Tonight we opened with Doug Dannger, Orange County Courier reporter and “gay man and gay journalist.” He talked with Phil about the passing of actor James McArthur and the “racism of Hawaii Five-O.” As Doug sees it, because the primary Asian group in Hawaii is (or was) Japanese there should have been Japanese actors and Japanese characters on the show, not Chinese as was the case with Kam Fong playing Chin-Ho. The same is true of the current Hawaii Five-O with Koreans playing Polynesians. Doug said the whole audience is complicit in this racism. “This is the same as the entire cast of the Cosbys being replaced with coal-black Cubans and nobody saying anything!” Doug said the reason why people weren’t calling right away is because he smoked TV viewers racism out and they were hiding.
Father James McQuarters of Belmar Academy joined Phil to get it said about the Maura Kelly column on “gross fat people kissing” on TV and the reaction it created on the set of TV’s Mike and Molly and across the country. “Of course it makes us sick to look at fat people kissing….but you don’t come out and say it!” Father McQuarters said they hang a sheet in the school gym behind which fat kids can go and dance and hug and do it away from the view of other people. He even works fat kids out by having them do deep knee bends “holding a crucifix, hewn from heavy wood, across their shoulders. It reminds them of what I go through trying to get the fat off their asses. Frankly it also reminds me of what I go through.”
