X Factor judge Louis Walsh has been branded a racist by a section of the Twitter community for repeatedly correcting Vietnamese contestant Jason Viet Tien mispronunciation of
'Tulisa' as 'Tulisha.'
Jason Viet Tien, an 18-year-old
student from Hanoi, Vietnam, sang a version of Whitney Houston's 'I have
Nothing' in a thick Vietnamese accent, declaring his love for judge
Tulisa Contostavlos despite mispronouncing her name - much to the amusement of the audience.
During the X Factor broadcast at the weekend, Jason's mispronunciation resulted in #Tulisha trending worldwide on Twitter as thousands of tweets reacted with sinophobic humour.
Not adverse to
racial controversy, Louis Walsh also said of Jason Viet Tien - "You remind me of a young Bruce Lee."
Reminiscent of the 2010 series of X Factor, when Louis Walsh described young black contestant Pajie Richardson as "You’re like a little Lenny Henry,” the only link between Pajie Richardson and Lenny Henry, Jason Viet Tien and Bruce Lee - is race. As an illustration of ignorance, Bruce Lee is not Vietnamese and Jason Viet Tien is not Chinese nor does he resemble Bruce Lee. Its an analogy of casual racism and racial stereotyping of East Asians, typically - 'they all look the same,' 'Bruce Lee is the only famous (East Asian) Chinese man I've heard of.' Through its broadcast, ITV, XFactor and in particular Louis Walsh, instigated and legitimised racism against East Asians.
Jason Viet Tien is not dissimilar to William Hung, a buck tooth FOB male caricature blissfully ignorant of western social and racial environments. In an interview prior to the audition, 'White Fever' Jason Viet Tien embarrassingly describes his craving for White British girls. Jason Viet Tien is a dupe, to further the media representation of East Asian men as 'sexless' short nerds with ghastly accents, out of their depth and out of their league, with no hope of winning the affection of alpha White females in her native country except through pity and derision, their FOB delusions of self-importance are pitied as a means of creating entertainment for the audience to laugh at - they're laughing at you Jason, not with you. (BBCZeitgeist)




































