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The Melting Blog
Where Marketing Meets Culture
"What's A Blog?"
Sunday,
November 23, 2003
Media Juxtaposition
We've
been exceptionally busy. Blogging has been light. And I'm on a
copy deadline. But, hey, I'm not complaining. However, I'm not
surprised this story flew right under my radar last week:
According
to this
AP story, Asian television networks the International
Channel and the Bay Area's KTSF
will be taking their first stab at English-language programming
with a youth-oriented, magazine-style show targeting second/third
generation Asian Americans. The show, aptly called "Stir,"
is set to debut in early 2004. Relevant grafs:
During a recent editorial
meeting at KTSF's offices just south of San Francisco, Yang
and the hosts bounced around story ideas, touching on the
ephemeral nature of cool, Asian rappers, Korean golfers, engineers
and Internet babes, Asian tattoos and Chinese restaurant workers.
The show is striving to strike
the right balance between provocative and political, mainstream
and Asian-American.
"It's not about identity
politics," Yang said. "It's not going to be about
the embattled minority. This is about the empowered majority."
Read
the
whole article. Stir follows the heels of similar programming
trends generated by Hispanic media's increasing recognition of
the younger generation as an increasingly vital market force.
Forays into English (or Spanglish-inflected) TV programming aimed
at ethnic youth --- such as those targeting young Latinos, including
LATV, Mun2
and SíTV
--- will continue grow as this nascent market group hastens to
assert its distinctiveness (and independence) from their immigrant
forebears. The numbers are on their side.
We'll
be following this one closely.
Posted by Thomas Tseng,
9:38 pm
Saturday,
November 22, 2003
A Nation of Immigrants
To
celebrate the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's passing, allow
me to refer you, dear reader, to this Newsday
article. Unbeknownst to many (including me), Kennedy authored
a small book, "A Nation of Immigrants," which later
became the blueprint for the Immigration and Nationality Act
Amendments of 1965, aka the 1965 Immigration Act --- one of
the biggest immigration reforms in U.S. history.
The 1965 immigration act
ended the old "national-origins" immigration system
that favored northern Europeans and severely restricted entry
by newcomers from Latin America, South America, Asia and many
other places around the world.
Under the new statute, immigration
status was decided without regard for race, ethnicity or national
origin, and with an emphasis on family reunification.
The parents, children and
spouses of legal American immigrants would be allowed to follow
and become U.S. citizens without any numerical restrictions.
Other provisions in the law encouraged immigration by those
with special occupational skills, who were considered valuable
to the American economy.
The flow of legal immigrants
following their relatives into America increased dramatically,
so that the total of 9.7 million foreign-born Americans in
1960 rose to nearly 20 million by 1990. By last year, the
U.S. Census reported, there were 32.5 million foreign-born
citizens - 11.5 percent of the total U.S. population.
The new America can be seen
in nearly every urban center in the nation, where new arrivals
flock to gain their first toeholds in the market economy.
In New York, the changes are manifest in neighborhoods such
as Astoria and Corona that teem with immigrants from Asia
and Eastern Europe. On Long Island, where immigrants from
Latino nations are ubiquitous, and in other suburban enclaves,
communities revel in the benefits of diversity and struggle
with the tensions it can produce - as in the beatings of two
Mexican immigrant workers in Farmingville three years ago
by two men from Hicksville and Maspeth later convicted of
attempted murder and assault.
The 1965 law's biggest impact
was that the gatekeepers to America were now officially color-blind,
allowing entry on a first-come, first-served basis. It transformed
America into a far more diverse population with roots around
the world.
Indeed.
I'm a descendant of that law. My Dad originally came from Taiwan
as a Literature student in 1963 and subsequently stayed as a result
of the act's passage. In turn, he brought over my Mom, and they
eventually spawned me --- your dedicated blogger.
What
always surprises me is how, in hindsight, the passage of the 1965
Immigration Act heralded relatively little fanfare. It wasn't
anticipated to produce any radical influx of new immigrants. In
fact, the younger Ted Kennedy had assured the senate "our
cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually."
Furthermore, the act was also overshadowed by what, at the time,
was considered more substantive civil rights legislation --- including
the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Looking
back now, however, there's no debate today that this important
piece of legislation has done more to effectively alter, and enlarge,
America's ethnic and demographic landscape than any other. The
rest, as they say, is history.
Posted by Thomas Tseng,
11:04 am
Monday, November 17, 2003
I Wish They All Could Be California...
As
the beloved (if beleagured) home state of our firm, California
has seen much better days. We have a sputtering post-dot-com economy,
soaring
housing prices, and, just over recent weeks, one of the worse
wildfire
disasters in the state's history --- charring miles of surrounding
outer-ring acreage across greater Los Angeles and San Diego. If
that weren't enough, you can also add disruptive grocery
and transit
worker strikes, an astronomical
budget deficit, and last week's freaky
outpouring of hail in, of all places, South
Los Angeles. We've had everything short of a plague of locusts.
So, in honor of today's inauguration of California's new Action
Hero Governor (we also had that other little thing of recalling
the previous governor we elected just, like, last year), I want
to present some positive news about California according to this
Harris Interactive
survey. Through it all, surprisingly, the Golden State tops
the list as the most popular place Americans want to live in 2003.
Yes, you heard correctly. For the second year in a row, California
emerges as numero uno when respondents are asked:
"If you could live in any state in the country,
except the state you live in now, what state would
you choose to live in?"
Apparently, sunshine covers a multitude of sins.
Posted by Thomas Tseng,
2:47 pm
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