Abigail Derecho
University of California, Berkeley

Performing Transnational Anti-Fandom: Filipinos Protesting The Daily Show and Desperate Housewives Online

On September 18, 2007, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a massively popular "fake news" program that airs four nights a week on the Comedy Central cable network, featured a five-minute "investigative report" by senior correspondent Samantha Bee entitled, "Is America Ready for a Woman President?"  In the segment, Bee states, "Other countries have had girl leaders for years.  And while Golda Meir fended off Egypt, Corazon Aquino faced down dictators and Margaret Thatcher kicked communism's ass....Still, they are women."  While Bee mentioned each of the three female former heads-of-state, photos of the leaders were shown with captions scrawled across them, in a style made famous by gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who writes short, punchy captions across the photos of celebrity mishaps that he includes on perezhilton.com.  The photo of Golda Meir had "Oy!" scribbled across it, the photo of Margaret Thatcher (with Thatcher's head photoshopped onto an image of Britney Spears' body, from a famous shot of Spears exiting a car while she was wearing a short dress with no underwear) had "Oops" written on it, and Corazon Aquino's photo had "Slut!" written on it, with a heart punctuating the exclamation point and two additional hearts drawn on either side of Aquino's face. 

On September 30, 2007, ABC aired the first episode of the fourth season of hit drama Desperate Housewives.  In the episode, one of the primary characters, Susan Mayer, portrayed by Teri Hatcher, says to her OB-GYN, before the doctor presents her with some test results, "Okay, before we go any further, can I check these diplomas?  Because I just want to make sure they're not from some med school in the Philippines." 

These two jokes, one referring to a Filipino icon and the other to the Philippine's system of higher education, appearing in two U.S. television programs just 12 days apart, provoked an immediate and widespread response from Filipinos around the world, and from highly-ranked officials in the Philippine government.  News stories, protests, and petitions circulated around the globe in the weeks following the airing of the Sept. 18 Daily Show and Sept. 30 Desperate Housewives episodes.  A great deal of the response was organized and published online.  News of the "Filipino jokes" on the U.S. programs, and the backlash they engendered, were published by official online news portals such as Inquirer.net, the Internet edition of the Philippines' most widely read newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer (http://www.inquirer.com.ph/abt.asp) and GMANews.tv, the news website of GMA-7, the Philippines' No. 1 television network, as well on numerous blogs, YouTube, and PetitionOnline.com, a site that enables users to write petitions and collect signatures on the Internet.

In an eight-day period, between October 2 and October 9, 2007, 13 news stories and numerous reader comments about the so-called slurs appeared on Inquirer.net and GMANews.tv.  The story was then reported by online Western news services, including CBC.ca, the Internet portal of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; BBC News' bbc.co.uk; eonline.com, the official website of E! Entertainment Television; SFGate.com, the online portal of The San Francisco Chronicle; the Internet edition of The Los Angeles Times; and the Associated Press, whose write-up of the matter was run on well-trafficked political blog The Huffington Post and Variety.com.  These mainstream news outlets picked up the story from the blogosphere and viewers' e-mails.  The earliest account to be published, GMANews.tv's story of October 2, bore the title, "Pinoys [a Tagalog term for Filipinos] seek apology from 'Desperate Housewives,'" and stated that the site "received e-mails from concerned viewers who found the remark [made by Hatcher's character on the ABC show] insulting to many Filipinos.  Some blogs have also discussed the negative remark made about the Philippines."  An Inquirer.net article from October 4 reported that "Filipinos, especially healthcare professionals in the US and the Philippines, were outraged by the remark [on DH].  E-mails expressing outrage circulated among Filipinos all over the world.  Blogs and websites denounced the remark." 

In other words, the issue of interest to the mainstream press was not a set of controversial mentions of Filipinos by U.S. television programs, but the rapid organization of Internet activism that followed the airing of the Desperate Housewives (which I will henceforth refer to as "DH") and Daily Show episodes.  By October 4, five days after the DH episode and two days after GMANews.tv, an online petition seeking an apology from ABC for the line in DH had accrued more than 30,000 names.  An article on GMANews.tv ran that day calling the television episode "an international incident, with reports on it topping Philippines news shows and drawing newspaper headlines."  The article also pointed out the important role played by viral video in allowing more potential protesters to view the clips in question: "Filipinos could judge the scene [in DH] for themselves when it was posted on YouTube."  Although ABC Studios and the producers of DH issued an apology on October 3, stating that "There was no intent to disparage the integrity of any aspect of the medical community in the Philippines," the author of the online petition, 29-year-old Filipino-American New York resident Kevin Nadal, called for the removal of the piece of dialogue from future airings of the episode and from the future DVD versions of the show.  Also on October 4, Inquirer.net ran a letter from a reader addressed "To all Filipinos in the Philippines & Abroad," which first included a link to the YouTube video of the DH clip, and then (presuming that the clip would engender a negative reaction), implored Filipinos across the globe to object to the DH episode by sending e-mails to ABC and the Migrant Heritage Commission in Washington, D.C.  Calls for these two forms of digital protest - signing the onilne petition and bombarding DH's producers and network with e-mails - were issued by more than 100 blogs in the days following the September 30 episode.  Although bloggers and readers who left comments on online news stories also often called for offline protests, such as leaving messages on the ABC viewer hotline, and although a number of Philippine and U.S. government officials, including the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, a California State Senator serving a large number of Filipino-American constituents, and Philippine congressman Bienvenido Abante Jr., chairman of the House committee on public information, sharply criticized ABC and DH, it was the online activism of Filipinos that caught and held the focus of Philippine and Western news organizations reporting on the slurs. 

On October 5, in the middle of the week that saw the heaviest reporting on the DH joke about Philippine medical schools, GMANews.tv began running stories about the Daily Show's September 18 show, in which one segment tagged a picture of Cory Aquino with the word "slut."  As was the case with press articles on the DH clip, viewers' online reactions to the Daily Show's joke both instigated and were the focus of the news coverage.  GMANews.tv explicitly linked audience's responses to the  Daily Show line to the furor over DH, "Even before the outrage over a derogatory punchline on graduates of Philippine medical schools could die down, Filipinos have found another unpalatable remark on an American television show....An episode of the political satire 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' has found its way onto YouTube, and has been gaining more views in the last few hours....As of 2 p.m. Friday [October 5, 2007], the YouTube posting...registered 4,946 views."  The article also stated that GMANews.tv had been alerted to the Daily Show segment by a reader's e-mailing a link to the YouTube video, and implied that YouTube was a more democratic forum, allowing more disgruntled viewers to express dissent, than the authorized Comedy Central website: "While only one viewer's comment was posted on the official message board of 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,' the YouTube page where the video was uploaded has generated a number of remarks already."  The story went on to quote some of the YouTube comments directly, most of which argued that the Aquino joke was offensive to the Philippines and mandated an apology. 

A number of video responses to both the DH and DS lines appeared on YouTube at this time, bearing titles such as "Cory Aquino - A Slut?  Another Degradation!" and "Desperate Housewives Teri Hatcher: LEAVE Filipinos ALONE!"  A coalition of Filipino-American groups organized demonstrations to take place outside of ABC Studios and flagship Disney stores (Disney is the parent company of ABC) in New York City, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, and many Filipino and Filipino-American bloggers promoted the picketing.  Faced with impending street protests, Robert Mendez, Senior Vice-President for Diversity and Talent Development at ABC Network, reassured Arnaldo Valera, legal counsel for the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), that ABC would cut the offending scene from all future DH reruns, DVD sets, or any format for sale or rent - meeting the demands issued by online petition author Nadal on October 4 - and agreed to meet with Valera in person to discuss the matter.  Despite ABC's conciliatory gestures, picketing proceeded in New York and San Francisco, and the controversy persisted.  On October 9, America Online (AOL) conducted a poll that asked whether visitors to the site regarded the DH remark about Philippine medical degrees as "a silly joke" or as a line that "has racial implications."  Although 75 percent of respondents (46,580 clicks) voted that the line was a joke and 25 percent (15,197 clicks) voted that it was racially derogatory, the 3,000 comments appended to the survey represented a full spectrum of views from Filipinos and non-Filipinos, with members of both groups expressing strong opinions about whether or not the line was cause for offense.  That same day, the number of signatures on Nadal online petition protesting to ABC reached 112,789. 

The online controversy generated by the Daily Show Aquino line was far less intense, but was sufficient to prompt Comedy Central to send an e-mail to news outlets on October 7 explaining that  "'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' is a comedy show and the reference to former President Aquino was a joke."  GMANews.tv reported on the e-mail, adding, "No apology can be found in Comedy Central's website though," hinting that a statement posted to the official website would be interpreted by bloggers and other Internet protesters as more formal and, hence, more acceptable than the e-mail reply.  The GMANews.tv article went on to cite the number of views garnered by the YouTube posting of the Daily Show clip (17,247), and said, "Viewers posted protests and irate remarks on Comedy Central's message board and on the YouTube page.  The list keeps growing by the hour.  A thread titled, 'A Petition for Mrs. Cory Aquino'...demanded an apology from show host Jon Stewart."  Thus, although an online petition similar to Nadal's did not circulate in protest of the Daily Show's Aquino remark, the term "petition" was invoked by at least one Internet protester.  The GMANews.tv story also quoted several specific comments posted online, as well as a text message sent to GMA News by Cory Aquino's daughter, television host Kris Aquino, which read, "Americans would take the same type of offense if our own Bubble Gang [a sketch comedy show on Philippine TV] referred to President Jimmy Carter or John F. Kennedy as gigolo." [sic]  

That a wave of objections to alleged anti-Filipino slurs made by American television shows swelled via digital protocols (e-mails, blogs, comments on websites, YouTube videos, and cell phone texts), reached extraordinary heights, and became a hot topic for Filipino and Western Internet news outlets for slightly more than a week, may strike the average college-educated American TV viewer as extreme.  Indeed, amidst the thousands of comments posted to AOL, YouTube, Comedy Central, and other websites decrying the DH and Daily Show jokes as racial slurs, a good number of comments, from both Filipinos and non-Filipnos, denounced objectors for being "overly sensitive," for not knowing what political satire or sarcasm is, for taking themselves "too seriously," and for not having a sense of humor.  A contemporary postmodern American sensibility might easily dismisses one-line jokes that play on stereotypes, such as the DH remark, as too trivial to warrant concern, and might heartily appreciate a clearly sarcastic remark, such as the Daily Show's about Cory Aquino, in which a revered public figure is called an outrageously derogatory name as a commentary on a parallel, similarly ludicrous or ridiculous, situation.  For example, at a White House Correspondents' Dinner in the 1980s, Jay Leno delivered a line Nancy Reagan being given the Humanitarian of the Year award: "I'm so glad she beat out that conniving little bitch Mother Teresa"; Leno later said, "Well, everyone applauded because it was so ridiculous.  Even people who were Republicans laughed at it." (http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t54708.html)  In comparison to 21st century Americans' media sophistication, the digital mobilization of thousands in the Philippine diaspora in protest against U.S. television comedy may appear to be another instance of what Homi Bhabha calls Third Worlders' "belatedness": Filipinos seemingly do not know how to either "take a joke" or "get the joke," when most Americans - even Republicans - fully embraced insult- and sarcasm-based humor at least twenty years ago.  

However, another set of interpretations of Filipinos' digital activism in response to U.S. television is made possible by an understanding of Filipinos' history as subjects, but not full citizens, of the United States, as well as their history of using digital technologies as means for effecting political change.  I draw upon Graham Murdock's concept of "cultural citizenship" to frame Filipinos' protests last fall as a plea for better representation in the U.S. cultural sphere, a sphere distinct from, though closely linked to, the U.S. political and economic spheres.  The Filipinos who objected to throwaway jokes deriding Philippine institutions and icons were mobilizing as netizens - competent users of digital technologies who gather and disseminate information rapidly through communication networks - in order to be more fully recognized as cultural citizens, not political citizens, of the United States.

The United States annexed the Philippine Islands as a colony after defeating first the Philippines' former colonial masters in the Spanish-American War of 1898, then the Filipino insurgency of 1899-1902.  From that point to the year that the U.S. granted the Philippines in 1946, and beyond independence to the present day, the Philippines has been an important source of labor and raw materials for the U.S., and Filipinos in turn have been targeted as consumers for U.S. exports.  Economically, the U.S. benefited greatly from holding a monopoly on imports into the Philippines during the colonial years, and giving Philippine exports unlimited (i.e., duty-free) entry to the U.S.  President Taft, in signing the tariff bill of 1909, happily bowed to pressure from American manufacturers who realized, in the analysis of Stanley Karnow, "only an unchecked U.S. market for Philippine goods would open the Philippines to limitless quantities of their goods."  The policy, as well as the "tight trade ties" [explain what these are] imposed by the U.S. Congress on the Philippines as part of the terms of its independence, sometimes promoted growth, but just as often, retardation, in Philippine industry, because the fate of Philippine production inevitably dovetailed with the fate of U.S. markets, and Filipinos could never extricate themselves from the U.S.' particular waves of supply and demand.  Karnow writes that the complete dependence of the Philippines on the U.S. economy during the colonial years meant that, "Economically...the Filipinos were doomed to remain 'little brown brothers' for years....'reciprocal free trade'...was a device to preclude Philippine independence by locking the archipelago into the American economic orbit" (Karnow 198; 226), and that these trade ties condemned Filipinos to reliance long after independence (Karnow 198).  

In addition to economic reasons, the U.S. had political reasons for flooding the Philippines with American products, particularly cultural products.  The U.S.' moral justification for taking over the Philippines was grounded in missionary fervor - President McKinley (who first coined the phrase "little brown brothers" in reference to Filipinos) spoke of "his divine directive to 'uplift and civilize' the Filipinos" by means of a process he called "benevolent assimilation" (Stanley Karnow, In Our Image, p. 197).  Assimilation implied that the Filipinos would eventually resemble Americans - they would become Americanized, by learning to speak English from American schoolteachers imported to the islands, for example, and by learning American customs and habits, American worldviews and ways of being - and also that Filipinos would eventually be recognized as fully a part of the American project, which, even during the colonial years, meant that the Philippines would one day be worthy to be a democratic, self-governing nation with the same just systems of rule that the U.S. had.  U.S. leaders were explicit in stating their belief that Filipinos were not, during the colonial period, ready for self-governance, and that their "many discouraging defects," according to then-Governor General of the Philippines Taft, could "only be cured by careful tutelage," which would take "'at least a generation,' and maybe longer, to prepare them for 'a large participation' in government" (Karnow 200).  McKinley instructed Taft to set up an American-style primary school system in the islands in order to "fit the people for the duties of citizenship and for the ordinary activities of a civilized community" (Karnow 201).

The U.S.' promise to the Philippines at the outset of the colonial project was not, therefore, eventual citizenship in the American nation, but eventual citizenship in the American project, which included democratic self-rule based on moral and intellectual worthiness - "fitness," as McKinley put it.  It is important to recognize that from the start of the U.S.' colonization of the Philippines, what Neferti Tadiar calls a "common material imaginary," characterized by "dominant dreaming practices" (Tadiar 31) was established.  From the early 20th century, the Philippines was encouraged and commanded to dream of full citizenship in an American New World Order, an America that would extend beyond the borders of the nation called the United States - a global America, a worldwide American Dream, in which all people would be free and self-governing because they deserved to be, because they had worked hard for it.  My invocation of the Bush-era term "New World Order" is purposeful, for it is only recently that many of the ramifications of the dreaming practices implanted in the Philippines by its U.S. colonizers, and in many parts of the third world by first world nations, have become clear: what the first world, particularly the U.S., has been aiming at over the last century is a supranational or extranational imperialism, in which all smaller, weaker, and poorer nations become willing and eager members - citizens - of a global empire characterized by American-style political democracy and economic development.  The Philippines was one of the testing grounds for the transnational American Dream, in which all peoples, even little, brown, and unfit ones, can aspire to one day earning the right to become worthy beneficiaries of the great American experiment of self-rule, and liberty and justice for all.  Frank Gibney, in a 2003 article, drew a direct comparison between President Bush's current goals in Iraq and McKinley's statement in 1899 regarding the Philippines, "It should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants by assuring them in every possible way [the] full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of a free people substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule."

American exports to the Philippines, particularly of cultural productions, played a large part during the colonial years in the U.S.' "tutelage" of Filipinos.  Films are potent and often effective vehicles for delivering ideological messages.  The influence of the American movie industry on Filipino culture is reflected in the well-known Filipino summary of its two colonial periods, first under Catholic Spain's rule and then under the U.S.': The Philippines, it is said, spent "400 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood."  The inundation of Filipino cinemas, television screens, and radios with American cultural productions only increased after independence, particularly after the end of the Cold War and the "deregulation" of U.S. media.  David Morley and Kevin Robins write,