Rosie O’Donnell Mocks Chinese

Ask any Chinese (or for that matter Asian) American who has grown up in America. You get a lot of “Ching, Chong, Ching” kind of mocking on the playground or even walking on the street. I know; it happened to me. It’s derogatory and offensive. In Mary Paik Lee’s book, Quiet Odyssey, she writes about the same type of experience as a Korean immigrant child. And now, Rosie O’Donnell.

O’Donnell imitated how she thought Chinese broadcasters might sound discussing actor Danny DeVito’s recent drunken appearance on “The View.”

“You know, you can imagine in China it’s like, ‘ching chong, ching chong chong, Danny DeVito, ching chong chong chong, drunk, The View, ching chong,’ ” O’Donnell said to applause and laughter from the audience. The Organization of Chinese Americans, the Asian American Justice Center, New York City Councilman John Liu, the Asian American Journalists Association, and UNITY — which represents more than 10,000 minority journalists — are among the growing number of critics, demanding an apology. So far, she has not apologized for her Dec. 5 comments as Asian Americans in the Bay Area and across the country are demanding.

But she has responded on her blog at www.rosie.com.

She writes that she “wasn’t mocking / that’s my best impression” and that her “bad accent was not meant to insult or degrade / linguistic incompetence — guilty / mocking — never.” She tells one detractor to go “f- urself.”

Spoofing a language belittles the people who speak it, community leaders say. They also say it’s disappointing to hear such insensitivity from O’Donnell, who has championed gay and lesbian rights and taken others to task for being homophobic.
“What’s disturbing is that Rosie, Barbara (Walters) and the producers of ‘The View’ are all aware of the controversy and they’re not giving any response,” said Rene Astudillo, executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, headquartered in San Francisco. “She owes it to the community to acknowledge a lot of people were hurt, even if she says it wasn’t her intention. ‘The View’ is a popular program aired on a respectable network. If we don’t say something about it, every other person will say it’s OK. Had Rosie faked ebonics or exaggerated a lisp to imitate gays, would she expect people to be quiet?” Click here.

bh