英文阅读：CNN主播辱华用词分析
Julia writes:Sorry to trouble you, but I have a question regarding insulting remarks
against the Chinese on April 9 made by Jack Cafferty, one of commentators of
CNN. He said: "We're in hawk to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the in
Iraq...." What's "in hawk to"? And what does "up to our eyeballs" function?
My comments:
First of all, I never hesitate to comment on an interesting question, or
one that I think is of general interest. So therefore, never mind the "trouble",
just fire away.
Jack Cafferty called the Chinese "goons and thugs" in his comments, which
have drawn the ire from many Chinese bloggers over the Internet. However, "in
hawk" is not what that hateful man said. What that hateful man said was "in
hock", meaning "in debt". China has been buying American Treasury bonds, which
is one of the issues that had led Mr. Cafferty to rave, in full:
"I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is
certainly different."
"We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in
Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of
our paper. We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of trade
deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on
them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you
can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from
Wal-Mart."
'So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think
they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50
years."
Cafferty's remarks say a lot about CNN and the mainstream Western media in
general. They also tell a lot of course about how little Mr. Cafferty
understands what he's talking about. It was ungracious of him to accuse China of
anything because China has been more victim than perpetrator in the so-called
free trade. China did not call the shots in the beginning, not then, not now. It
was not China which invested in those sweatshops. It was not the Chinese
government that forces a trade deficit with American businesses – it was rather
the other way around. It was American capitalists who moved businesses to China,
creating those sweatshops and fattening up in the process – keeping most of the
profits. To the capitalists, the sweatshops and the trade deficits are not moral
or immoral, they are just good business. Pity Mr. Cafferty could not see this
and have empathy with Chinese workers who, like Mr. Cafferty himself in a way,
are just workers who own nothing but a good day's labor. Given a choice, the
Chinese workers would leave those sweatshops this very minute, much in the same
way Mr. Cafferty would move to a better job if there was one on offer.
Mr. Cafferty's remarks just show how ignorant the Jack Caffertys of America
are. China has for the past thirty years allowed itself to be the global
workshop and allowed its people to toil under harsh conditions so that Mr.
Cafferty and other Americans can have a cheaper shirt to wear to the office.
China has bought American Treasury bonds to keep the United States going. And
now this. "Goons and thugs" are what China gets from the Jack Caffertys in the
mainstream media. You wonder what else China should do to please Mr. Cafferty.
Give the billions of dollars of trade surplus back to America for free?
I'm not suggesting they would or that they could, but perhaps you know,
that Chinese government should close all sweatshops and stop buying US Treasury
bonds just to teach the Jack Caffertys a lesson and get them to understand how
lucky they are thanks to the very existence of those "goons and thugs" they so
despise.
It's not worth it to be angry over remarks by Americans who should have
known better. Americans, as Chinese to be sure, can be very ignorant. One time
back in 1989, in Honolulu as a matter of fact, I was talking to a proud
middle-aged American man during the break of a seminar when he, totally out of
the blue, asked me: "Do you have electricity in China?"
Stunned and lacking in tact, I replied: "No, we don't. But we do have
nuclear weapons."
"Up to our eyeballs" from Mr. Cafferty, by the way means nothing more than
"very much". Variously "up to the ear", "up to the neck" and "up to here"
(pointing to one's throat), "up to our eyeballs" functions as an adverb and is
used in situations one finds intolerable.
I find Mr. Cafferty very educating, aside from intolerable of course. Don't
you think?
Even if Chinese bloggers are fed up to the throat with him.
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