\n\n\nhappy lunar new year, friendly reminder that jimmy kimmel and ellen degeneres inviting marie kondo on to their show to\u00a0\u201ctidy up\u201d their writer\u2019s rooms only to dismiss her advice, belittle her methods, make fun of her use of a translator, and act like ungrateful children in the face of her genuine attempts to help is literally the most basic form of Othering from white people. It\u2019s another form of commodification by white people of non-white cultures that is being willingly shared, and it doesn\u2019t get any less racist when it comes from\u00a0\u201cprogressives\u201d, be they a liberal white woman or a\u00a0\u201cWoke\u201d news pundit\u00a0
like she\u2019s already being attacked and villainised into this aggressive book-burning harpy by white people on twitter who thinks having a full bookshelf can substitute having a personality, and now mainstream network talk shows are coming after her as well.\u00a0
\nI don\u2019t care if you think\u00a0\u201cthis is just how Degeneres/Kimmel does comedy\u201d, I don\u2019t care if they did it for laughs. The overall tone of their segment is to show their reaction; to show how ridiculous and childish they find the KonMari method. We get it, white liberals don\u2019t have time for wishy-washy Japanese mindfulness woo-woo and their\u00a0enlightened views make them too rational to take seriously any other cultures that are based in spirituality and animism
\nKimmel made a long, over-winded joke that deliberately put both Marie and her translator into an embarrassing situation, deliberately highlighting and mocking Marie\u2019s lack of English, and then mocked the Shinto cultural background that Marie\u2019s methods come from. Ellen\u2019s writer acted as if Marie was going to overturn his office, then shoves Kim Kardashian\u2019s ass into Marie\u2019s face, then admit that he\u2019s going\u00a0\u201cput everything back anyway\u201d after Maries leaves. Both of them act as if her\u00a0\u201cgreeting ritual\u201d was some form of Weird Hokey Japanese Gimmick.\u00a0
\nWhite \u201cprogressive liberal voices\u201d are turning non-white cultures either into a commodity or into a joke without any self-reflection or foresight into the damage they\u2019re potentially doing. They take no care in the hurt that they as white comedians are sowing; in turning Marie\u2019s traditional Japanese cultural values and contexts into a joke, they\u2019re making the act of othering and disrespecting non-white cultures more normative and easier to do. Their activism and political commentary is nothing but performative white bullshit.
\nWhen we share don\u2019t share our cultures, white people turn it into a hip commodity, then cry PC-gone-mad when we take offense. When we willingly share our cultures, it gets turned into a punchline. It doesn\u2019t matter if the dismissal and commodification come from someone wearing a MAGA cap or a white liberal icon; the lack of respect still stems from the same root of privilege.\u00a0
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the notion of \u201ctalk shows will invite you on but treat you as a comical foreigner to exploit for humor\u201d as an American-on-Japanese thing tho
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