一段对Joe Wong 的评论，
I’m really amazed by the jokes that Joe Wong told at the RTCA Dinner. He
was able to weave them into a series of well connected jokes which touched
upon many facets of his immigrant life and the American culture. He started
out by calling himself a “who” which was how most Americans reacted to an
Asian name. And, yet, he was smart enough to weave that into the credit card
security question. He then described his childhood by telling the audience
how the cultural revolution had impacted it and ruined his childhood memory.
How lucky American children are to have schooling today that is free from
disruption and hardship. He then proceeded to his entry into Rice University
in Texas. He highlighted discrimination by referring to bumper stickers on
his used car that told non-English speakers to go home. He quickly followed
by talking about bilingualism. It was a touch of genius to connect that with
his American-born son becoming president someday and having to sign
legislative bills in English and talk to Chinese debt collectors in Chinese.
How timely it was for him to comment upon how much debt America owed to
China at this juncture. Just observe how the audience reacted to that joke,
many laughed and yet grinned at the same time knowingly. He then talked
about deciding to stay in the US after graduation because he would be better
off in this country for being ethnic. With this country’s lopsided
emphasis on race and ethnicity, it was a very telling comment indeed. The
most intriguing jokes were his reference to Benjamin Franklin, a clear and
explicit comment on our social policies. People robbed convenience stores in
search of Ben Franklin whose face was on $100 bills. With our justice
system today, that could very well be a viable defense. He then used the
same analogy for the second Amendment which allowed citizens to bear arms.
The Roe vs Wade joke on abortion gave a twist to the way Cubans came into
Florida by rowing and Mexicans into Texas by wading across the Rio Grande.
The “white guilt” joke touched upon the often used phrase “all men were
born equal”. After they were born, equality kind of depended on income,
education and ability to pay health insurance. As a political comment, he
poked fun at the election of Scott Brown as Republican’s answer to health
care. Continuing on the political thread, he poked fun at Joe Biden, O’bama
, especially about his not rejecting the Nobel peace prize. One could
clearly see the embarrassment on Joe Biden’s face. He then switched and
joked about those in the audience, the journalists calling them his peers in
a tongue-in-cheek way. Journalists were the only people that could justify
anything they said or published, such as being born in the year of the horse
,therefore claiming to be a nay sayer. He then poked fun at C-SPAN and PBS
and QVC. He reserved his best to the last and that was when he talked about
his becoming a US citizen in 2008. America #1 referred to the
presumptuousness of the US in assuming that the team that won the baseball
series in the US would automatically be the world champion. He was very
smart in using the “yes we can” election slogan of O’bama and Biden to
arrive at his own “Who Cares” slogan. Here, he really delved into the
political controversies over same sex marriage, unemployment and global
warming in a lighthearted way but intelligent. The joke about using text
messaging for diplomacy was brilliant. It was a technology most people could
identify with and something that was such a hype in the last election. This
is why I think Joe Wong is a genius among comedians today.
