An overture …

“I Like to Fuck” by Tila Tequila

I like to fuck, sexy boys and girls (uh huh!)
I like to fuck, leather pants, Jheri curls
I like to fuck, suck cock, until I hurl
I like to fuck everybody in the world

ONCE UPON A TIME, in these United States of America, Asians were perceived as asexual beings. American popular culture depicted Asian men as emasculated and unattractive, and while it may have been a bit more forgiving towards Asian women, it still portrayed them as demure and repressed. But as we enter the second decade of the new millennium, Asian Americans like Jon Gosselin, Tiger Woods, and Tila Tequila are blazing new trails, redefining what it means to be Asian-American while getting their inordinate share of happy endings. Call them the Golden Horde of the Asian-American sexual revolution.

Let us take a brief look at the history of Asian-American sexuality as portrayed by American popular culture. In 1915, the Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa played the lead in “The Cheat” as a Burmese tycoon—initially written as a Japanese national but later changed to placate Japan which at the time was a U.S. ally—who brands a white socialite as his possession after she fails to repay a loan. Ironically, this diabolical and effete role catapulted Hayakawa to the kind of international superstardom yet to be repeated by an Asian-American actor, resulting in an offer to star in “The Sheik” which he turned down. The role was eventually filled by a certain Rudolph Valentino.

Then in the 1960 film, “The World of Suzie Wong,” William Holden’s character, a good old corn-fed Midwestern white guy, tried to approach Nancy Kwan’s titular character, a working girl with a heart of gold, aboard a ship off the waters of Hong Kong only to be rebuffed by her declarations of virginity. Back then, even a prostitute knew that she had to save face.

So that’s how things have generally been. Effete Asian males and flower drum song females. In this universe of low expectations, Asian-American guys like myself have had to rely on books like this magnum opus “How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men” in order to have a shot at bagging that most elusive of creatures, a decent-looking white woman who would date Asian guys. How times have changed. Now someone like Jon Gosselin—a half-Korean guy who somehow manages to look chinkier than 90 percent of full-East Asian guys—has been working overtime, tilling some particularly fecund nether regions of numerous white women as if they were rice paddies in the Vietnamese countryside.

And what about the rather seemingly staid Tiger Woods? Let me take this opportunity to address the African-American community on this issue: Hey, Tiger is at least 5/8 Asian with his full-blooded Thai mother and his part-Chinese father. We won’t monopolize him, but can’t the two communities share him or at least the blame for him? (Dave Chappelle, bring back the Race Draft!) Anyhow, Tiger may have mastered the art of avoiding sand traps in the game of golf, but he is just a neophyte when it comes to avoiding the traps laid by sandy blonds. Perhaps Bret Michael’s “Rock of Love” trailer has been swept up into the air a la Balloon Boy—another Asian American—and crash-landed at Augusta’s revered golf course, with the many ladies of easy virtue having landed safely thanks to the presence of excess silicone and saline bags.

But it isn’t just the guys who are making the Asian-American community proud. We all recognize Tila Tequila of MySpace and “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” fame as every first-generation Asian immigrant parent’s nightmare. She’s the Asian girl who dates any guy. Or any girl, for that matter. But Tila has shown us that an Asian parent’s nightmare is ironically the ultimate American dream. If you lack talent, make sure you strip yourself of every last shred of dignity as well. Then you, too, can screw your way to realizing the American dream.

Remember the smug (white) TV pundits waxing poetic about a post-racial America when Obama was elected? I remember watching his Chinese-American brother-in-law, a handsome fellow, beaming in the crowd and thinking that perhaps Asian Americans had also arrived with the election of the nation’s first minority president. Could I have been any more wrong? That was but a minor precursor to the monumental milestones achieved by the three recipients of TripmasterMonkey’s inaugural Model Minority Gone Bad Awards.

Like it or not, Jon Gosselin, Tiger Woods, and Tila Tequila have firmly established their status as trailblazers in racial relations. Okay, so they’re not exactly Jackie Robinson or Rosa Parks, but damn it, people, any breakdown of old stereotypes is progress. America, we have finally arrived in full force—and not just fresh off some dinky little boat, but off an opulent luxury liner filled with money, honeys and camera crews, proving that we too can be just as stupid and promiscuous as the members of any other ethnic group. And you just wait till the Chinese-Canadian movie star/amateur pornographer Edison Chen crosses the border.

Me so horny, me love you long time, America. •