Thanks to former business reporter Tim Ruel for adding a bit of context to comments by radio personality Michael W. Perry:
From HawaiiReporter: Michael W. Perry, who is a co-host of Hawaii’s most popular radio morning show, the Perry & Price Show, said on the air this morning that Hanohano’s apology sounded more like a “non-apology” coming from someone who did not really want to apologize. He joked that if he or his co-host Larry Price had said anything like that on the air they would be working at K-Mart doing announcements for shoppers, and not on the radio.
really? this sounds very familiar. let’s see:
Honolulu Advertiser, May 6, 2007
Price: “You keep using the word ‘honest,’ senator; where you from?”
Hooser: “Where am I from? Kapa’a.”
Price: “Yeah, where were you born and raised?”
Hooser: “I was born in California. I graduated high school at Radford High School.”
Price: “You got blue eyes?”
Hooser: “(Laughs) I do. Does that matter?”
Price: “Yes, to us it does. Because when local people hear somebody from the Mainland talk about how honest everything is that means that something’s wrong. You know when they say ‘frankly’ or ‘honestly’ we did a lot of things, you know and stuff like that, that sounds suspicious.”
Hooser: “You know, I don’t really appreciate a reference to where I’m from, from California, or my blue eyes, Mr. Price.”
Price: “Well I don’t care what you think.”
Price later apologized. But Perry said Price didn’t have to apologize.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/May/08/ln/FP705080343.html
Even though Perry and Price now consider the Hooser episode closed, Perry said, “we’ll have the loonies call in who still haven’t heard what he actually said and we’ll deal with that.”
After Price’s apology, Perry told him on air, “That’s it? You’re apologizing?”
Price: “Yup. It’s the right thing to do.”
Perry: “You know what I think?”
Price: “I’m afraid to ask you what you think.”
Perry: “I think you’re crazy. You don’t have to apologize.”
Price: “Nah. The apology stands.”
Perry went on at length, calling himself “the blue-eyed member of this morning team.”
“This was not about racism,” he told listeners. “It was about hypocrisy as anybody who heard the whole thing knows. If you listen to the part of the news, the interview that wasn’t in the news stories, you know exactly what it was about. … On the radio, people hear 60 percent of what we say and 40 percent of what we mean. I understand that. So you’re calming the waters. OK.
“This is just so typical. Cries of racism. I’m a victim, I’m a victim. Racism, right. Larry Price, caucasian father from Tennessee and Hawaiian-Portuguese mother from here. Which half of you was racist?
“This stuff drives me nuts. It’s just so typical. A 15-second sound bite overwhelms a devastating, revealing 15-minute interview about our dysfunctional state Senate. People who heard the whole interview know exactly what this is about. Go listen to it. It’s still on the Internet.
“I have a feeling what happened was most people heard the blue-eyed thing and then turned to the people next to them and said, ‘Did you hear what he said?’ They didn’t even listen to the rest of it where you made your point. Your point was exactly the opposite point from the one you are accused of making and that drives me nuts … Would you like to withdraw your apology?”
Price: “No.”
Perry: “I didn’t think so.”
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“Frankly”, his comment was racist.
So, I’m confused. Do you think Hanohano’s apology was genuine or not? I agree with many folks that it was a non apology. She apologized not for what she said but instead for people being offended by it. Not the same thing. Then there is the spectacle of a grown woman throwing a tantrum over the art being hung in “her” office. On top of that she sends her staff for training. Heck, they are not the ones who made the racist remarks, she is the one who needs more than a little training; and maybe to take a hike.
As for Perry and Price, my opinion is that they SHOULD be working at K-Mart. The fact that they are the most popular morning show is (again my opinion) a sad commentary on the collective intelligence of the radio listening public.
Larry Price’s comments were not “racist”, as his comments did not demean Hooser’s ethnicity, only his arrogance. Hooser’s attitude that he was “honest” is the code word for mainland people to say that local people are either stupid or corrupt in their “view”. That is what Price was trying to get to in his interview. Since it was a radio program and not a tv presentation, Price’s poor reference to Hooser’s “blue eyes” was more to give his audience a perspective of a mainland haole who he was speaking with.
In my parent’s generation, mainlanders were referred to as those with the “missionary complex” who came to Hawaii to tell everyone how stupid local folks (Haoles included), because that they didn’t do things like on the mainland. Unfortunately, that “missionary complex” exist in a growing number of elected officials who consider local people (Haoles included) unable to understand that it is their way or the highway because all we local folks are incapble of making the “right” decisions.
In conclusion, Price had a difficult situation since he was not on television and used an inartful references to place a perspective to Hooser, but to call him racist in light of Rep. Hanohano’s outright racist tirade is totally out of line. They are not in the same boat in any manner, shape or form. Pity Frank Delima, for in your politically correct world he would never had a comedic carreer.
The fact that you think somebody who grew up here and graduated Radford is a Mainlander says a lot about you, Russel. If he’s a haole, he must be a Mainland haole, no matter how long he has lived here? Assuming every haole from the Mainland thinks the same way is as racist as thinking all local people are stupid or corrupt.
No, all Haoles are not alike and I never said that. Some Haoles come and settle here and accept local ways. Some Haoles are born here and are inclusive as well.
Quite a few Haoles come and never fit in. Most of those just leave and never come back. I had an AJA friend who grew up in Manoa and never fit in here. He loves living on the mainland.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that there are Haoles who either don’t understand local folks or who don’t want to understand local folks. Some hang out together like birds of a feather, putting out their views to their transplanted brethern who they associate with. It does bother me what they do with their friends, but I do mind if their view of the world is being imposed on me, my friends and my family. They have the right to their opinions, but don’t have the right to impose them on others.
The true racists, of any ethnicity, believe that they have certain rights to impose their views on the rest of the world because they are superior or that the world owes them something. However anyone may disagree or even hate them for what they believe in, in the United States they are free to think what they want. That is why the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights protects free speech, but doesn’t allow anyone to impose their views on others or attack them. May be that is simplistic, but is the gist of what free speech is all about.
The bottom line, when God made assholes, he didn’t discriminate. You can find them everywhere.
“The bottom line, when God made assholes, he didn’t discriminate. You can find them everywhere.”
for once, i agree with you.
Price’s situation was nothing like Hanohano’s, in my opinion.
Hanohano distinguishes between ‘her’ people, and the people in her district. She doesn’t apologize for being intolerant of, and hurtful to, those different from her race. She insulted a whole bunch of ‘part Hawaiians’ in her little tirade, and her so-called apology was for nothing more than show. She also used her position as State Representative to threaten an agency with de-funding if they did not do as she wished – basically extorting them.
I surely hope her constituents take note & give her walking papers come next election cycle.
Per the usual, some comments are missing the point.
The point?
Perry shredded the value of Price’s genuine apology, leaving KSSK listeners with little.
But Perry had no problem going after Hanohano’s “non-apology”.
The conclusion?
After Price’s apology and Perry’s reaction, Hooser said it best: “While I have not heard from Mr. Price directly, I understand that he issued an apology for last week’s remarks on his radio show this morning. As much as I personally appreciate his effort to address his inappropriate and offensive statements, it is clear from statements that continue to be made on the show that the management and owners of KSSK still do not understand the seriousness of the matter.”
We do no hear Perry and Price here in Big Island but I have problems with Price’s overall attitude about “haoles” as he snickers while using the word. He needs help.
As for Hanhonao , she is more blatant. Friends asked me how she skipped over the Koreans and Filipino sin her racial bashing. I do not know.
Hawaii said goodbye to a woman who lived here for nore than 60 plus years of her life who was first ivefnmen exeutivw since Queen Lilioukalani, part Black and absolutely unforgiving of prejudice. I wonder what her thoughts might be of her successor’s s tirade a couple of days after her beautiful celebration life.
Being Hawaiian is no license to utter vulgarities.
KSSK can be found on the internet at: http://www.iheart.com/#/live/829/?callletters=kssk-fm&autoplay=true
I listened to Perry& Price for a whole week as an experiment! It is the worse show ever!
I agree with Price on this point: I am wary of people who begin a sentence with “Honestly, I must say …” which clearly implies that they are not normally honest. I’m wary of people who start out with “To tell the truth …” which clearly implies that they do not normally tell the truth but they want you to believe they are about to tell the truth this time “just for you, my friend.”
There are also “local” people who don’t “fit in.” They wind up moving to the Mainland.
P.S. — Radford is a high school in Hawaii.
Sneaky ‘kine slaps are slaps nonetheless. Price knew that, but apparently Perry didn’t. Mutual respect is maintained when people get called out when they’re wrong. Hal Lewis would have handled it much better than Perry – and Perry ain’t no Hal Lewis. Not by a country mile.
Russel is correct that God created the – let me call them,”you know whats” in all races. The “You know whats” I have met usually show the symptoms at a young age and, regardless of how their lives progress, remain “you know whats” for a lifetime. One of the few incurable conditions left outside of cancer and neurological disease. And, I might add, spreading like wildfire.
Cultural misappropriation is a big issue, and was at the heart of Hanohano’s outburst.
The “Tiki Manifesto” was recently read on KHPR (although I did not hear it).
http://www.bambooridge.com/episode.aspx?eid=244
What’s been called a ‘tiki culture’ emerged in 1950s America and has spread around the world. It is basically Pacific-island themed restaurant/lounge culture – a very peculiar hybrid, if you think about it.
There is a serious side to tiki culture. That is, it is what you make it. From the wiki on ‘tiki culture’.
At the core of the musical was the issue of racism, a bold challenge in 1949.
This corny aesthetic had a huge impact on American culture.
In a complicated way, what is today seen as an exploitive and racist commercial art form was in some ways an expression of open-mindedness in its heyday, a bit like subscribing to National Geographic magazine. (This kind of ambiguity is typically the topic of ‘cultural studies’ in academia today, which explores the negotiation of progressive and conservative impulses in the formation of popular culture, especially in how ordinary people utilize dominant institutional structures to express their viewpoints.)
One contemporary comparison might be Italian restaurants. There are over 50,000 ‘Italian’ restaurants worldwide, but only 10,000 of them serve actual Italian food. For the most part, these are American chain restaurants like Olive Garden serving bogus Italian food. (For example, the ‘Alfredo sauce’ at Olive Garden is made with egg yolks, the way carbonara is supposed to be made.) The Italian government has taken this issue to international courts, to no avail.
Another example might be the misappropriation of Korean food by the Japanese. The Korean government successfully sued Japanese food corporations who were marketing fake kimchee. Now the Japanese need to sell such stuff under the term ‘kimuchi’. From the wiki on kimchee:
Food is especially a delicate topic in matters of cultural misappropriation. It is intimate and personal. It is the last thing people give up as they gradually assimilate over the generations.
But cultural (mis)appropriation is a complicated matter. It goes both ways. For example, Italian cuisine is very strict (e.g., fish dishes must never contain cheese). Yet some of the “timeless” rules of contemporary Italian cooking, like cooking pasta ‘al dente’, are only a couple of generations old, and sometimes have an American Influence (e.g., pasta carbonara is said to date to World War II, and was made to appeal to American soldiers hankered for eggs and bacon).
Another example might be reggae music in Hawaii, said to be the most popular musical genre in Hawaii. In a way, that’s like tiki culture, exoticizing another culture and then imitating it, and thus exoticizing the self. One big difference might be that reggae in Jamaica in the 1970s was politically radical and anti-colonial, born in the matrix of music, religion (Rastafarianism) and (pan-African) politics, whereas in Hawaii it seems pretty much just laid-back entertainment. Also, reggae in the 1970s was creative, whereas in Hawaii it seems ossified.
One could argue that the Hawaii state capitol building represents both the exoticizing of the Other by American culture and the exoticizing of the self. From the wiki:
John Carl Warnecke and Associates were located in San Francisco. (Warnecke designed the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame memorial gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery).
From the wiki on ‘Hawaiian architecture’:
So the Hawaii international style of architecture is a hybrid of tropical island motifs and an American version of the German architectural school of Bauhaus, which emphasized a kind of efficient elegance. From the Bauhaus wiki:
The ‘New Objectivity’ was an inter-War attitude characterized by realism and democratization, and modeled after the German notion of what American culture is like. From the wiki:
So one could argue that the Hawaii state capitol building is modeled after an outsider notion of Pacific island culture, combined with an American notion of German design which itself is modeled after a German notion of American pragmatism. There is a lot of cultural appropriation going on here, and perhaps misappropriation as well.
We could also explore the misappropriation of American culture in Hawaii. The local diet in Hawaii is heavily Americanized. Interestingly, the foods that Americans consider most American – hamburgers, hotdogs and apply pie – are really simplified versions of German food (which is already pretty simple compared to French food), and have become highly processed, industrial fast foods. Likewise, Hawaii is obsessed with American sports like baseball and football, which are really simplified versions of British cricket and rugby. (Football has become even more simplistic, with the average football telecast lasting 186 minutes — with the ball in actual play for only 11 minutes during that period, and the other 175 minutes consisting of replays, commentary and commercials.) So European folk culture became simplified American popular culture, which has become the impoverished culture of corporate mass consumption, which has been eagerly absorbed in Hawaii. But one might argue that the things that the Germans of the Bauhaus school of architecture admired about American culture – the openness, efficiency and public-orientation of a democratic culture of debate and discussion – do not characterize the political culture of Hawaii.
Larry Price raises an interesting issue on who can speak for a society. Partly, that is an issue of regional politics in all societies. (“We don’t need no Yankees coming down here and telling us our business.”) But it is a question central to the social sciences on who can best understand a society, the insider or the outsider. The object of cultural anthropology in particular is to translate local insider practices and local (‘emic’) understandings for a broader audience (e.g., explaining how betting in a Balinese cockfight is not based on guessing which rooster will win, but about symbolically reinforcing local alliances), whereas a sociologist might import outside academic (‘etic’) concepts to understand a culture in a way that it could never understand itself (e.g., American studies was meant in its inception to bring an outsider’s anthropological viewpoint to the study of American society, disrupting familiar notions American automatically assume about themselves). But in both cases, insider and outsider accounts, the best observations are by those who have the broadest or ‘highest’ perspective, and that’s based on travel, education and the study of history, etc.
One issue here is the ‘liminal’, which is the in-between realm at the intersection of insider and outsider. The wiki:
One issue is that some people, and not just anthropologists during their field work, are born into liminality. The sociologist Robert E. Park wrote about migration and ‘marginal man’, an individual born in one society and who has moved to another culture, and who lives in two worlds but belongs to neither. The Jews in Europe often experienced this duality, but it is also common in the American experience, not just of immigrants and their offspring, but of those who move into the cities from small towns. Marginal man is both insider and outsider, in a sense, and might make the most knowing observer. So someone who moved to Hawaii at an early age might make the best commentator on the regional scene.
But I am not sure Larry Price understands that. That’s peculiar, because Price has a PhD in business and has done postgraduate research at Stanford, according to his wiki. He is educated. But perhaps, to make it odder, he might himself be a kind of marginal man (e.g., his father was a white man from the South). And that’s what makes the “Perry and Price” team so odd. Their whole shtick is like the white cop and the black cop on the sitcom “Sanford and Son”, with the pompous white cop expounding in fancy language, with the black cop translating it all into ordinary language and jive talk. But Larry Price is himself already a kind of two-legged Perry and Price. He contains the white cop within him. And the cop is educated and wealthy … and kind of a Southerner.