Read Online Oh Myyy! by George Takei - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: George Takei
Tags: Humor
Ads: Link
statement:
I was thrilled to see the response of the fans, with over 147,000 fans clicking like on it and over 10,000 commenting, nearly all positive. The people had spoken: This is George Takei’s page, and he can say whatever he damn well pleases!
But part of the risk of carefully growing a cohesive online community is that the cohesion can prove illusory, giving way quickly in the face of divisive politics or beliefs. Although I was quite proud of them and knew that they could move many viewers to action, my endorsement videos were, shall I say, not welcomed by a certain percentage of my fan base. It didn’t matter that I had prefaced the first post as tactfully as I could imagine:
I did take the time, as I usually do, to read through a great deal of the comments below my posts. To my dismay, most of the 4000+ comments expressed on the first video expressed disappointment; indeed many were highly critical. Hundreds questioned how I could speak so passionately in the video about how my family was incarcerated in camps during World War II simply because we were of Japanese descent, yet support a President who had signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — a provision in which grants him the very power of indefinite detention without trial that I had just condemned. For the record, I had blogged about my opposition to the NDAA earlier and was dismayed that the President had signed it. It had been passed by veto-proof majority of 93 out of 100 senators, which may explain but doesn’t excuse his signature.
So this wasn’t just a case of shaking the tree and having a lot of nuts fall down. Thousands of my fans on the opposite end of the political spectrum were genuinely upset and were citing valid concerns. While I was happy that my “push” on my Facebook page ultimately lifted the number of YouTube views on the first video to over 175,000, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d pulled a Sinead O’Connor on some lesser scale (you might recall, on Saturday Night Live Ms. O’Connor had ended a performance by ripping a picture of the Pope in half — a highly controversial statement that cost her significant goodwill with many fans, some of who began booing her at concerts).
But another part of me was upset that I had somehow managed to turn myself into some kind of Internet personality who wasn’t allowed to have real world opinions anymore. Every engaged adult citizen has the right to vote in this country, and all of us are supposed to be guaranteed freedom of speech. How could the Internet manage to censor, through public opprobrium, what the government itself had no power to silence? Was I to curtail my own outspoken nature in order to keep a portion of my fans on board?
It struck me that, in the minds of many fans, I am an actor and an entertainer, and it is therefore presumptuous of me to use whatever popularity I have to push a social or political agenda. This is why Richard Gere’s decision to talk about Tibet on the Oscars raised a collective sigh of exasperation. Actors aren’t any smarter than anyone else, so the thinking goes, they’re just more popular. But their fans made them popular so they could make movies and TV shows, not so they could lecture the world.
So let me be clear. I am an actor, yes, but I am also an activist. Indeed, the “golden” years of my life have been marked more by the latter than the former. As I write this book, I am starring in a musical called Allegiance which I consider my legacy project. Allegiance is set during World War II and the Japanese American internment, and it’s the first time such a story will be told on the Broadway stage. I want this story told because I want it remembered.
The internment, you see, was not just a Japanese American story; it was an American one. It was the U.S. Constitution that was violated by the detention of over 120,000 persons of Japanese decent, without charge or trial, and it was our
I was thrilled to see the response of the fans, with over 147,000 fans clicking like on it and over 10,000 commenting, nearly all positive. The people had spoken: This is George Takei’s page, and he can say whatever he damn well pleases!
But part of the risk of carefully growing a cohesive online community is that the cohesion can prove illusory, giving way quickly in the face of divisive politics or beliefs. Although I was quite proud of them and knew that they could move many viewers to action, my endorsement videos were, shall I say, not welcomed by a certain percentage of my fan base. It didn’t matter that I had prefaced the first post as tactfully as I could imagine:
I did take the time, as I usually do, to read through a great deal of the comments below my posts. To my dismay, most of the 4000+ comments expressed on the first video expressed disappointment; indeed many were highly critical. Hundreds questioned how I could speak so passionately in the video about how my family was incarcerated in camps during World War II simply because we were of Japanese descent, yet support a President who had signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — a provision in which grants him the very power of indefinite detention without trial that I had just condemned. For the record, I had blogged about my opposition to the NDAA earlier and was dismayed that the President had signed it. It had been passed by veto-proof majority of 93 out of 100 senators, which may explain but doesn’t excuse his signature.
So this wasn’t just a case of shaking the tree and having a lot of nuts fall down. Thousands of my fans on the opposite end of the political spectrum were genuinely upset and were citing valid concerns. While I was happy that my “push” on my Facebook page ultimately lifted the number of YouTube views on the first video to over 175,000, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d pulled a Sinead O’Connor on some lesser scale (you might recall, on Saturday Night Live Ms. O’Connor had ended a performance by ripping a picture of the Pope in half — a highly controversial statement that cost her significant goodwill with many fans, some of who began booing her at concerts).
But another part of me was upset that I had somehow managed to turn myself into some kind of Internet personality who wasn’t allowed to have real world opinions anymore. Every engaged adult citizen has the right to vote in this country, and all of us are supposed to be guaranteed freedom of speech. How could the Internet manage to censor, through public opprobrium, what the government itself had no power to silence? Was I to curtail my own outspoken nature in order to keep a portion of my fans on board?
It struck me that, in the minds of many fans, I am an actor and an entertainer, and it is therefore presumptuous of me to use whatever popularity I have to push a social or political agenda. This is why Richard Gere’s decision to talk about Tibet on the Oscars raised a collective sigh of exasperation. Actors aren’t any smarter than anyone else, so the thinking goes, they’re just more popular. But their fans made them popular so they could make movies and TV shows, not so they could lecture the world.
So let me be clear. I am an actor, yes, but I am also an activist. Indeed, the “golden” years of my life have been marked more by the latter than the former. As I write this book, I am starring in a musical called Allegiance which I consider my legacy project. Allegiance is set during World War II and the Japanese American internment, and it’s the first time such a story will be told on the Broadway stage. I want this story told because I want it remembered.
The internment, you see, was not just a Japanese American story; it was an American one. It was the U.S. Constitution that was violated by the detention of over 120,000 persons of Japanese decent, without charge or trial, and it was our
Similar Books
