Alessandro... he's coming back!

Just click on the below tag "Ask Alessandro" if you have no idea what this means. As announced this afternoon on Beijing Cream, Alessandro -- the man, the myth, the legend -- will be making a joint appearance on BJC and China Daily Show next week:

Like many continental men, Alessandro will often greet other males with a kiss on each cheek, but he rarely relishes it
The sunglasses? They’re Fottore-Bans
Did you know? Prickly pears are 30% less prickly in Alessandro’s presence
If Alessandro was an interrogator, your crotch would talk

Alessandro is now accepting questions. Please send to cds@chinadailyshow.com.

On Charlie Sheen and Global Times (and al-Jazeera, et al.)

I didn't want to comment on this. I think satire's best left uncommented on, lest you become, unwittingly, the butt of the joke (see: Alessandro; Alessandro, fallout to; my friend's buzz thread; those in bullet points below). But now that Global Times' Charlie Sheen piece is out in the way-the-fuck open, I think it's time for me to throw in a couple cents.

But first allow me this detour: Charlie Sheen is an American hero. Can we all agree on that? Not because he lives the social liberal's dream life with three blond porn stars, but because he's been able to say, clearly and resoundingly, FUCK YOU to an establishment that includes prudish CNN and Wall Street Journal types, overly serious journalists trying to "make sense" of him, conservatives who are disgusted by him and anything resembling non-missionary-position sex, and amateur psychologists all the world over. Charlie Sheen is to be enjoyed while he's still with us (I don't say this with insensitivity) because he's the sort of one-in-a-million personality who, given the platform to communicate with wider audiences, eschews the phony in favor of brutal honesty and entertainment as if to say it actually is possible to be yourself and absolutely right-fucking okay ... okay to be interesting, okay to be funny, okay to have a laugh at everything staid and cliched. Because surely we must recognize how much of our lives are spent wading through the marshes of cliche, right? That we live trapped in houses within houses built by predecessors and ancestors and god-knows-whom, and that people like Charlie Sheen (and poets) open a window ever so slightly and allow us a whiff of freshness. Surely we must understand that the opportunity to diverge from our lockstep march toward death is an opportunity that deserves to be celebrated -- not crushed by loathsome words like "mental" and "unstable." Yes, I know Charlie Sheen is a tragedy wrapped in a comedy, but in all honesty, we have him to thank for giving that to us. Giving himself. America has allowed him to do that. He's the epitome of America in so many ways.

So any news media that uses Charlie Sheen (and they're all using them, those sluts -- worse than any of the porn stars Charlie's loved) in any way that is in the "Charlie Sheen spirit" is off to a good start. So Global Times deserves kudos off the bat here. Charlie Sheen as vehicle for satire. Charlie Sheen as net to catch the hypocrites, even long-time "China watchers" who really, really should know better.

Remember when I implied up top that the best satire ensnares as much as it incites laughter? Well, here is a compendious list of GT's victims:

• Shanghaiist's Kenneth Tan
  
• At least three people on my friend's buzz thread, linked above.
• Al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan
  
• At least he admitted to being "punk'd": Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner
  
• Richard, Peking Duck (disappointing...)
  
• Snark, NICE! (I might have to spell it out for him: "nice" is in all-caps = sarcasm): former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors Robert Stein, who, instead of admitting he didn't get the joke, replied: "Yeah, as I remember. Chairman Mao had us in stitches for years."
  

Here's the thing with all these people: they failed to get the joke even after it was explained to them by a Global Times editor (from Shanghaiist):

The answer is, it’s a spoof column, with full editorial connivance, and was intended to amuse as well as gull a few “Western” readers who’ll believe either a) any mad crap a Chinese commentator says or b) failing that, that the Chinese are incapable of humour or being “in on it” and therefore must be having a prank played on them. Either view is patronizing and/or offensive, I think you’d agree but - even if you don’t - in this case, you’re wrong.

Kenneth Tan's response to the above was essentially: we're just a blog, don't get mad at us.

But Kenneth, you're a blog of some repute, and even after the joke was explained, the best you could offer in reply was a defensive-sounding, "Yes, it didn't quite cross our minds that your bosses were in on the joke. But seriously, can you blame us for that? Have you read some of the jackshit that's published on the other pages of your paper?" You're not necessary wrong for not assuming the best in people, but your tone conveys a strange lack of awareness of who the enemy is -- if there is one.

The other things you say -- which I'll spare you the humiliation of re-reading on this blog -- sound even more defensive. You're the Shanghaiist. You probably blog out of an office -- unlike me, I'm blogging in my pajamas right now. You have influence. Act like it.

And here's al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan: "And so The Global Times editors signed off on a piece ostensibly about Charlie Sheen, probably believed there was some merit to the argument for Eastern values, recognised the reality of how business and mistresses are dealt with in China -- and in doing so, published a piece that was also mocking The Global Times itself."

I learned my lesson a while back with Alessandro: don't assume. In this case, don't assume that Chinese people don't "get the joke." And certainly don't conflate, as people are wont to do, the dispassionate and seemingly unbreakable veneer of the authoritarian government that controls China with the people who inhabit this country. It's one thing to say the government doesn't like joshing around -- though didn't Wikileaks show us the goal of international diplomacy for basically every country is to establish as elaborate a facade as possible? -- but it's another to say that the Chinese just don't "get" it.

Alas, I fear if we delve further, we're going to lose some readers. As Thomas Roche of Techyum puts it in a good but sorta roundabout piece: somehow we've reached the stage of "a hoax within a hoax within a hoax." And that's not a good place to be.

Try as I might, I can't really angry at any one person. But I'm going to use Melissa as an illustrative case here. The target of the satire was not the U.S. It wasn't China, really. It was ... you ready for this, Melissa Chan? ... YOU! (I'm channeling the spirit of Time, please excuse me.) YOU, Melissa Chan! I think balloons are falling from the rafters! Confetti is rocketing up to meet them in starbursts of color! The lights are flashing, Melissa, the lights, the hot lights of fame and glory!!! You are winning!

This is what it took to pull me back: China Daily Show

Go here now. The greatest thing to happen since Ask Alessandro.

Um... welcome, Italian, French, and Spanish readers?

Okay, I've calmed down, and -- prodded by a couple of commenters -- have reread the column that threw me into fits yesterday.

The opening sentence should have been a dead giveaway:

The most frightening piece of writing I've read recently is a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blog about my colleague Alessandro.

Colleague Alessandro. That's brilliant. Now I feel stupid for pointing it out in my blog post -- the "keeping up the ruse" part -- but not taking what I said to heart.

Within the first paragraph, another giveaway:

...by discussing vaginas amid the Chinese ambition of gaining a bigger voice among foreign audiences.

The mockery of WSJ is obvious. I missed it the first time around. Simply missed.

And if it's not clear yet...

Oddly enough, I feel more frightened than ashamed after reading the blog titled A Vulgar Turn in China's International Media Ambition...

It goes on. Nice work, guys. I take back all that I said that didn't involve the word vagina. Look forward to buying y'all a drink.

And now, I refer you to the Italian newspaper The Republic. (And this Italian in New York also thinks Alessandro is a genius.)

POSTSCRIPT: Getting a lot of hits from French and Italian and Spanish Google...

Gutless: Global Times's response to Sky Canaves

UPDATE, 3/12: I've since re-evaluated my initial response. I've kept the below for posterity, but here's my apology to Jacob Li and the Global Times editorial team.

Well, the "impending death" alluded to in my Alessandro post turned out to be an indefinite suspension, as Global Times's Jacob Li tells us in today's issue:

The most frightening piece of writing I've read recently is a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blog about my colleague Alessandro. He, together with our newspaper, was accused of projecting a vulgar voice by discussing vaginas amid the Chinese ambition of gaining a bigger voice among foreign audiences.

You, sir, are a pussy. No, not pussy... vagina. You are a big fat vagina dripping with vagina juice and you deserve to be stuffed back into the vagina from whence you came, you stupid vagina.

Admittedly, the joke is sophomoric and perhaps should have been killed with better judgment...

Vagina.

...Oddly enough, I feel more frightened than ashamed after reading the blog titled A Vulgar Turn in China's International Media Ambitions...

...written by a humorless vagina...

...and its more fearsome Chinese translation Chinese Media's Vulgar Voice Irks Reader...

...written by vaginas who take humorless vaginas way too seriously...

...thanks to last year's anti-vulgarity crusade during which...

Vagina, vagina, vagina.

The joke was just about the vagina, not about China. It was not even about Chinese vaginas – the one who raised the question was a foreign woman.

[Vagina joke.]

Still, I would like to apologize to those who have been offended by Alessandro's occasional vulgar language during the last three months.

Have I mentioned how much of a vagina you are?

I decided to discipline the foul-mouthed Italian...

You HAVE to understand that by keeping up the ruse that Alessandro is 1) real, and 2) actually Italian, you're undercutting your message, right? Or is that your point?

If you're really apologizing, why not out "Alessandro"? Grand plans for the future? If that's the case, ignore the rest of what I have to say. Email me off-blog and explain how a creative, free-spirited, subversive, hilarious voice was able to get a job at your publication, because by God, the writer of Alessandro was actually good.

...by canceling his advice column until he realizes how wrong he is and how he has jeopardized Metro Beijing, the first daily English language local news provider in town.

So let me get this straight: you're canceling the column because some prude working for the Wall Street Journal hates humor and has, with the might of all that is holy in the name of the Western press, derided it in a fucking blog post, and as a result you think your action -- this cancellation -- will save Metro Beijing? VAGINA, how chicken-hearted are you? The equivalent of this would be MSNBC issuing an apology for everything Keith Olbermann has said in the past three years because Rush Limbaugh called him "offensive." Apparently, however, hell has no wrath like a vagina in the Western press scorned.

As I read more of the blog, I did start to feel ashamed of being incompetent, particularly when I saw the appellations Miss Canaves of the WSJ gives us: An arm of the People's Daily, the Communist Party's official mouthpiece and the "government-run" epithet, and calling us on our so-called great ambition of gaining a voice abroad.

Oh, Ms. Canaves, spank me harder, I've been a bad boy, I've been real incompetent, oh please shame me, Ms. Canaves, oh please give it to me, tell me I'm an arm of the People's Daily, oh yes! yes I'm a mouthpiece, oh yes I'm a mouthpiece, oh yes the mouthpiece! the mouthpiece! yes! yes! yes!!

Is the "fake" Italian a spy who has sneaked into the "government-run" newspaper, trying to sabotage our mission of making the official voice roar in the West? Have I been trapped in his well-designed snare?

I'm a bit confused. Your mission is to make the official voice roar in the West? Are you being sarcastic here? Are you saying you believe you DO represent the "official voice," i.e. you ARE a mouthpiece of the government? And furthermore, that you want that voice to "roar"?

If you are being sarcastic, shouldn't you be, um, PROMOTING Alessandro? Maybe you are promoting Alessandro. Maybe this is all a joke, and I've fallen for it. Maybe you are much wiser than I've given you credit for. Maybe I've failed to read between the lines. Maybe I will be retracting everything I've said in two months when Alessandro makes his glorious return.

Then again, maybe you're just milquetoast.

And yes, you have been trapped, you vaginisitc vagina.

All the anger and doubts, however, disappear when I recall the statement we made in our launch issue: We simply aim to provide reliable and fast news and become a communication platform for expats living in this country.

I'm confused again. Fill in this blank: My anger and doubts disappear because ___.

I think you would say -- and forgive me if I'm wrong, I'm not practiced in reading the minds of namby-pamby vaginas -- that your anger and doubts have disappeared because you've realized you're a vagina whose diet consists of high-energy, high-fiber, low-fat vaginas.

The column was becoming a communication platform for expats, which means on top of being a vagina, you are a vaginaing vuhgina vagina.

We're clear about who we are. This is simply an English language newspaper run by Chinese people, with the help of some foreigners.

You're a fucking China Daily wannabe.

But if objectivity and plurality happen to build up our country's soft power, everyone who is involved should feel proud.

You're a milksop.

Anyway, we should thank Miss Canaves for pointing out the inappropriateness of some of Alessandro's advice.

You're a douchebag and a groveling idiot.

It helps us, a fledgling English language newspaper, to find the boundary.

Define your own fucking boundary and find your own fucking voice, you conforming vagina.

But the spirit of Alessandro will live on, in a good way.

If by "spirit" you mean as the 17th century poets meant it -- cum -- and if by "a good way" you mean "in my vagina," then yes, good sir, you have redeemed yourself and your column was a worthwhile use of our time which we shall never want back even if we would eat maggot-flecked goat testicles to get it back.

Well done, Global Times. Vive le Western media!

p.s. Fuck you, Sky Canaves.

The impending death of Ask Alessandro?

Alessandro is a man. He lives in Beijing now. Earlier he was Italy's greatest character actor in advertisements, at which time he was known as Marlon Brandex. He has loved many women, very much.


The picture of "Alessandro," after redesign.


Alessandro, before redesign. Way to decide to crop him, Global Times.

*

Many months ago, I came across Ask Alessandro, a humor column in the Global Times, through a friend's gchat status message. This, by way of example, is one of the many posts that made me laugh out loud. Forgive me for excerpting liberally:

Dear Alessandro, Ever since I got to Beijing, it's like my boyfriend doesn't even notice me anymore! He spends all of his time looking at these Chinese girls, and they are looking at him! And then he tries to tell me how beautiful they are! It makes me feel so angry! Why is he like this, and what can I do to make him love me again?

Sincerely,

Monica

Hello Monica,

When I first see this letter, forgive me I make an assumption. You are obviously not a very beautiful woman. But I mention this to my friend Beppe, who is analyst. He tell me some things, like one time, a woman came to his o. ce – maybe 40 years old, but still scorchio – and he says you can see the line of her suspenders under her skirt while she was talking! Serious! Amazing he get paid for this.

Anyway, he say some times there is beautiful women come to him and their lover doesn't try to satisfy them. He study this and fi nd some men so lazy in their lovemaking they actually give the woman a "negative orgasm". I don't know what they waste all their energy on, maybe they like jogging very much or something. But serious, it seem all the woman getting negative orgasm have something in common: they married to British and German men. So maybe not so surprising after all. I guess maybe your boyfriend is British, ha ha. Or German. Sorry, is not funny.

Beppe writes a thesis on the condition at the moment, what he call "Deprivation of Any Vaginal Ecstasy", or DAVEgasms for short. Don't bother to read, is mostly boring. My advice to you is become more like Italian woman. If your man can't satisfy you, get drunk, scream, throw things at him and tell him if he don't make you feel like a real woman you will cut yourself and fottere his dad.

"You are obviously not a very beautiful woman"? Scorchio? DAVEgasms? Wow.

Wait, there's more!

Dear Alessandro, I'm a single, white, North American female between 30 and 35 living in Beijing, and I can't find a date. What should I do?

Signed,

TCAMF (The Cat Ate My Face)

There is old saying in my tongue, which is Italian. We say, "Il mio fronte sta fondendosi," which translates literally as "my face is melting," though often we use as metaphor for when someone has told a ribald joke. For instance, we might say, "I am standing too close to this tanning bed, il mio fronte sta fondendosi." But that a very literal way to use the saying, and standing too close to tanning bed is no joke. Can get skin cancer. But it is important that you realize that the phrase can be taken literally or fi guratively, as I assure you, when I first came to China, il mio fronte sta fondendosi. Literally. I don't know why this be. Maybe pollution.

Instantly, I knew four things about this column:

1. This was among the funniest, most creative recurring pieces in ALL the serial print world, not just Chinese media.

2. The editors of this column -- surely Chinese, if such editors existed -- were NOT in on the joke. (Unless, now that I think about it, I haven't given been giving Chinese editors enough credit.)

3. This was great satire.

But beyond a shadow of a doubt,

4. This wasn't going to last.

Yet somehow, someway, the column persevered, thrived, even. And that made me happy in the same way that small surprises, like blue skies in Beijing, made me happy. It made me perk up the way you might if you walked into a random neighborhood bar in Brooklyn and discovered an absolutely brilliant band playing in front of six people.

No one I've spoken to about this column has expressed dislike -- most, in fact, have given it a ringing endorsement, even if they didn't always find it funny. Surely, I thought, whatever subversive expat penning this and laughing his her ass off was a brilliant, daring, reckless scribe who gave a damn about neither censors nor authority. She was, in a disguised manner, showing the world that China did not utterly lack a sense of irony (though it does, really). It became easy to believe that there was hope yet for Chinese media to loosen its shackles, laugh every once in a while at itself.

More to the point, the Ask Alessandro column defined Global Times, made it unique. It might not have been enough for me to actually seek out Global Times and buy a copy, but it gave me a reason to talk about the paper. It added to its identity, which, while still in its formative stages, can be roughly defined as not-China Daily. If there's one place to NOT find humor, it's China Daily.

But now I fear Ask Alessandro has met its match and may soon come to a crashing halt. And for that we have the prudes over at the Wall Street Journal to thank.

At 9 p.m. earlier tonight, WSJ's China blog's top post was one titled, "A Vulgar Turn in China's International Media Relations."

The piece is so clueless, I cannot think of a way to summarize it for anyone with a sense of humor. I will, however, provide a link. (Suffice it to say, it involves an over-sensitive business reporter.)

As I commented at the end of the WSJ post (with less-than-exemplary grammar):



Here's to hoping -- to really, really hoping -- that Ask Alessandro's next column makes due mincemeat of this unjust attack on its Italian machismo.

POSTSCRIPT: This is the offending column that got the WSJ writer (who does good work normally, I must say for the record) so upset. In all honesty, I was expecting to see that Alessandro dropped the C word. UPDATE, 3/11: The editors have since taken down the column, and all his rest.

POSTSCRIPT 2: RIP, Jon Swift.

UPDATE, 3/11: My response to Global Times's response.