Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Berkeley law school associate dean Goodwin Liu has been nominated to the 9th circuit court of appeal. If confirmed, which is no easy thing given the Republican attempts to block Obama's nominations, Liu will become the first Asian American among the nation's 175 federal appellate judges. The first one? That is a travesty. I know that not as many Asians go into law as in medicine or science fields. But the first appellate judge with so many academically qualified Asian Americans? This is hard to believe.

I like most of Liu's views. He leans to the left as expected from a Democratic nominee. But he considers conservative positions as well. He has defended the No Child Left Behind policy put out by the Bush administration. He agrees with school vouchers. These are two positions that I also believe in. California's proposition 8 which outlawed gay marriages was challenged on constitutional grounds. While Liu probably supports gay marriages, he predicted that the proposition was on good constitutional grounds. I have written before that while I disagree with Berkeley law professor John Yoo's memos on torture, I do not feel that he should be fired from the school. Liu also supports Yoo despite his disagreement with Yoo's view. So, yes I think Liu is an excellent choice and a choice that is well overdue.

Another Chinese American that has been in the news lately is Harvard basketball player Jeremy Lin. I saw Lin a few years ago on tv when his high school team, Palo Alto High, won the state championship over national power Mater Dei which had several future d-1 players. Lin was the best player on the court that day and I wondered if he would be recruited by a big basketball school. The answer was no. Stanford is next door and it didn't recruit Lin. Nor did his other favorite, UCLA. The truth is that he would be the starting point guard for either of this team now if they had recruited him. So he ends up at Harvard which isn't too bad of a fall back. I am sure if Lin was black or even white the coaches would have felt he could have played at high d-1 level. I guess that is one reason there are more students name Lin at Harvard than there are d-1 Asian American players in the country!

Well, now that Lin has shown that he is an elite college player, he has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Time and ABC etc. Of course every article or show has to mention how underrated he is. But as the great Joe Dumars of the Detroit Pisitons once said: "I have been called underrated so often, I have become overrated." That maybe the case with Lin now. What has the world come to? An overrated Chinese basketball player? Almost as surprising as no Asian American appellate judge.