With a controversy over his Super Bowl Sunday campaign ad spreading nationwide, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra scheduled a telephone conference call with reporters on Monday morning.
The ad, depicting an Asian woman standing on a dirt path next to a rice paddy, speaking broken English, declared that she, like all Chinese, are happy that Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow has run up U.S. budget deficits and allowed China to gain financially by investing in American debt obligations.
The conference call was held as Hoekstra was experiencing a barrage of criticism for the ad on Facebook, YouTube, from an Asian-American group, from black ministers, and from an array of loyalist Republicans.
Critics called the ad racist, xenophobic, “dumb,” and “despicable.”
The Hoekstra camp had tried to aggressively fight back on Sunday, saying the 30-second spot was meant to be satirical, or that it showed how even modest Chinese people can at least speak some English.
Those defenses were dumped in advance of the conference call with a group of reporters, including myself.
The Super Bowl Sunday crowd is certainly not populated with countless politically sophisticated people who spend hours each day studying the issues. So, I wondered if some were hoodwinked by the actress on the tube vs. the reality of a candidate trying to establish a calculated election message.
The Hoekstra camp had already admitted that the ad was shot in California, not China. During the conference call I asked if the woman in the ad was Chinese. The candidate replied that both of her parents are “100 percent Chinese.” As I tried to ask a follow-up question, whether the woman was born in America and normally speaks correct English, my phone was quickly cut off and the question was never heard.
Campaign spokesman Paul Ciaramitaro later said the phone was muted by accident and the incident was not an attempt to censor certain questions.
He also promised to provide information on the actress and her background.
As I write this, that was nine hours ago and still no response.
Which makes me wonder if this woman is an American-born UCLA grad, with a major in theater, who speaks perfect English and has no idea why the director of the shoot wanted her to speak in such a cartoonish manner.
In the coming days, maybe we will get some answers.
What difference does it make if she speaks good English normally? She is a actress, who was asked to portray a Chinese women in a rice patty speaking broken English. Broken English should be expected from someone in that setting. If you were to try and speak Chinese it would be broken Chinese. This is a non issue and you as a reporter should concentrate on the issues that matter> Debbie Stabenow is spending our country into the ground and she needs to be held accountable for this.
This is just another example of the right's tired old "fear mongering"… instead of the Soviets or "Radical Liberals" now its the Chinese! The ad was in poor taste, designed to appeal to the least common denomonator. Hoekstra should have more class than that.