News in Brief…

• ABC sued for $500 Million by the Northern California chapter of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations.
  
• Swarzenegger Vetoes the DREAM Act. This occurred following recent support by the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC), and the University of California Student Association (UCSA). The bill would allow all students, regardless of legal status, to apply for financial aid scholarships.
• Nurses locked out after Sutter Health Strike.

 

Update on ABC’s ‘Desperate’ Faux Pas

An AP article which ran in Friday’s SF Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News included a transcript of the offensive joke:

“In the season premiere that aired Sunday on ABC, Teri Hatcher’s character, Susan, goes in for a medical checkup and is shocked when the doctor suggests she may be going through menopause.”Listen, Susan, I know for a lot of women the word ‘menopause’” has negative connotations. You hear ‘aging,’ ‘brittle bones,’ ‘loss of sexual desire,’” the gynecologist tells her.

“OK, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas? Just to make sure they aren’t, like, from some med school in the Philippines?” Susan fires back.

ABC’s agreement to edit out the controversial scene has done little to stifle the uproar on both sides of the Pacific. As of this morning, over 98,000 signatures have been attached to an online petition demanding an apology from the network, not to mention calls to ban the show in the Philippines and to boycott ABC and Disney, the network’s parent company.

But let’s try to rise above the din here and use this incident as a point of entry into a larger discussion. The INQUIRER.net has used this opportunity to discuss the serious underrepresentation of Filipinos on television by posing the question, “Why are there no Filipino characters in hospital drama TV shows?” An interesting question indeed.

 

ABC Undermines Pilipinos in Health Care

We recently received an e-mail petition about a curious tension that has arisen between Pilipinos and the television network, ABC.

To: ABC

To the producers of “Desperate Housewives” and ABC:

We are writing to express concern and hurt about a racially-discriminatory comment made in an episode of Desperate Housewives on 9/30/07. In a scene in which Susan was told by her gynecologist that she might be hitting menopause, she replied, ‘Can I just check those diplomas because I just want to make sure that they are not from some med school in the Philippines.’

It’s hard to know exactly how “hateful” the uttered statement was without any televisual context. Looking at the language used in the petition letter–among them, “oppression” and “disrespectful,”–it seems like Teri Hatcher’s tone might have been a bit too vile.

In text, the remark does not seem racially discriminatory, but rather, economically discriminatory. It is saying, “Poor countries like the Philippines can’t have good medical schools,” much more than it is saying, “Filipinos aren’t good at medicine.”

Still, not very flattering. However, it is laughable that the writers would choose the Philippines as the third world country to convey the humor of that remark, since countless health care technicians in this country–especially nurses–are from the Philippines. But then again, Filipino nurses have had some bad press in the past, including a scandal about nursing students cheating on the license exams.

What do you think: are we being too sensitive? Should Filipinos boycott ABC?

If you would like to read the rest of the letter and sign the petition, go here.

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