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Vendors outside Wrigley Field and on eBay are still selling shirts that have "Horry Kow" on the front and Japanese ball player Kosuke Fukudome's name and number on the back. The shirts poke fun at Japanese accents using the familiar "holy cow" that the late Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray used to always use.
May 18, 2008
Holy cow, offensive Fukudome shirts still for sale
Vendors outside Wrigley Field and on eBay are still selling shirts that have "Horry Kow" on the front and Japanese ball player Kosuke Fukudome's name and number on the back. The shirts poke fun at Japanese accents using the familiar "holy cow" that the late Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray used to always use.
The Cubs tried stopping sales of the shirts after Fukudome came out and said they were offensive. The people selling them, they're making a buck so they don't care much what Fukudome or anyone else says. And apparently some fans are wearing those straw rice paddy hats to games as some sort of homage to the Cubs' first Japanese player.
I can sort of see why some people might not "get" that the shirts or the hats are offensive. If they've never been ridiculed for their skin color or the way they talk, or if they've never been the target of racism, then everyone else is just too sensitive or being PC. These are the most ignorant people and probably nothing will change that.
You can make the case that it's the Midwest and there aren't as many Asian Americans as in California. But that's generalizing and offensive to Midwesterners. There are Cubs fans out there that do get it. Let's hope they are the vast majority.
Posted by harry at May 18, 2008 2:53 PM
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"You can make the case that it's the Midwest and there aren't as many Asian Americans as in California. But that's generalizing and offensive to Midwesterners."
Considering there are 1 million plus Asian Americans in the Midwest - and that's a lot of sushi, pho, and bulgogi - anyone who would draw that conclusion has to be double dipping and shouting "Have I peaked yet?" on a regular basis.