Your video, Tommy Chong - Sting Operation: When the DEA Is Onto You, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I half expected to see Cheech and Chong when he rolled down the window.

When Stephen Colbert made his Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation joke the trending hashtag was #cancelcolbert, not #iwronglyfindthisjokeoffensivebutwouldneverseektosilenceitsauthor. Control is the agenda of the StinkyJeWs, page by page, paragraph by paragraph.

Let's say you're a writer for a videogame being developed by CompanyA, which in turn is owned by MegaCorpX. Some leaked bit of dialogue or a screenshot of an immodestly dressed character rubs the stinkies the wrong way and off they go, shrieking and howling: #megacorpxisracist, #firechaosengine; articles pop up on Kotaku and Polygon lamenting the state of misogynistic gaming culture, in which perverts and serial harassers like ChaosEngine are still allowed to dominate the industry and keep POC and female voices out in the cold. #boycottcompanya, #chaosengineisapaedophile, #megacorpxfundsrapeculture

Sure enough MegaCorpX doesn't like the negative, if ludicrously inaccurate, publicity and the word comes down the totem pole: the game's cancelled, or the plot has to be rewritten, or you're fired, tough luck. You really mean to tell me that no censorship has occurred at any stage of that process?

I shouldn't have to remind you that corporations aren't people. They're steered not by principle but by market forces. If I shove a boulder off a hill and it rolls into your house, I don't get to say "Well it's nothing to do with me, the rock could have swerved aside, it could have stopped halfway down or it could have turned around and climbed back up the hill. It was entirely its own decision to flatten your home."

Your video, Tommy Chong's "Lincoln Advertisement", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Really?! How is that suppose to work? I'd be amazed if that somehow works. Hope Chongs not just stealing stoners money. That would be disappointing.

You're missing the point. It should be offensive. If you're not offended by the ching chong foundation, the cotton picking nigger foundation or the actual "Redskins Original Americans" foundation, there is something wrong with you.

And that's the equivalency Colbert was making. He could actually have gone further and made it the cotton picking nigger foundation and the point would have been even stronger, but there's no way that would have been allowed to air.

I don't disagree with your comments about Suey Park, as I said I think she acts crazy and I don't support her approach in any way. I think it's unfortunate that she's leading the charge on the other side of this thing, because I think she's doing a horrible job.

As I see it, Colbert is using Asian Americans (a minority that is also most definitely not atop the social power structure) as an example or prop to try to educate people about racism that's happening toward another group of people. Cool! We're helping out Native Americans. It's not really engaging Asian Americans though, who very commonly have racism directed at them as well. In my readings on this, it would seem a fair number (but NOT all) of Asian Americans grew up being ridiculed by things like "Ching chong ding dong", and it is steeped in an extremely negative racial connotation for that group of people.

I'm stretching to an extreme with this analogy, but I think it's necessary. What if Colbert instead called it the "The Cotton-picking Nigger Foundation for Racial Sensitivity"? I don't know about you, but I think that feels quite a bit more problematic.

But why does that cross a line where "Ching chong ding dong" doesn't? To be honest, while I think I could come up with some ideas that seem quite reasonable to me off the top of my head, I'm not *exactly* sure. Because at the end of the day, here's my reality -- I'm not an Asian American that was ridiculed with that saying and things like it, so I didn't have that firsthand personal experience. For all I know, for a large subgroup of Asian Americans, maybe it *is* very similar to the other example I mentioned would be for blacks.

So rather than thinking I have some magical grasp on what is offensive toward certain groups, I listen very carefully to what they're saying, and what their experience is. I think everybody should do that, and continue thinking about it and conversing about it. Instead, everybody seems to be rushing to Colbert's defense.

As a Canadian of Asian descent, I just want to back up Colbert, here. If satire is "the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues," then I think he knocked this one out of the park. A lot of folks don't see "Redskins" as an offensive term because they grew up with it being everywhere; exaggerating and applying the same idea to the Asian population really highlights how ridiculous the name of this foundation is, but only because Western culture has only just recently started to agree that phrases like "Ching chong ding dong", "orientals" (unless you're Rob Ford), "gook", "slant", "chink", etc, are actually really offensive. If a pro sports team came up with the name "Vancouver Chinamen" or "Detroit Negroes" today (coupled with stereotypical logos) there would be a massive and immediate outrage. The only reason the Redskins have gotten away with their name is that the team was named long enough ago that the racial slur was widely acceptable to the non-First Nations public.

And really, this parallels racial awareness in North America; although racism is still very much a thing for people of all races, the First Nations population is still being outstandingly and horribly marginalized with very little support or attention being paid to them or their (still appallingly denied) rights. Here in Canada (in which we boast great racial and cultural diversity, the "cultural mixed salad" vs the US "melting pot"), we still haven't done anything to amend the fact that when we got here we took brutal advantage of a trusting and helpful culture, booted them out to the worst parts of the country and stranded them there.

@andyboy, I still don't get why you think Colbert should apologise. Ok, you didn't think the joke was funny, that's fine, I didn't think the ching chong ding dong joke itself was particularly funny and the tweet out of context even less so. But why should he apologise?

Let's get this clear... satire of X is not X. Colberts response was reasonable (he even asked people not to attack Park on twitter over this).

What's really sad is Park's overt racism in the response. So yeah, funnily enough when you start talking about how "white men can't talk about this" people stop taking you seriously.

Actually, one more thing while I'm on this soapbox...

If you're a "hashtag activist"... that is a synonym for "doing fucking nothing". Posting on fucking twitter is not activism, it's posting on fucking twitter, and it's an insult to people who are out doing real work in aid of their causes.

just read the above comment in chongs voice.hilarity ensued

No Cheech and Chong? At all? None?

If you think that old wizard guy is Tommy Chong it makes it so much better.

Reminds me of this guy from the first Cheech n Chong flick in the waiting room at the welfare office making all the sounds....aural-realistic noises are the shit!

Some kids grow up mimicking bird calls, Saudi kids can imitate the sounds of emergency vehicles and large-caliber ordinance!!