Watching the Sunset (Feature) Mass Privatization of Philadelphia Schools Worries APAs (in National News) Report Released on the Plight of the Asian Pacific American Worker (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: ‘Warcraft III’: Blizzard Does it Again (in Business) Fok Leads Golden State to Second Place Finish in Pro-Am (in Sports) From the Director’s Chair (in A&E) Emil Amok: APA Male TV Anchors: Invisibility and Emasculation (in Opinion)

APA Male TV Anchors: Invisibility and Emasculation

Asian Pacific American male anchor? Not in a maritime sense, mate. But as in news anchor, the guy behind the desk, shuffling paper, smiling in front of the robotic camera, reading the prompter, shuffling news script like a prop and tossing it so affably from local tragedy to sports, traffic or weather.

The anchor is an American cultural icon. Walter Cronkite. Dan Rather. Tom Brokaw. Peter Jennings.

So where’s the Asian Pacific American guy?

Oh, yes. Let’s not forget to mention James Hattori, formerly a weekend anchor at KRON and now host of CNN’s tech show, and a few local exceptions in Los Angeles, guys who have ridden a TelePrompTer in their time. But as the major news anchor at their outlets? APA males just aren’t in that game.

If it’s about journalism, there are good, even great APA male reporters. Vic Lee, my former colleague at KRON, is a news monster. But you won’t find him on the fast track to an anchor desk. There are sports and weather guys here or there. Raj Matthai is a great emerging sports star. But locally, and certainly not nationally, no APA male emerges on the same path as the one paved for Brian Williams, who stands waiting for Tom Brokaw’s last breath.

Why is that?

The question has been kicking around for years. Ever since Ken Kashiwahara was still the stud for ABC’s now-defunct West Coast Bureau in San Francisco. Ever since I started as a young TV reporter in Reno. Ever since Connie Chung … that’s another column.

But perhaps it explains why I was indifferent to the news that the Asian American Journalists Association was bringing up the issue yet again at their latest convention. I criticize the group often, mostly to spur them to action. But now I must commend them for dusting off this evergreen.

AAJA recently commissioned a study by USC’s Annenberg School of Communications. Not only were our anecdotal fears confirmed, but the problem for APA guys is far worse than we thought.

In the top 25 local markets, there was just two APA male anchors. One in news, the other in sports.

Reporters? Just 18 guys, not quite one for every city.

If you were an APA guy, considering the low pay, would you say this was the field for you? In fact, a check of the journalism schools reflect very few APAs in the pipeline.

But here’s the real problem: While males flounder, APA women are practically the chicken of the sea. They’re out there in numbers.

Two APA male anchors in the top 25? There are 28 APA female anchors in the top 25.

In both reporting and anchoring, APA females outnumber APA males by nearly 5-1. It’s not even close. You don’t have to count the hanging chads.

And doesn’t it feel like a spiked heel in the you-know-where?

Are you saying what’s the big deal, Emil? Oh yeah, APA women are on the move, go sistahs! But then you miss the sinister aspect.

There’s some deeply-rooted race/gender matters at work here. And as it’s all played out on such a public stage as your living room, it matters a hell of a lot more than you think.

The anchor spot is not just about elevating the best journalist to the prime presenter spot. In television, we have moved from the news realm into the world of show business, the prime image generators in our culture. And if the media is the mirror, once again the message is clear for all: APA women rock, while APA men have no rocks.

It’s the emasculation of the APA male and it’s happening daily at 5, 6 and 11. Or let’s see it from the flip side: It’s the selling of the APA female.

Is that more positive?

At the base of all this is, of course, sex appeal. Don’t think that the attractiveness of APA females to white males isn’t at play here. But USC’s survey asked the mostly white male hiring managers about APA males. They saw them as smart, aggressive businessmen.

Great. APA guys are seen as threats.

But they also used the metaphorical phrase “Asian Tiger,” a phrase that more aptly describes the business face of Asian countries in the Pacific Rim. In other words, APA males are still seen as foreigners.

So it’s no surprise managers also mentioned “Jackie Chan.” Jackie Chan? The affable foreigner … who can kick your ass and entertain you.

Chan may be big box office, but that’s because he plays the likeable happy-go-lucky karate guy. He’s the earnest buffoon. And he’s sexless. In his next movie, The Tuxedo, do you think he’s going to get Jennifer Love Hewitt? It minimizes his threat. Let him kick all he wants. He doesn’t get the girl.

All these media images, or lack of them, snowball. And guess whom that impacts? More than ourselves, it impacts our sons.

When I raised this issue recently, I got a message from a father of a young APA. “I worry for the future of my son who will not have the same social, political and economic opportunities of his white male counterparts growing up in this country,” he told me.

More than invisibility, the lack of APA male anchors is just the most graphic example of our emasculation in America.

What I Really Think: A friend once told me in passing that I may have had an anchor shot if I’d just had better hair. He was half-joking, but I realized he was probably right. In the 80s I still had Peter Frampton-hair. I was Roger Daltrey meets Jheri-curl Jackson. I was a slave to hair fashion. I didn’t want to look like Walter Cronkite. But I didn’t have to. I just had to look like me. And I owe my TV hair to my dear friend Alfons Skilandat, a gentleman’s tonsorial artist, who practiced just a few blocks from San Francisco’s Chinatown. More than a barber, Alfons was a master of going beyond the bowl haircut. He gave me my look. Alfons died last Saturday after a horrific 14-month battle with cancer. His son Ron, a master of hair couture carries on. But I’ll never forget Alfons as the man who made me go straight.

Tipping allowed: Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.