Tiptoeing Through Racial Minefield

I was listening to the radio when KMPC’s Don and Rick Shaw unwittingly dug their own professional graves on the air, and I must dispute the subsequent reactions of Japanese-American activists whose lobbying pressure on KMPC management was chronicled by The Times’ Claudia Puig on Sept. 24 (“KMPC Deejay Fired over ‘Racist’ Skit”).

I have enough personal inventory to understand the cutting edge the Shaw brothers exposed themselves to. They performed a clearly comedic telephone interview with a “Japanese basketball player” without realizing that humor is subject to wider interpretation than a speech by Pat Buchanan.

To single them out as hate-driven bigots is to overlook their approach to improvisational comedy. Rick Shaw fancies himself a soul brother to Sid Caesar. He was taking on the personalities of Bulgarian gymnasts and a Pakistani something or other before he ever dared to turn Japanese phone tricks. With a name like Rick Shaw, he was almost destined to suffer.

The Shaw brothers’ routine (aired on Aug. 15) was defined by the super-competitive instinct that the Japanese indisputably possess, almost to a fault. Rick Shaw played at being a 5-foot-5 center who feels an overwhelming urge to test against the best, since his people have perfected a unique six-point basket based on a mathematical formula no one has been diligent enough to yet catalogue.

The activist hysteria would have you believe the whole approach is like a scud attack that humiliates all Asians at a time when just one wrong look can get somebody’s head bashed in. But evaluating humor is always tricky.

Who can even begin to explain why the monumentally unfunny Canadian tag team of Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster held the record for appearances by comics on the “Ed Sullivan Show”? The bland nothingness of Wayne and Shuster is probably the only comedy these activists can live with.

If there’s a problem with the Shaws, they sometimes edge too close to Allen and Rossi. But you’d never mistake them for Lenny Bruce.

I was so seized with laughter that I called KMPC right after the fatal routine.

Don Shaw allowed me to exploit on air the raw comedy that exists in this cultural gap to begin with, and all within the best definition of talk radio tailored around sports. I mentioned that Alvin Davis, a high-priced bust with the Angels, told reporters that he was headed for Japan to try “regaining his batting stroke.”

I pointed out that most Americans have a terrible time coping in Japan. Anyone who’s actually seen Japanese baseball knows this. In virtually every ballpark, there are brass bands that play constantly, from first pitch to last. Their repertoire is limited--not much more than three selections, all delivered in a constipated march tempo. The most popular anthems are “The Mickey Mouse Club March,” “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man” and “The Beverly Hillbillies Theme.”

Comedy just isn’t pretty. When the first U.S. bombs hit Baghdad, I was ordering Chinese food in Santa Monica with a couple of struggling comics. One, a woman known only as Glitter, defined the true edge of the comic envelope as soon as she heard the CNN bulletins.

“You know why those Arabs always end up fighting, don’t you?” she moaned. “It’s ‘cause their music is so lousy.”

The other stand-up, Steve Epstein, came to Hollywood from Houston behind his pal Sam Kinison but has never quite made it. Hard-core stand-ups call him an “intelligent” comic, shorthand for saying he’s too obtuse to ignite sparks. Epstein’s the kind of guy who insists the only legacy of Vietnam is Tom Vu, the refugee-turned-star of all those late-night TV infomercials. Vu wants to create a subculture of millionaires in a shaky real estate market.

The activists would probably love Tom Vu in their chase for a role model. I doubt they’d summon the same energy to drive him off the air.