Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Pheaturing George Takei


Hello, kids, welcome to another entry of the Phile. How are you? So, I want to say somwthubg real quick. A sense of humor is critical to your survival. Sure, you need food, water, shelter, and other stuff like that... but a sense of humor is what holds your shot together when life is being a motherfucker. That's why I keep doing this blog, to entertain and hopefully make you laugh here and there. It also keeps me sane. Yes, it's hard to do it five days a week but I think its worth it, and it keeps me sane. Anyway, which that said let's get on with it. Thanks for taking time out of your "busy" schedule to read the Phile. It means a lot.
The coronavirus has truly exposed the worst kinds of people, and these are the guys that have no regard for the shelter-in-place, self-quarantine, stay-at-home orders that have been enforced since the CDC has taken this pandemic issue seriously. Social media has exposed so many people who think they can get away with going out in public for no important reasons at all, except simply that they want to, despite the fact that most businesses have shut down their physical offices. One specific Texas COVID-19 case has taken the Internet by storm, and I don’t think I would ever want to be known as this person. Northwest Texas police were looking for 18-year-old Lorraine Maradiaga in Carrolton, Texas. This lady became a “terroristic threat” when she posted videos of herself testing positive for the coronavirus and outright refusing to stay home. The videos went viral and the Twitter community spread the word saying that she should be arrested. Before long, everyone knew that Maradiaga had completely disregarded any social distancing and could care less about public health. In one of her videos, she mentioned how she refuses to let anyone tell her to stay home and doesn’t care if she causes more coronavirus cases. In fact, she even mentioned that she wanted the fame from being the Texas coronavirus spreader. Well, Lorraine, looks like you got the attention you wanted. Next thing you know, Texans from all over the major cities (Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and especially Dallas) had her picture circulating. Police had put it out there that they don’t think she’s an actual threat to public health, but that they are taking her social media claims very seriously, charging her with terroristic threat. Out of all the latest updates and news surrounding specific cases of COVID-19, I don’t know how dumber people can get than this. Lorraine Maradiaga is showing selfishness and disrespect to every health department, all health care professionals putting their lives on the line, any health and human services, the state of Texas, the rest of the United States, and everyone who is following all the self-quarantine/stay-at-home orders. As if prevention of close contact couldn’t be anymore emphasized, Maradiaga proceeded to video herself going out in public, blatantly stating that she doesn’t care. Seeing a video of an infected person doing this makes it difficult for those who aren’t infected but are doing their part for the well-being of the general public health. In more positive cases, Maradiaga was finally arrested, but what did she do? She told police that she lied and didn’t actually have COVID-19. Yes, she had the audacity to say that her inciting public terror by claiming to be a confirmed case of an infected person was all a lie. However, even though police don’t have evidence of her testing positive, she was still transferred to Denton County Jail with a bond set at $20,000. She will also be forced to self-quarantine in jail for 21 days after release for precautionary purposes. Props to this girl I guess. I guess the fame she got was worth all the time and resources wasted on her poor decisions.
An enraged Massachusetts woman is being accused of spraying a Leicester Walmart employee in the eyes with Lysol disinfectant, after being told that there was a limit on the number of cans she could buy. So dumb, so stupid, so unnecessary. The employee had told the woman there was a limit on the amount of Lysol desiccant she could purchase. So, this Karen, (that’s not her name but that what I WANT to believe her name is) just simply picked up the products, took the cap off, and sprayed her life away scaring this poor cashier to death. Despite the spray, the woman still managed to complete her purchase and then left what is believed to have been an Uber. Leicester Police Department noted the assault did require EMS to respond to the scene since well, it was an intentional act of crime. The department quickly released a photo of the suspect and quickly urged anyone with information relating to the incident to call Leicester Police Officer Matthew Soojan at (508) 892-7010 ext. 2066 or email him at soojianm@leicesterpd.org. So why exactly wasn’t this woman allowed to buy multiple amounts of Lysol disinfectant spray? Well, stores across the country have now limited the number of cleaning products and supplies that people can buy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Walmart also announced that they are limiting the number of customers to roughly 20 percent of stores’ capacities as of last weekend. What this woman did was just ridiculous. I know you’re a scared lady, but the last thing you should do is blame a poor employee who is simply doing their job. Plus, think of others two also want to protect their family and those around them. I pray this Walmart cashier is okay after this, especially since it can be toxic for your eyes. You have more problems to worry about now than just the COVID-19, lady.
A Kansas City woman thought she had water in her ear. Turns out it was actually a nightmare. Susie Torres went to the doctor assuming she had a case of swimmer’s ear that she just couldn’t fix. Torres didn’t have water in her ear, though. There was a spider living in there. A brown recluse. An extremely venomous spider. How Torres found out a spider was living in her ear is probably the most horrible part of all this. The doctor was examining her, saw something especially troubling in her ear, and pretty much ran out of the room. Having your examining doctor find something in you and then run out of the room has got feel like the equivalent of your parachute not opening when you’re skydiving. Just a total feeling of hopelessness. That not only are you screwed, but you are also irreparably and terrifyingly screwed. Screwed in a way that is going to be traumatizing for people to witness. Thankfully her doctor came back a few moments later with some friends. At first, Torres was informed she had an insect in her ear before the team of morbidly curious doctors eventually realized that it was a spider. The brown recluse was pulled from Torres’ ear without any further incident, thankfully. Torres wasn’t bitten by the spider so all’s well that ends well, right? Wrong. Super duper wrong. Torres was so (rightfully) creeped out by the incident that she’s now sleeping with cotton balls in her ears until she gets earplugs. And really, is even that enough? The only way to feel safe after this is a full face mask on your head, double-bagging your bed with mosquito netting, and laying out a thousand traps around your home. Also maybe invest in some spider eating birds. If all else fails, installing a self-destruct feature in your home is a smart move as well. Some sort of button connected to fifty pounds of C4. If there’s one place a spider can’t get to you, it’s inside your urn.
Oh, look, another ice cream licker who thought he could get away with it. Again, ladies and gentlemen? Didn’t we leave food tampering behind? Did we learn nothing from the previous incidents? Apparently not. So that’s why D’Adrien Anderson will spend 30 days in jail after licking a tub of ice cream at a Walmart in Port Arthur, Texas. Anderson was seen in a viral video taken back in August 2019 opening a half-gallon container of Blue Bell ice cream and licking ice cream before putting it back in the freezer. But, there was a small plot twist to the incident. When asked by authorities if they had proof of the incident, Walmart says surveillance video showed Anderson takes the ice cream and purchasing it. Which I mean, it’s appreciated, at least he purchased it. So his germs weren’t exposed the public. But still, gross. Authorities stated that he and his father also returned to the grocery store to show officers his receipt for the ice cream. Anderson’s father confessed his son was only trying to get Facebook likes and didn’t mean any harm from the prank. But, Port Arthur police did not find it humorous one bit. Which is why the 24-year-old was charged with criminal mischief in the incident. Along with serving 30 days, the licker will be required to complete 100 hours of community service and pay a fine of $1,000. Yup, the most expensive ice cream he will buy in his life. After the video of the Texas man went viral, authorities stated it cost Blue Bell Creameries a total of $1,565 to replace all of the ice creams in the display case. So, Anderson will also have to pay restitution in that amount to Blue Bell. Which, I mean, is understandable! There is justice at last. But honestly, I was surprised he even got jail time, this man did end up buying the ice cream after all. I think 30 days in jail for liking ice cream is excessive. I blame his lawyer for this whole mess because well, he also got community service and a fine. He could have easily just gotten community service. Can you imagine trying to apply for a job and saying you were arrested for liking ice cream? Geesh. But hey, lesson learned. This is why you shouldn’t tamper with food, kids.
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again, God bless delivery workers. It’s no secret that their job is hard, and sometimes they are put in different situations that they can’t control. But they still do it with a smile on their face, because at the end of the day, that’s their job. And we’re thankful for them because they always deliver our stuff in one piece. In this case, it wasn’t a package, rather a dog. Yes, this FedEx driver probably had a lot of deliveries to do that day but still took time out of his busy schedule to return a lost pup who was wandering around the busy road. Three rounds of applause for to this hero. Honestly, who does this, most people would just leave the lost dog and figure he’d go home by himself. According to People, Lisa Menzies from Castle Pines Colorado was out of town when her 3-year-old golden retriever decided to just step out of the house. Catcher, the adorable pup, was able to sneak outside when the breeze blew open their front door. According to Menzies, the family had a contractor at home, but the pup was able to escape after the contractor went to lunch. Yes, the little rascal tried to pull a fast one. The whole incident was caught by the family’s Ring doorbell camera footage, where it shows the curious dog just wandering down toward the front lawn. Luckily for the family, the FedEx worker came to the rescue and found Catcher before he could go any further. Yes, just look at this man carrying this sweet pup as if it was his own baby. It’s really cute, talk about a special delivery. Especially since he didn’t have to do this, this is one good human. Certainly a hero.
So many people are wearing protective gear now. Even State Farm workers like this guy...


"So, Jake from State Farm, what are you wearing?" "Ummm, a hazmat suit." When Boaradway plays open in New York some shows are changing their names and even the plot of the shows. Like this one here...


Haha. People are using the coronavirus as pickup lines on dating site, and I think it's working for them.


Good job, James, whoever you are. If you watch the Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith on Disney+ you might spot a change here and there. Like this one for example...


It's good to wear masks and gloves when you go out but some people are taking it way too far... of they don't have masks.


That should be a Mindphuck. Haha. So, today's guest is George Takei who played Sulu in the original "Star Trek" series. My favorite episode of "Star Trek" though was the when where Batman appeared. You don't remember that one? Let me show you, kids.


Oh, yeah, Robin was in it as well. And uh oh, Robin is wearing a red shirt. Shit. Once again this is March versus April...


And now from the home office in Port Jefferson, New York, this is...


Top Phive Things Said About Zoom Meetings That Didn't Go Well
5. New award moment for our times: a few seconds pf resting botch face between saying good-bye to everyone in a Zoom meeting and figuring out how to leave it.
4. I was invited to a Zoom call by a really old friend group and I decided to go? It was a mistake this is awkward, I want to leave.

3. In an awkward Zoom meeting and I ask my girlfriend "should I ask him how he's doing?" And then I realize I'm muted.
2. The ten minutes right before a Zoom class (any call, really) are the WORST. Guess I gotta reread the instructions, recheck my schedule twenty times so I have the right start time, panic about logging on to soon and having an awkward laugh with 1 to three other people there.
And the number one thing said about Zoom meetings that didn't go so well was...
1. I thought being early to a real life party was awkward, then I joined Zoom meeting early and I was the only one there.



If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Okay, so, here's another story from Florida that could happen no place else...


A Florida man seriously lacking in hobbies (also, morals) hacked into one of an Orange County, Florida public school’s Zoom video classes and exposed himself to the class because some men just want to watch the world burn… by making the world watch him. Eighth graders at Wolf Lake Middle School were in the middle of an online math class when a strange man interrupted and showed the students his penis. The students said they were disgusted by the indecent exposure. School district officials informed parents and the press that Zoom was not a district supported platform and said that teachers should be using platforms the district does support, like Canvas and Big Blue Button. The Apopka Police Department is actively investigating the situation. Who does this?!? Like, exposing yourself to kids is wrong under any circumstances but this almost feels extra wrong than, say, if this e-flasher had just done this in a park. There are so many extra steps here. Yes, apparently Zoom is easy to hack into but you still have to figure out how to do it. You have to find instructions, learn them, practice, and then execute. And then you take your pants off. At least the park flasher just sort of does it, possibly as a spur of the moment thing. But this? There’s just so much intent and preparation. It makes it a lot creepier. What else does this guy who wants to show his penis to kids have the time and energy to do? The next parent-teacher conferences are going to be a nightmare for whichever genius teacher decided to hold class on what apparently is basically just a public Chat Roulette room instead of a school-sanctioned platform. Nobody wants to be “the teacher who negligently caused all her kids to see a stranger’s penis”. Maybe next that teacher can take the class on a field trip to an alley where hobos go down on each other for meth.




The vandal who hates athletits. Hey, I wanna see another live shot of Port Jefferson...


Nothing much going on. It's a nice clear day there though. I miss Port Jeff. Okay, moving on...


President Donald Trump yesterday threatened to freeze U.S. funding to the World Health Organization, saying the international group had “missed the call” on the coronavirus pandemic. Trump also played down the release of January memos from a senior adviser that represented an early warning of a possible coronavirus pandemic, saying he had not seen them at the time. But he turned his anger on the WHO, first declaring that he would cut off U.S. funding for the organization, then backtracking and saying he would “strongly consider” such a move. Trump said the international group had “called it wrong” on the virus and that the organization was “very China-centric” in its approach, suggesting that the WHO had gone along with Beijing’s efforts months ago to minimize the severity of the outbreak. The WHO has praised China for its transparency on the virus, even though there has been reason to believe that more people died of COVID-19 than the country’s official tally. “They should have known and they probably did know,” Trump said of WHO officials. Throughout his presidency, Trump has voiced skepticism toward many international organizations and has repeatedly heaped scorn on the WHO. In its most recent budget proposal, in February, the Trump administration called for slashing the U.S. contribution to the WHO from an estimated 122.6 million dollars to 57.9 million dollars. The organization’s current guidance does not advocate closing borders or restricting travel, though many nations, including the United States, have enacted those steps. The WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on January 30th, nearly a month before Trump tweeted that “the coronavirus is very much under control in the U.S.A.” and a full 43 days before he declared a national emergency in the United States. Health experts have suggested that the weekly death totals will reach a new high in the United States this week. More than 12,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said that the Centers for Disease Control will release new guidelines this week for returning to work for people with potential exposure but who may not be displaying symptoms. Trump continued yesterday to defend his actions in the early days of the crisis. He played down memos written by Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser, that were made public this week. In the late January memos, the most direct warning as yet uncovered in the upper levels of the Trump administration, Navarro warned that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death. Trump said Tuesday that he was not aware of the memos back in January but that he unilaterally followed some of their recommendations, including taking steps to curtail travel from China. But he said he wouldn’t have wanted to act prematurely when it was not clear how dire the situation would become. “I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else. I’m not going to go out and start screaming, ‘This could happen, this could happen,'” Trump said. “I’m a cheerleader for this country.”



In the men's room at work, the boss had placed a sign directly above the sink. It had a single word on it... "Think!" The next day, when he went to the men's room, he looked at the sign and right below, immediately above the soap dispenser, someone had carefully lettered another sign which read... "Thoap!"



Oh, my. Today's guest is an American actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the television series "Star Trek." His book, They Called Us Enemy is the 119th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. Please welcome to the Phile... George Takei.


Me: Hey, George, welcome to the Phile. It's so good to have you here. How are you, sir?

George: Thank you very much. Glad to be here and doing well.

Me: So, your new graphic novel They Called Us Enemy is an illustrated account of your experiences growing up in camps where Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians were interned by their governments in World War II. You begin the book the night your family got told to leave their home and you say, "I will never be able to forget that scene." Could you explain what happened that night? 

George: Well, it was a few weeks after my fifth birthday, I was born on April 20th, 1937 and this was the birthday of 1942. My parents got me up very early that morning, together with my brother, who is a year younger and my baby sister who was still an infant. Dressed quickly and my brother and I were told to wait in the living room while our parents did some last-minute packing in the bedrooms. The two of us, my brother and I were gazing out the front window when suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up the driveway. They were carrying rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stomped up the front porch and with their fists began pounding on the door. It was a terrifying sound. I still remember it as almost making the house tremble. My father came rushing out of the bedroom and answered the door. Literally at gunpoint we were ordered out of our home. My father gave my brother and me little packages to carry and he hefted two heavy-looking suitcases. We followed him out onto the driveway and stood there waiting for mother to come out. When she finally emerged, she had our baby sister in one arm and two huge duffel bags in the other. Tears were streaming down her cheek. That is a morning that I'll never be able to forget.

Me: Oh, man, that's scary. Where did you go after that?

George: We were sent to an interment camp in Arkansas.

Me: Did your father or mother explain what was going on?

George: My father said we were going on a long vacation.

Me: Why do you think your dad lied? I guess it was the smart thing to do...

George: They protected us, my parents from the reality. We were too young to really understand it anyway. And I'm eternally grateful for how they prepared us for that experience.

Me: Why is that?

George: Because for this southern Californian kid to be plugged into the south eastern Arkansas camp, a swamp, was magical experience. There we were behind barbed wire fence, sentry towers, machine-guns pointed down at us but beyond the fence was the bayou and trees grew out of the water. Their roots snaked in and out of the water. It was a fantastical place, magical things happened in Arkansas.

Me: I'm glad you look at it that way. How long were you there?

George: From ages five to eight.

Me: At what age did you realize or find out what happened to your family?

George: Well, a year into the imprisonment there the government realized there was a wartime manpower shortage and so the dilemma they had was to solve it with a loyalty questionnaire. Everyone in the camp, and their were ten camps, altogether had to respond to this questionnaire of about thirty questions. Two questions were so ignorantly put tougher that they turned all ten camps into turmoil and outrage. Question 27 asked, "Will you bear arms to defend the United States of America?" This being asked of my mother, she had three children. One a toddler by this time and I was 6-years-old and my brother was 5-years-old. She was being asked to abandon us and bear arms and defend the country that was imprisoning her family. It was preposterous. And question 28 was even more insidious... it was one sentence with two conflicting ideas. It asked "will you swear your loyalty to the United States of America and forswear your loyalty to the Empire of Japan?" The Emperor of Japan? We're Americans. We never thought of a loyalty to the Emperor. It was outrageous to assume that we were born with an inborn racial loyalty to the Emperor. So if they answered truthfully "no I don't have a loyalty to the Emperor" forswear that no applied to the first part of the very same sentence, "will you swear your loyalty to the United States of America?" If they answered "yes" meaning they do swear their loyalty to the United States then that yes applied to the second part. Meant that they were confessing, that they did have the loyalty to the Emperor and now they were prepared to forswear it. It was a stupidly put together question.

Me: And what did your parents write?

George: No. No to both. And the term used in camp was "no no's." And so we had to be transported to another camp, in northern California right by the Oregon border called Tule Lake, which became the most notorious, symbolically representative of both the stupidity and the cruelty of the government. It was the largest of all the ten camps, it was 18,000 people that went into outrage and anger by the incompetence of the people that out together the questionnaire. This was the camp with overreaction on part of the government. It was not just one layer of barbed wire fence but two more layers, three layers of barbed wire fences and a half a dozen tanks patrolling the outer perimeter. It was outrageous, those tanks belonged on a battlefield, not intimidating Americans who were goaded into outrage and put in this camp. So it was one outrage, one incompetence on part of the government after another.

Me: How can you not have rage or a deep cynicism towards the government?

George: As a teenager, I became very curious about my childhood imprisonment because as I said I was an innocent child. I was taught the pledge of allegiance to the flag in the camp. I could see barbed wire fence and the sentry tower right outside my schoolhouse window. As I recited the words "with liberty and justice for all" totally innocent of the stinging irony behind those words. But as a teenager, I started reading civics books and learning about the noble ideals of our democracy. All men are created equal... equal justice under the law. This is a nation ruled by laws. I couldn't reconcile that with what I knew to be the reality of my childhood. So I had many after-dinner discussions with my father. He was the only person that I could go to for information. History books had nothing about the internment back then in the '50s. My father told me that our democracy is the people's democracy, but that people's democracy is existentially dependent on people who cherish those ideals and actively participate and engage in a participatory democracy because people are also fallible human beings and mistakes are made.

Me: And I guess Pearl Harbor didn't make matters any better, right?

George: As Pearl Harbor was bombed this nation was terrorized by more hysteria and fear of an invasion by Japan. And American citizens in the country of Japanese ancestry looked exactly liked the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. And hysteria and racism went all the way up to the President of the United States. Even the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt got stampeded by that hysteria and signed the executive order putting a 120,000 Japanese-Americans on the west coast in barbed wire imprisonment.

Me: George, you were in the original L.A. cast of Fly Blackbird in 1961 you got to meet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What can you tell us about that?

George: Yes, I was a member of the cast civil rights musical of young college students campaigning for equality for African-Americans. We were invited to almost every civil rights rally in the L.A. County during that time. The show was a big hit. The biggest rally of them all was held at the Los Angeles Sports Arena that held thousands of people. The keynote speaker was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was such an incredible thrill to march into the L.A. Sports Arena together with Dr. King. We sang our hearts out and then Dr. King spoke and his words just thrilled us all and transported us to another place. His eloquence had our spirits soaring. Then, the most unexpected and biggest thrill of all... the members of the Blackbird cast were invited to go downstairs to Dr. King's dressing room and meet him. Each one of us had the opportunity to shake his hand and briefly chat with him and that hand of mine that shook his hand didn't get washed for about three days after that. LOL.

Me: Hahaha. Were you into movies and TV back then, or any kinda entertainment?

George: Yes, we got to see old Hollywood movies after dinner in the mess hall. The tables were dragged away and the benches were lined up and we all sat there looking at the bed sheet that was put up. They screened movies like Charles Laughton as The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Betty Davis, who suffered a lot and cried a lot. These movies transported me beyond the barbed wire fence.

Me: So, that was like an escape for you, am I right?

George: Yes, it certainly was. It was an escape. That was an escape from the barbed wire fence.

Me: In the book you talk about how you got the role of Sulu on "Star Trek," which I have to mention. As a kid I loved that "Star Trek" show and the movies. What made you take on the role of Sulu? 

George: George Roddenberry.

Me: What was it about Roddenberry that you liked?

George: He was a visionary. He envisioned the 23rd-century as one where we are much more enlightened. That huge, vast starship called the Starship Enterprise was really a metaphor for starship Earth. He said that the diversity of that starship Earth was its strength and the power came from that diversity coming together and working in concert as a team. So on the bridge of the Enterprise, the Captain represented North America. Europe was represented by a Scottish engineer. He was actually from Vancouver, Canada and actually Irish. LOL. But Jimmy Doohan was a good actor and he also told me that he drank enough of the libation of Scotland to play a Scotchman. The chief communications officer was an African woman and my character was to represent all of Asia. So here we were all working in concert. In the '60s was probably the coldest point in the Cold War. We had a trusted member of the leadership team, Chekov, a Russian and spoke with an anachronistic, heavy Russian accent. That's the future that he envisioned. It was a very optimistic and a very positive view of the human future. I'm proud to be associated with that.

Me: I had William Shatner on the Phile and LeVar Burton just recently from the "Next Generation" cast. So, what's this "The Terror: Infamy" that you're a part of?

George: It's a horror story that takes place in a Japanese-American internment camp. In addition to the horrors of the camp there is also a ghost story, this is based on the traditional Japanese ghost stories also known as "kaidan."

Me: Ahhh... I don't do horror stuff so I won't be seeing that. Haha. So what's the appeal of this show, George?

George: Well, the internment itself was harrowing enough but the other element that we added, the kaidan, the ghost tales is also organic to the telling of the internment story.

Me: Why is that?

George: Because a good number of the people that were incarcerated were immigrants from Japan. And immigrants came to this country with high hopes and new opportunities to better their lives also brought with them the customs and the beliefs and the faiths and the myths of the old country. And then people have those beliefs are put under great stress as we were in imprisonment they work in those ghost stories because so and so died. That persons spirit is now haunting others. So that's worked into the story to intensify the terror that we were actually going through in the camps so it makes a compelling story telling and certainly makes for tremendously thrilling cliffhangers after each episode.

Me: George, how old are you now?

George: Eighty-two-years-old.

Me: You might be the oldest guest I ever had on the blog. So, what is it like to see the sets of a reconstructed internment camp?

George: Yes, it was very, very compellingly real and my real memories of the camp are those of when I was five to eight years old. So when I saw the barbed wire internment camps set and we were rebuilding the camps on six and a half acres of land it was done with great research and very authentically. When I saw the crawl space beneath the barracks, it reminded me of the stray dog that we adopted... a black dog that we named Blackie. Whenever there was something frightening or some terrorizing event happened, a riot or a thunderstorm, Blackie would crawl under the barrack into the crawl space area. My nostalgia on seeing the internment camp was more of my childhood memories. My adult understanding of the camp is what I acquired after our incarceration. It was a strange mixture of the fond memories I had that are very real and also my understanding of what those buildings meant.

Me: I was holding off asking this next question, as it's not in the news anymore thanks to the COVID-19 shit that's happening but when you see on CNN, the families being separated, how do you feel about what's going on right now on the U.S.-Mexico border?

George: I certainly see the parallel because it's the same kind of hysteria that put us into those prison camps. We were characterised as potential spies, saboteurs and fifth columnists. Now the stereotypes that are pasted onto the people fleeing violence and poverty on our southern borders, these people are characterised as drug dealers, rapists, and murderers. It's that kind of hysteria that brings about this kind of cruel injustice. Now we are reaching a new, grotesque low because as children we were always intact with our parents. What's happening now on the southern border is young children are being torn away from their parents. This is a horrible, horrible new low, emanating from the same kind of wild hysteria and cruelty.

Me: Why did you want They Called Us Enemy to be a book of hope? What do you mean by that?

George: Well, when we were incarcerated every elected official in the United States from a court council to the President of the United States vilified us seriously with venom. One Senator from Tennessee, Tom Stewart, said, "Any Japanese in this country will stab you in the back." Which is outrageous. How many Japanese first of all would a Tennessee Senator would have met? But it was that kind of world that we faced. When President Trump signed his first executive order that was the Muslim travel ban thousands of Americans throughout the country rushed to the airports to protest that travel ban. And attorneys rushed to the airports to offer pro-bono their services to foreigners coming into the country. And the Deputy Attorney General at the time, Sally Yates, said she will not defend this travel ban. So it was a whole different and political social climate when the Trump travel ban was signed.

Me: Okay, but why is this book called "a book of hope"?

George: I call this book "the book of hope" because the target audience is preteens, teenagers and young adult readers. If these young people grow up on comic books, which is what I grew up on and when I was reading comic books as teenager I just absorbed in everything that I read. It became part of me... it was in my body. If these young people are going to be reading They Called Us Enemy grow up with the knowledge of this chapter of American history, they are going to become the voters of tomorrow. They're going to become the movers and shakers of tomorrow. They will act in a wholly different way from how young people reacted when we were incarcerated and hopefully more enlightened. That hope is of a better and truer people's democracy in the future.

Me: George, sir, thanks so much for being on the Phile. Please come back again in the future when the TV show comes out. Stay well.

George: Thank you very much.





That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my great guest George Takei. I hope he comes back again soon. The Phile will be back tomorrow with musician Lindsey Jordan from Snail Mail. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye. Stay inside.

































I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon

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