Dog Eaters

Anyone in politics will tell you, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and if you’re not thick-skinned, you’re liable to become the next dog on the menu.

So it came as a mild surprise last month when Ron Kim, the city’s Public Safety Commissioner and Democratic mayoral candidate, began flapping his gums to the media over some derogatory remarks posted on Saratogian’s Web site over the past six months or so. He alleged the comments –including one referring to him as “Kim Jong Il” –were racist in nature and aimed at belittling the first-generation Korean-American’s heritage.

Kim took the opportunity last month to call for a wholesale restructuring of the newspaper’s online posting policy so that comments –such as one allegedly calling him a “dog-eater” –would be snared by the editors or a filter of some sort. As bizarre as his reaction might have appeared to those unacquainted with the Public Safety commish, they were right in tune with Kim’s overall erratic behavior during his two terms in office.

After all, this was the same guy who angrily stood up during a City Council meeting, packed up his belongings in a fury and stormed out the exit. And this is the same fellow who called a media conference to unveil the so-called “failure-o-meter,” a placard showing the number of day since the council “failure” to bond money for a new public safety castle; to date, no one is quite sure whatever happened to the taxpayer-funded failure-o-meter after it “went on tour” through the city. This is also the guy who brazenly lied to the media when he falsely claimed he was being forced to lay-off at least 17 cops, when he was really asked to trim his budget just like every other city department.

No, the quirky cry of racism from Kim in mid-August didn’t seem too far out of his character. Some might even argue that the overall weirdness fit right in with his modus operandi: Get your name in the paper for good or for bad.

But there were and continue to be some oddities about the whole affair. First of all, there’s a question of whether the comments left on the Saratogian’s Web site were directed as slurs against Kim’s heritage, or whether they were simply off-color remarks about his mannerism, which in fact do conjure images of a power-drunk demented dictator, madly shouting demands into a crowd.

Kim answered these questions by pointing to remarks either alleging he eats dogs or referring to him as a dog-eater. Now, this term is a sort of mid-level slur that took root during the post World War II era, long before the age of information and during a time when it was somewhat fashionable to belittle Asiatic people.

But these days, the term ‘dog eater’ has quite a different meaning. In fact, one of the more widely recognized Asians in popular culture these days is sometimes referred to as a “dog-eater.” Of course, this sort of term self-attributes itself when you’re able to cram 59 hotdogs in your face in under 12 minutes. It should also be noted that the term didn’t really ruffle feathers when the BBC used it in a headline, or a comic book writer of Asian descent used it in a title, and so on and so forth.

Nevertheless, Kim took offense to it and rightfully so, some online posters have argued. But the real question remains: How did Kim find out about the so-called slurs and why did it take him so long to respond to them? And why didn’t he simply report the comments as abusive when to the paper’s Web administration?

Well, the answers to these questions are starting to become clearer as the Kim Campaign continues to fuel the story. All four daily newspapers were more than willing to let the story drop after the first report, seeing as though none of them really seemed to give it much credence to begin with. Kamp Kim, however, kept hammering the Internet with it.

First, there was a clap-trap entry by Kim ally Lew Benton on the Times Union blog, claiming the Saratogian’s condoning of blatantly racist remarks as being parallel to instances where black and Jewish residents were barred from Spa City establishments during the late 19th and early 20th century. Then this week, a Los Angeles-based immigration reform group curiously tossed out a news release to the Saratogian, decrying the paper allowing such remarks to be posted –roughly a month after they had already been removed from the Web site.

Kim claims he never alerted the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium about the issue, but suggested maybe his brother did. After all, he does live in California, the commissioner admitted. He also suggested the issue might have been dredged up by conservative radio talk shows that discussed his plight –even though he never identified any particular one.

But the most telling comments to the Saratogian were the ones where he claimed he never even read the hurtful comments. As the paper paraphrased, Kim “does not typically read comments left on blogs and other online forums, because he prefers not to think about what is being said about him behind his back.” Instead, he was alerted by campaign members and urged to take action so that if his children ever wanted to get into politics, they wouldn’t have to face such outward bias.

“It’s just wrong,” he told the Saratogian in one of his classic disjointed statements. “My kids, if they were to run for office, shouldn’t not run because someone is going to call them up and call them a ‘dog-eater.’"

Say again? Was that a double negative? So, you’re bringing this up for your children’s future run in office? Are you sure you don’t mean your own run for office?

Simply put, this is a ploy to attract any attention to the Kim Campaign. The notion is that a candidate that blankets the airwaves, printing presses, online chat bases and lawns with his or her name will ultimately sway the most fickle of voters. In the process, if you can guile a nationally reputable organization into taking up your cause –maybe even finance your campaign –you’ll be able to outshout any of the negative publicity generated by the conquest for saturation coverage.

The problem is Kim has revealed himself for what he is: A vapid and hyper-reactive media whore whose campaign lacks the sort of momentum it needs to unseat an incumbent. Adding to this sad reality is that the incumbent –Republican Mayor Scott Johnson –isn’t even that popular right now. But at least he hasn’t issued half-crazed news releases calling for greater censorship of the media and free speech. Oddly enough, that’s something one might expect from a well-known dictator on the Korean peninsula