Matt Lauer kept losing his hair, but he never lost his job–not until he lost his sense of judgment, self-control, and credibility. Too bad he’s not president of the free world. He’d still have his job.
But now, no one cares to ask “Where in the world is Matt Lauer?”
And before this week, no one wo...
We’ve got some great Thanksgiving topics this year at our Asian American family table, but did anyone figure the first course would kick off with, “So anyone thankful they didn’t get harassed this year? How about the last 30?”
It’s prime for a bunch of “me too” moments, and in a bit I will share mi...
I couldn’t help thinking about the Charlottesville, Virginia chant that racist white nationalists spewed last summer. They marched through the University of Virginia campus as they carried tiki torches and chanted, “You will not replace us.”
It’s the lament of white males in particular, and somethi...
My Uncle Mel was a great American. As a barber, he cut my hair. As a soldier, he was a corporal in the U.S. Army, a recipient of a Purple Heart. And now, a Congressional Gold Medal winner.
I couldn’t make it to DC for the big Congressional Gold Medal event this week. I’ll be in the area next week...
In his 100th year, life is finally looking less absurd for Filipino WW II veteran Celestino Almeda.
On Wednesday, he will be a speaker at the special ceremony honoring all Filipino Veterans of World War II with the Congressional Gold Medal.
And while that is quite an honor, it comes on the heels o...
This year, I made a pilgrimage to a special landmark that you may miss unless you happen to be looking for the only public restroom at a particular vista point in Morro Bay, California.
For Filipinos, maybe even for all Asian Americans, maybe it should be considered our mecca.
Or perhaps our blarn...
These are hazy, smoky times in the most Asian state (by population) in America.
Most of California is essentially an orchard paved over to varying degrees, and I am on the edges of the rural and urban–the ruburbs of the great Central Valley, a few hours away from the gourmet grapes of Napa and Sono...
October is Filipino American History Month for a number of reasons, but probably not because it’s my birthday month. The Filipino American National Historical Society chose October because it’s the month when the first Filipinos are said to have landed in California, at Morro Bay, Oct. 18, 1587.
16...
I’m kneeling.
But not for the NFL, and not necessarily for my free speech rights (witness, I still have them). Most certainly, I am not on bended knee for Donald Trump (more on the NFL issue later).
No, as a good Catholic, I’m kneeling in prayer for Puerto Rico.
It could be the 51st state, after ...
For real bipartisanship in Congress, we must celebrate the passing this week of a resolution in both the House and Senate to honor Filipino World War II veterans with the Congressional Gold Medal.
Low-hanging fruit? Slam dunk? Not necessarily.
It required 70 senators to co-sponsor a resolution led...
As the head of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration, Janet Napolitano knows all about DACA. Though it was announced by President Obama, it was Napolitano’s agency’s plan.
Now as the president of the University of California system, Napolitano feels DACA was repealed “capr...
When President Obama was hailed as ushering in a “post-racial” America, the phrase was often said derisively by those who wished to bury our country’s race mistakes of the past.
That would include immigration exclusion laws, but the main debt was slavery. It was the only way some people could dea...
If you’re a president known for tweeting, of course, there’s only one way to show any empathy.
You do selfies.
It was Trump in what would be known as a “mulligan” in golf–his second visit to Houston since Hurricane Harvey demolished Texas. Trump arrived on Saturday at the NRG shelter in Houston ...
“This is the worst,” Ed Gor, a Houston resident, told me on our podcast, Emil Amok’s Takeout. We were on the phone Sunday talking about the power of Harvey, demoted from hurricane to tropical storm, but still packing a wallop.
Gor knows he was lucky for now. His street was flooded, but the water ...
To better understand what’s happening in this great country, let’s all engage in the metaphor of the day!
The total eclipse of the sun will be over in less than three minutes.
But take off the glasses, open your eyes, and see the real eclipse that’s going on over the entire country.
That would ...
The Trump hotel brand oozes opulent luxuriousness. But now that Trump is in public office for the first time (and right at the top), I’ve coined a word to capture the new Trump style of government and political rhetoric.
Take one part truculent (“the quality of being disposed or eager to fight or e...
On the edge of Chinatown in San Francisco, Filipinos always gravitated to Kearny Street. Known as Manilatown, it was not a tourist trap, just a place Filipinos called home.
But by 1977, development was eating up real estate on Kearny Street. Manilatown was down to just one block, anchored by what w...
Eddie Huang said he’s currently working on a novel now. But when he first started writing a few years back and his literary ambitions were high, book publishers wanted a cook book, not a memoir.
He ultimately wrote the groundbreaking book, “Fresh off the Boat.”
It’s the good cheese compared to the...
When I saw that BD Wong was recently nominated for an Emmy, my first instinct was to offer congratulations.
So I was surprised when I saw an Asian American group refrain from offering kudos and take the stand that only trans actors should get trans roles.
Sort of makes sense. Unless you’ve actua...
In a news week that contained O.J. Simpson’s parole and President Trump’s trade-in for a slicker New York mouthpiece, sandwiched by even more Russia-Trump trauma, it’s not surprising you haven’t heard much about a story that recently took place in Washington, DC.
But it has a large segment of the A...
