Just to take a break from politics, let me rant about racism in the media...

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A friend of mine, Dr. Benjamin Tong, used to teach film at SF State, and did a study of Hollywood treatment of Asian leads (maybe several thousand Hollywood movies made before 1990). He found that when male Asian leads are cast - a rare event in its own right - the scripts will generally not allow them to "be intimate" with Caucasian co-stars. In his study, he only found four movies that portrayed an Asian male lead in an intimate role with a Caucasian woman. Of these, all four were later killed, as if Hollywood were trying to teach uppity Asians an important moral - don't mess with our women.

So by those unwritten rules, Chow Yun Fat will not be allowed to sleep with Mira Sorvino in The Replacement Killers, but there is no way to stop Jason Statham from nailing Shu Qi in The Transporter. Don't forget that Hollywood refused to star Bruce Lee in his proposal for the "Kung Fu" television series because he was Asian, and instead cast the sleepy David Carradine as a "half Asian". They were afraid to even cast a hapa at that time. I think if Bruce Lee had been cast in that role, the series would have been absolutely sensational.

However, there are some great indy films that are breaking the mold and casting Asian men in cool leading roles, and letting them bed white chicks. Some night, go to Blockbuster and rent "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle", "The Lover" or "The Guru". Let's see if Hollywood continues to cast Asian leads in major films.

The times they are a'changing!