BCT Editorial – 8/6/07

This page was last updated on August 27, 2007.

Face time; Editorial; Beaver County Times; August 6, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The medium is the message

“That maxim by the late Marshall McLuhan was never more applicable than in the anti-Asian Web site posted by some students who attend Fox Chapel High School.

“The Associated Press reported the Internet site ‘Anti-Asians Anonymous’ contained a picture of an Asian man with a bubble caption saying, ‘I ate your dog, but I’m not sorry.’ There were also references to Pearl Harbor, anime and chopsticks.

“More than 20 students were involved, and school officials met with them about the page, which had been online for about a year before it was taken down last month. (Because the page was done off school property, district officials could only point to the students the error of their ways.)

“‘I apologize to anyone who took offense to this group,’ Billy Hagberg, listed as one of two administrators of the page, wrote in an e-mail to Fallout Central, a Web site that encourages Asian-Americans to fight racism.

“‘I am not a racist, and believe one of the major hindrances in our country and world is ignorance based on race,’ Hagberg said. He said the site was ‘simply a joke’ based on the ludicrousness of existing stereotypes.

“‘I never meant to incite any hatred, only to get a laugh,’ he added.

“But the problem is that people take this stuff seriously, as witnessed by one message from a visitor who wrote, ‘I really do hate Asians.’

“This remark reveals a major downside to the Internet - its impersonal nature.

“People can adopt any persona they want on the Internet and say anything they want about anybody without personally having to deal with the consequences. There’s a huge difference between insulting somebody on the Internet and looking them in the face and doing it.

“It’s unlikely the Fox Chapel students behind this Web site would have expressed their opinions to or aimed their jokes at Asians or Asian Americans who attend their school if they had to look them in the face when doing so.

“It’s unlikely the ‘I really do hate Asians’ writer would express his dislike face to face.

“That’s why, for all the talk, the Internet might be called a not-so-brave new world.”

[RWC] The editorial is correct, but – displaying a trait common in Times editorials – the author didn’t see the same issue in his own medium. Exactly how many editorial, opinion column, and letter-to-the-editor writers look their targets “in the face” when they write their insulting and name-calling pieces? Simply affixing your name – and editorial authors don’t even do that – to a piece isn’t looking someone in the face.