Introducing Your New … Asian American Idol! Asian Americans Win “Fame” and “Last Comic Standing"

by Todd Lee
posted 8/15/03

The votes are in, and America has decided that it’s fame-bound, up-and coming singer/dancer and comedian are both …. Asian American men!!! Implausible as it may seem, the world of reality television in its hurry-up-let’s-copy-American Idol wisdom has anointed Chinese American Harlemm Lee of Hollywood as the top singer/dancer in the country (in NBC’s “Fame”) and Vietnamese American Dat Phan of San Diego (in NBC’s “Last Comic Standing”) as its premier comedian. In each unpredictable competition, voted on nationally by the great American public, Lee beat out Britney Spearsesque all-American blonde Shannon Bex for the first prize in “Fame”, while Phan overwhelmed Dave Mordal, the smug Caucasian comedy veteran in a head-to-head challenge and outpolled new-urban white boy Ralphie May by 35% to 28% of the final, national vote in “Last Comic”.

Something is happening out there.
Maybe it started with the latest crop of American Idol winners, as the unphotogenic, un-starlike pair of Ruben Stoddard, an overweight big bear of an African American man with a Luther-like voice and Clay Aiken, a restyled, TV made-over Christian geek from South Carolina, won the number 1 and 2 spots on the talent show despite their superficially unsellable images. But what was surprising to some (including me) on Idol was that America voted in the Black guy with the velvet voice rather than Clay, the nice guy good ol’boy, certainly a nerdy version of the all-American boy. But if that vote was surprising, my usual cynicism at Americans’ ability to rise about racism and subtler racial bias was really jolted by Harlem’s and Dat’s victories. If you had told me two months ago that two Asian guys were going to win two of the most contested national talent shows in mass media in 2003, I would have taken bets against you and lost badly.

Asian American Idol 2- Surprising Dat