Next Level Luxury (Feature) APAs Speak Out Against Bush’s Anti-Affirmative Action Stance (in National News) San Jose State Frat Brawl Ends in Death of 23-Year-Old APA (in Bay Area News) The Getaway: Lots of Heart, But No Love (in Consumer) In His Father’s Steps (in A&E) Emil Amok: The State of Our Union (in Opinion)

The State of Our Union

This week when the president told us the state of our union, how many of you felt he was really talking to you, Mr. and Ms. Asian Pacific America? Did you feel like anything being said on screen could be connected to your life?

But what sense of belonging and partnership did you feel when you saw Gov. Gary Locke of Washington follow the president with the Democratic response? This is not to be partisan. To prove it, I had the sound turned down for both of them.

You must admit to a sense of inclusion, just seeing Locke — a Chinese American, an APA face. You weren’t watching the International Channel. Nor was it some Asian Barbie Anchor on TV. This was the guy on your 36-inch plasma screen after the president. It wasn’t Johnny Yune. Ponce Ponce. Pat Morita. But it should have been a face to stop your remote-control cold. Flipping to avoid him? How could you miss him? He was on all the major channels — all of them focused on a face that looked like ours.

If that’s all you got from the State of the Union, that was enough. That was real.

All the rest is mere politics. All talk. Some, none or all of it may come true. We’ll see what gets passed. But what we saw was the big picture stuff. That was true. There was a white man who flapped his lips. And then came an APA guy.

For APAs then, the state of our union is good, right?

After all, there’s Gary Locke!

Yeah, but right next to him is Shaquille O’Neal.

You didn’t think I could let this go, did you?

O’Neal’s “ching-chong” taunting of Yao Ming and the subsequent lack of an adequate apology cannot be forgotten.

Wags in the community are already dubbing it “Shaq-gate.”

But what’s really the scandal? Is it Shaq’s ignorance, or the prevailing belief of many in society that APAs are making a big thing out of nothing? They’re the ones who are buying into the Shaq defense: I was just joking. Try joking about serious stuff as you check your bags at an airport these days. That’s the level of tolerance APAs should have for this stuff. Call it our own community version of “homeland security.”

The Shaq comments get into the culture and start spreading like bad genes.

Bet those Gonzaga basketball players on Van Ness Street in San Francisco the other day had heard about the Shaq story on all the sports talk shows. They were the guys who walked by Kenneth Lee and started making “ching-chong” sounds to Lee and his wife.

The Gonzaga guys were out in public, in full regalia, school jackets identifying their proud Jesuit missionary heritage. They were walking the walk, and talking the talk: the Shaq talk. To them, it’s acceptable behavior. Hoodless racism. At the sight of a Chinese American like Lee, one need not say, “Hello, how ya doing?” Just let out a mocking “Ching-chong!”

Of course, like the Shaq case, the coach’s denial printed in the San Francisco Chronicle was priceless.

“I have good kids. They in no way, shape or form said any of those statements made. I don’t doubt at all that maybe something was inferred, but as far as [my players] are concerned, nothing along those lines was said,” Gonzaga Coach Mark Few told the paper.

That’s a typical strategy. Make it OUR problem.

Incredibly, since all these stories broke, more than a few non-Asians have contacted me to say, “Exactly, Emil, what does ‘ching-chong-wah-ah-so’ mean?”

It’s GIBBERISH! Trust me. The question “Conjugate the verb ‘Ching-chong?’ will never appear on your Chinese language final in college.

So just like the Shaq remark, Gonzaga held a press conference last week to issue a formal non-apology. Not an act of contrition. It was more like, “Here’s an apology for you. I don’t need it, because I did nothing. But if you need one for your sorry self-esteem, here it is. Costs me nothing.”

Thanks loads.

Hey, if Shaq can get away with that, why can’t 6'7" Gonzaga freshman Tyler Amaya? And I’ll bet you there are a lot more stories like this that happen every day and don’t get reported. Shaq can make it all better by living up to that NAACP award he received recently and setting a good example for all. He can issue a formal apology in time for the All Star game. Yao is starting for the West squad and Shaq was expected to be named Yao’s back-up this week.

To show you just how little has been learned from all this, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson was asked by the Los Angeles Times if Shaq was bothered by not winning the NBA balloting.

Jackson, the man with the zen image, and who really should know better, responded: “I don’t think it bothers him in the least. He understands fully the NBA has put out four forms of [ballots in] Mandarin, Cantonese, Pekingese and also Hong Kong-ese to allow the Chinese voters to vote on the All-Star ballot, which probably skews it a little bit.”

Uh, Mr. Zen? Mandarin and Cantonese are languages. In Hong Kong, they speak either. Peking is now Beijing, and Pekingese is now almost exclusively used to describe a dog.

At least, he didn’t say we eat them.

There’s a lot of ignorance in the world. Jackson’s may be more innocent than others. But consider this extreme:

This week, James D. Brailey, Jr. age 43, remained held without bail in a federal detention center in Washington state on weapons violations connected with what the FBI said was an assassination plot against Gov. Gary Locke.

The FBI said Brailey didn’t believe in government, and that he (Brailey) was the only true governor. But FBI special agent James Kessling added this chilling thought: “Brailey also hates Governor Locke because of his ethnicity.”

That’s the state of our union.

Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.