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News Stories Colliding in My Head
Aug. 1st, 2021 07:28 amThe meaning of this turn of Olympic golf ended up being that the gold medal went to that man for all nations, the polyglot delight from San Diego who stood for one national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but could have stood for several. This 27-year-old with the Californian ease and the Taiwanese mother raised in Japan and the French-German father finally won a big-deal tournament after inveterate contention in golf majors, whereupon he gave an Olympian answer to an Olympian question about the values of multi-nationalism and travel upon this planet.
“I think that I can just use myself as an example,” Xander Schauffele said after one-shot win over Rory Sabbatini, the South Africa-born, 45-year-old multinational playing for Slovakia. “I’m the only natural-born citizen in my family [of four], being born in the United States … I think that being very international, it’s taught me a lot about different cultures and it’s made me very understanding of different cultures. I think that if everyone sort of had the ability to travel more and experience other cultures, they would be more willing to get along, potentially.”
He could look over at the bronze medalist and say, as an American, “Yeah, my fellow countryman right next to me. My mom was born in Taiwan, so actually by blood I’m half-Taiwanese.”
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In Orange County, Anti-Vaccine Activists Attack Top Elected Official For His Vietnamese Heritage
But at this week’s unruly meeting, anti-vax sentiments turned into a torrent of racist and xenophobic tirades against [Republican] Supervisor Andrew Do, the board’s chair, who is of Vietnamese descent. In his role as board chair, he has been directing the county's COVID prevention efforts.
One speaker who identified himself as Tyler Durden, a character from the film Fight Club, blasted Vietnam’s COVID quarantine policies and said to Do: “You come to my country, and you act like one of these communist parasites. I ask you to go the f—k back to Vietnam!”
Do was a refugee whose family fled the communist regime in Vietnam and has lived in the U.S. for 46 years.
Another speaker said: “You have the audacity to come here and try to turn our country, Andrew Do, into a communist country. Shame on you!”
“You talked about escaping communism this morning,” said yet another speaker. “Why are you bringing communism to Orange County? We want our freedoms. We're Americans, we have freedoms.”
Do is an outspoken critic of communism and perhaps the best-known Vietnamese American leader in Southern California. Some critics say his measures to combat COVID have not been aggressive enough compared to neighboring Los Angeles County, and they find it ironic that anti-vaccine activists are focused on him.
"I think most people look at Andrew Do and say he's certainly not at the vanguard of some of these efforts to limit COVID," Min said.
