Inscrutable Orientals; Perpetual Foreigners; F-Word

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Wed Sep 20 02:16:28 UTC 2000


INSCRUTABLE ORIENTALS

One of those conditions is a "yellow peril" panic over Chinese nuclear motives and accompanying stereotypes of "perpetual foreigners" and "inscrutable Orientals."
--VILLAGE VOICE, 26 September 2000, pg. 54, col. 3.

   Dow Jones has 46 hits for "inscrutable orientals," with the earliest from 1987.
   A WorldCat check shows:

THE MYTH OF THE INSCRUTABLE ORIENTAL: ASIAN, GERMAN, AND AMERICAN WORKERS SPEAK UP (Social Science Press, Philadelphia, 1964) by Rexford Hersey.

THE RIBALD CONFUCIUS: THE INSCRUTABLE SAYINGS OF THE VENERABLE ORIENTAL SAGE (New English Library, London, 1972) by Ah Fong, et al.

     I was in Japan a few months ago and everyone seemed pretty scrutable to me.

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PERPETUAL FOREIGNERS

     Dow Jones database has 53 hits, with the earliest from 12-15-1986.  Most of the "perpetual foreigners" are Asian.
     A WorldCat check shows a short film titled ASIAN IN AMERICA: THE PERPETUAL FOREIGNERS (1999) by Helen Zia.

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F-WORD (continued)

     From the movie ALMOST FAMOUS:

MOTHER:  OH MY GOD!  MY DAUGHTER SAID THE F-WORD!
SON:  She said "feck."
MOTHER:  What's the difference?
SON:  One has an "e."  The other has a "u."

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WILLIAM SAFIRE COLUMN (continued)

     Early Sunday, I e-mailed a letter to the editor of the New York Times Magazine.
     For starters, I said that John J. Fitz Gerald's name has been misspelled.  There has been no correction.
     I stated that William Safire's conclusion that both Ed Martin and Fitz Gerald had coined "Big Apple" was wrong on both counts, and grossly misstates the facts.
     I demanded--as I have for eight years--that the full words of the African American stable hands make the  paper of record.
     My version of my opinion has not been fit to print.



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