Tuesday, August 26, 2008



"Racist" Mickey Rooney

Must not laugh at Asians
"Mickey Rooney got heartburn when he learned why his 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" had been pulled for "Ratatouille" at East Sacramento's free Screen on the Green movie series Saturday night. "Ratatouille? Never heard of it!" Rooney, 87, said in his classic Brooklyn accent in a spirited phone interview from his southern California home this weekend.

One of the most beloved and enduring movie actors in American history, Rooney was shocked to hear his comic role as Mr. Yunioshi, Audrey Hepburn's cantankerous upstairs neighbor, had been branded racist by several Asian American activists in Sacramento....

CAPITAL (Council of Asian Pacific Islanders Together for Advocacy and Leadership), an umbrella group for more than 90 local organizations, told the Sacramento City Council that Rooney's buck-toothed Japanese character with thick glasses and exaggerated Asian accent perpetuated "offensive, derogatory and hateful racial stereotypes detrimental and destructive to our society."

Source

It was comedy at the time but laughter is dangerous these days

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How ironic, the juxtaposition with the HSBC story.

Anonymous said...

if the movie was made today there might be a case, but censoring the past is disturbingly orwellian

Anonymous said...

Interesting how one of the most actively racist races in the world complains that a 47 year old movie portraying a humorous version of an even older stereotype of them would be racist.

If you're not Japanese you can't even get a job in Japan except for menial labour (lots of Korean nannies and cleaners) because they refuse to hire anyone who's not Japanese...

Anonymous said...

Political correctness is well on it's way to destroying not just our country, but our people, culture, history, and our very way of life. It is doing more to erode our freedoms than anything we've ever experienced.

And yet, the American people simply sit there and accept this insidious virus as though it were some passing fad. Maybe this country's been around too long.