Joe O'Donoghue, as saying that the alleged participation, "epitomized both hypocrisy and insensitivity and does an injustice to the Chinese community."

Though O'Donoghue helped found SFNA, he now urges friends and supporters to abandon the organization for what he called its growing conservative leanings.

"We were friends once," Tsai said of O'Donoghue. "But I separate my personal views with that of SFNA. I think it's extremely racist that SFNA is considered a bunch of little Chinamen and Chinawomen who can be dictated upon."

But O'Donoghue said his intention was not to dictate to anybody, but simply to point out that the depiction of Brown was the worst form of insult possible.

"In Western culture, the pig head and the pig has long been used by colonists to degrade their subjects," O'Donoghue said. "In this country, before the turn of the century, the Irish people were depicted as sleeping with pigs. It is used to belittle the people you are opposed to."

He said while it may be true that Tsai and Lee did not have a direct hand in the cover, their lack of initial public protest signified that, in effect, they agreed to it.

"They could have depicted him with a crown in his head like an emperor whose head was being served on a platter," O'Donoghue said. "[Instead], they took joy in depicting the mayor in such a cruel imagery."

He said he doubts the veracity of the threats against Tsai and Lee, "but let them come forward with the evidence. Death threats in this city are a rarity," he said.

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