By Connor Adams Sheets
An angry outburst at state Assemblywoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) over her repeated request that controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh apologize for his impersonation of Chinese President Hu Jintao seems to be ebbing after she received no phone calls and few racially charged e-mails from the talk show’s supporters over the weekend, according to Meng spokeswoman Linda Sun.
But she, City Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) and city Public Advocate Bill de Blasio want to keep up the pressure on Limbaugh to take back his comments, and Koo gave Meng his backing over the weekend, offering to join her in her effort to calling the shock jock to task for offending the Chinese-American community. De Blasio issued a statement expressing his support of Meng on Monday.
Meng’s office has been inundated with more than 50 hateful and racist phone calls and e-mails since she publicly criticized Limbaugh for mocking the way Jintao speaks during a segment of his radio show Jan. 19.
On Thursday and Friday alone, Meng received about 30 calls and e-mails from people across the United States, some of whom used anti-Chinese slurs and profanity when lambasting Meng for asking that Limbaugh apologize for performing what she described as a racially insensitive impression of the Chinese leader.
On his radio show Jan. 19, Limbaugh lamented that a speech Hu gave during a recent visit to the White House was not translated as he listened to it on television.
“Hu Jintao, he was speaking and they weren’t translating and they normally have some translator every couple of words, but Hu Jintao was just going ‘Ching chong. Ching chong, chong chong!’” he said during the show, proceeding to spend more than 15 seconds mocking and imitating Hu’s accent. The AP reported that on the following day he addressed his remarks but did not make an apology.
“We’ve been getting e-mails and phone calls from all over the country. People telling us to go back to our country and that Asians work for them and if we don’t like it we can go back to our country,” Meng’s spokeswoman said Friday afternoon. “The majority of the phone calls have been from outside of [New York], people yelling at us. People have said to us that we’re defending China or China’s policy. That’s not our intention. We’re just standing up for all our fellow Chinese Americans.”
Meng is the only Asian American in the state Legislature. Koo, the successor to John Liu, the first Asian American city Council member, said on Monday that Limbaugh’s comments were out of line.
“We don’t want other people to make fun of minority groups, especially a public figure like Limbaugh,” Koo said. “The FCC, they have some regulations against it. You can’t use profanity and you also can’t discriminate against a group of people.”
Meng has stood by her comments despite the conservative backlash, saying in a follow-up statement that she still wants an apology from Limbaugh.
“I still stand fervently by my statement. I want to clarify that while any private citizen is free to say anything they want, I do not believe it is appropriate for anyone, especially a person with national recognition, to imitate the manner in which a group of people talks,” she said. “As someone who is proud to have been born in America and to be an American, I was often saddened and hurt as a child when people made fun of the way I looked or the accent they automatically assumed I had.”
An Associated Press story quoting Meng and headlined “Asian-American Lawmakers Demand Limbaugh Apology” was listed as the most-e-mailed article on Yahoo! News Friday afternoon. In the AP article, Meng was joined by California state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) in calling for a Limbaugh apology.
Sun said Yee, who was more prominently featured in the AP piece than Meng, has received some of the most offensive calls and e-mails. His office has released a fax Yee received Jan. 26 that read “Death to Marxists!” and “Fish Head Leeland” accompanied by a drawing of a noose around President Barack Obama’s disembodied head being dragged by a pick-up truck bearing an American flag. Yee’s office forwarded the fax to the California state Senate sergeant-at-arms.
Dave Backer, a Guilford, Ill., man who owns two companies that deal with various aspects of the radon industry, sent an e-mail to Meng after seeing the AP article on his Yahoo! News home page. He said in a phone interview Friday that Meng should apologize to her constituents for wasting taxpayer money and time by asking for an apology.
“Rush does not owe you or anyone else an apology. How about instead of thrying [sic] to grab headlines with crap you get out and actually do your job which is helping Americans. Yeah did you forget we still live in this country and you work for us,” Backer’s e-mail read. “Anyone who is Asian and has such thin skin when they are in our country should leave. So here is a suggestion for you. Either get a little thicker skin or take your ass back to where it is you came from. Back to your ancestry that you think we are picking on. Ching chong,chang!”
DeBlasio added his name to the growing number of officials calling for Limbaugh to take back his words.
“The recent threats sent to Assemblywoman Grace Meng are ugly and bigoted. Grace was right to speak out against Rush Limbaugh’s offensive parody of Chinese President Hu Jintao,” de Blasio said. “That doing so made her a target of harassment demonstrates the inherent dangers intolerant speech like Mr. Limbaugh’s can let loose. We must never be afraid call out intolerance when we see it, and we must all work to prevent our words from inciting division.”
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
