Tens of millions of Americans apologized to the world in 2000 and again in 2004 trying to explain that they hadn’t elected President George Bush and that they didn’t support his policies. The people of the world got it and didn’t hold Bush’s actions against us.

And when people criticized America for a myriad of bad policies, we understood that criticism was targeted at our President, not us.

But when the shoe is on the foot, there’s a disconnect.

From The Associated Press:

Chinese-Americans rallied outside CNN’s Hollywood office on Saturday to demand the firing of commentator Jack Cafferty for calling China’s goods “junk” and its leaders a “bunch of goons and thugs.”

“We understand free speech,” Lake Wang, 39, told the Los Angeles Times. “But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he’s jealous of China.”

A crowd estimated by police at 2,000 to 5,000 gathered, chanting and holding signs that read “Fire Cafferty” and “CNN: Chinese Negative News.” The crowd was peaceful, and no arrests were made, police Sgt. David Torres said.

Just what did Cafferty say?

“We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.”

“So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed,” he continued. “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”

For the record, I think Cafferty is spot on.

Because I think the Chinese people are ruled by a greedy, corrupt, authoritarian government that our government makes nice to because it owes it our great grandchildren.

Anybody disagree?

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 1037 by Jeff Hess and is filed under China, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.