Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

Dude! Did you hear that Kumar got robbed at gunpoint?

If you didn't, you haven't been reading the news AT ALL. But more to the point EVERYONE's been robbed at gunpoint this week:

• We've had a rash of Asian Americans committing crimez and then fleeing to mother countries, but this Viet Am who's being extradited is a bank robber. Robbing at gunpoint!
• Apparently, a Pakistani American may have gotten in on the act ... in reverse. Hamesh Khan, who hid in plain sight in the U.S., working for the Department of Agriculture, seems to have fled from a Pakistan loan fraud scandal involving the Bank of Punjab, where he served as president. The U.S. is about to repatriate him so he can be prosecuted. Another extradited robber!
• Rajat Gupta, director of Goldman Sachs, may have robbed the American people at metaphorical gunpoint, by engaging in insider trading during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
• There seems to be a disagreement brewing about a Minneapolis Hmong American father jailed for vehicular manslaughter with a Toyota Camry that may have had a design flaw that caused it to accelerate uncontrollably. If this is true, he's been robbed of three years with his family.
• Apparently, in New York at least, Asians have also been robbed at gunpoint by banks in the foreclosure crisis. Interesting article here.
• Bummer! Repub Anh "Joseph" Cao's fundraising has taken a huge hit since he bravely broke with his party and voted for healthcare reform. Looks like his constituents would rather be robbed at gunpoint for their healthcare than support a politician with their best interests at heart.
• Another Viet Am would-be politico, Danny Nguyen, is learning the hard way what happens when you support doing business with the current Vietnamese government. Could the protests from his own community rob him of a political victory?
• Speaking of Viet Am, this OC brouhaha, for a change, doesn't seem to be about commie vs dictator. Janet Nguyen, a county supervisor, angered a local community group when she applied for permits to organize the annual "black April" festival commemorating the fall of Saigon. This year is the 35th Anniversary. The org refused to work with the politician who, it claims robbed them at politics-point of a community festival they have been organizing for years. The Westminster city council had to step in and voted to split the park into two ceremonies: the daytime one for Nguyen, and an evening one for the community group.
• KoreAm new-to-politics Coffee Party founder Annabel Park, just wanted people to debate more centristly and more civilly. Instead, she may be robbed at rant-point of 200,000-person constituency by the more fiery liberals among them, who suggested at the first meeting that her Coffee Party movement needed a stronger leader. Yikes!
• Kip Fulbeck's exhibition of portraits of mixed-race children, Mixed, opens in Los Angeles at the Japanese American National Museum. Those who go to portrait books of the mixed race looking for hotties will be held at gunpoint and forced to say "Awww!" and "Boy, those mixed race kids really are the future!" Robbed, of emotion, at gunpoint!
• R.I.P. Victoria Manalo Draves. I profiled her last month for Women's History Month, and we were robbed of her presence on April 11.
• The 45% Asian (and 45% white) Arcadia California, returned an all-white city council to their posts for the first time in 12 years, even though three Asians were running. Do I even need to say it? I will anyway: robbed at gunpoint!
• NY Asian American parents are clamoring to get their kids into P.S. 105, which has a bilingual program. Most of them won't, because the school has the district's longest wait list. Why can't everyone be like principal Johanna Castronovo, who saw changing demographics, and changed the curriculum to meet them? Every student else is being robbed at gunpoint!
• So, uh ... this stunning Indian American model on Parisian runways is also attending Harvard. She has a "tough choice" ahead of her? What would that be, I wonder. It must be hard to be 5'11", gorgeous, and among America's academic elite. Robbed! I tell you, robbed!
• The L.A.Times has a profile of the Chang sisters, 20-something daughters of the KoreAm couple that started Forever 21. Both work in the family biz, which is robbing the country at trendpoint -- and making us like it!
• Viet Am makeup artist Michelle Pham is now a face of Lancome cosmetics. This does not fit in with my theme.
• M. Night Shymalan, an Indian American who is reversing the trend and robbing US at gunpoint of our beloved last airbender, has been hit for a second time by the grandeur stick and is making The Last Airbender 3D. Maybe he's hoping the yellowface will be less noticeable with an extra dimension thrown in?
• Indian Americans not robbed at gunpoint this week include:
  • Vijay Gandhi, the first Ind Am federal judge in Cali, and only second nationwide, was sworn in this week.
  • Jaishankar Ganesh, named head of Rutgers Business School.
  • Rao Anumolu receives the Ellis Island medal of honor.
  • Kevin Negandhi, the Sports Center commentator profiled on The Bleacher Report.
  • Aseem Shukla, commended by Congress for his medical work in India.
  • Vinod Khosla, who tops Forbes' list of 10 greenest billionaires.
  • The six Indian American women among the 50 fastest growing women-led businesses in the U.S.
  • The tech leaders who visited Israel for some reason.
  • Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, who announced profits for the quarter, and will survive a nuclear holocaust, apparently. Go ahead, just try to rob him at gunpoint!
• This is American Indian, not Indian American, but Wisconsin just voted to outlaw race-based mascots. Yay, them! And about time to put a stop to entire races being robbed, at sports-gear-point, of their dignity.