Jesse Watters, one of the more pointless appendages of the Fox News empire, has finally done something useful for America. This week, he produced a segment so breathtakingly racist that it has clarified and sharpened a widening conversation about the depiction and treatments of Asian Americans from many different communities. Watters’s defense, predictably, was that he’s a “humorist,” and that the piece was intended to be “light,” which is a reminder: In addition to being racist and generally obnoxious, Watters is a truly dreadful excuse for a comedian. The kind of humor that Watters traffics in isn’t edgy, in the sense that he says something that’s genuinely risky to speak aloud in the contemporary political environment. Rather, it raises hackles and bores as comedy because it’s such a throwback. Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the foul-mouthed proprietor of the Gem Saloon in “Deadwood,” managed to show more respect to Mr. Wu (Keone Young), the leader of the town’s Chinese community, than Watters can muster here — and Swearengen is a character from a show set in the 1870s. Watters’s approach is a little bit naughty, and quite a bit dumb. Which is, of course, the point: Watters is the ugly American who wanders around asking whether there are Taco Bell franchises in Mexico and whether being curious about Hillary Clinton makes a voter “bi-curious.” These questions, because they’re blunt, purposefully dumb or rude are meant to elicit revealing responses, but they mostly end up exposing Watters himself. In a similar way, the ill-mannered nature of his ambush interviews tends to disguise the fact that his questions aren’t actually very interesting. I suppose I might be capable of being shocked by Watters if had ever exposed me to anything to which I hadn’t already been aware of. But mostly, I’m amazed that there’s anyone who works in the entertainment business who thinks this is remotely clever. Watters should be ashamed of his racism. He might also feel abashed at just how poorly he practices his stated craft. |
