Bolsavik.com

To wit, “Best Fired Journalist” — says the OC Weekly here, in its annual “Best of OC” edition.

Heheheh.

The OC Weekly, it must be disclosed, is also the source of the above picture, taken by its photographer Keith May.

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The Register’s Martin Wisckol (pictured) had this column today in which he mentioned the Bolsavik three times in three different contexts.

Wisckol is the Orange County Register’s Politics Reporter and writes a regular column named “The Buzz.” With Peggy Lowe he also writes a blog for the paper, named “Total Buzz.”

Martin Wisckol has not won the Pulitzer. Compare this.

The Reg’s Deepa Bharath asked, and the Bolsavik answered, here. Excerpts:

Q: After the protests erupted and you were fired, did you regret your decision?

A: No, I’ve never regretted it. However, in hindsight I think I should’ve run it with an editor’s note, explaining the context of it all. But otherwise, I would do it all over again.

The interview is online now and apparently will be in print tomorrow Saturday.

If you’re new to this blog, you can click on the tag “Nguoi Viet” to the right (like this) and get all prior entires on this subject.

A copy of the photo in question is shown below. The photo accompanies artist Chau Huynh’s article, in which she related that her late mother-in-law, a refugee from South Vietnam, worked as a nail salon worker, not as a pedicurist but only as a worker who prepared people’s feet in that spa. Still, with what little money she made, she raised a family, sent her son to college, even paid for her daughter-in-law’s (the artist) college education.

The yellow-and-red-stripes color on the spa is the color of the flag of South Vietnam. The red power plug cover, to the Bolsavik, represents the communism from which the refugees escaped, but it has been interpreted to mean that communists have the power. Or something like that.

Read more about artist Chau Thuy Huynh here.

The two sides in a dispute over the display of the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam at the University of Southern California will hold a public discussion forum on April 21.

See background story by the OC Register’s Deepa Bharath here.

Here’s the announcement. The Bolsavik’s rather lengthy thoughts follow after.

Identity, Diversity, and Fair Representation?
A closer look at Student Exclusion and the politics of the VKC Flags
Monday, April 21st, 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Room TBA VKC 156
Food: TG Express

This forum will be a respectful, constructive and open space for a closer discussion about the recent VKC Flag controversy, with its implications for identity, student exclusion, and University space. The Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) and the Vietnamese International Student Association (VISA) will begin the dialogue and clarify current misunderstandings about the politics of the flag and student representation. Other student organizations like the Armenian Student Association and the general student body will have opportunities to voice their concerns about possible university exclusions and recognize both differences and commonalities. Faculty members Dr. Viet Nguyen and Dr. Janet Hoskins (tentative) will contribute to this discussion and school administrators will also be invited. This event is an important foundation for further advocacy. Students can engage the University’s current response and explore how student organizations can collaborate among themselves and with the University to inclusively represent a rich, diverse student body.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=35834995703
Contact: apasa0708@gmail.com

–
Daniel Wu
University of Southern California, 2010
B.A.: International Relations
Minor: Public Health
714-220-7989

“VKC” is short for the von KleinSmid Center for International & Public Affairs at USC, the building where the flag is hung. The VSA is the organization of mostly Vietnamese-Americans. The VISA consists mostly of students from Vietnam studying at USC on a student visa. Hence the acronym. Cute.
There is a deep feeling held by many Vietnamese-American, not just the right-wing extremists, that the current official red-and-star flag of Vietnam stands for the oppression that they and their parents and their parents before them suffered in Vietnam. (That is the mainstream Vietnamese opinion. The extremism comes in prohibiting anyone from raising a peep about the red flag, calling them a commie.)

To an overwhelming majority of Vietnamese-Americans, the red-and-star flag is an insult to their past and their identity as victims of the communist regime. The flag that represents the Vietnamese part of their Vietnamese-American heritage, to them, is the yellow-and-stripes flag of the former Republic of Vietnam (right, with the Governator). Although it doesn’t represent any country any more, it does represent a sentiment, and that is what they want to use to represent the Vietnamese community.

On the other hand, there is also a probably equally deep feeling among many younger people in Vietnam, who may very well be anti-communist for all we know, but who have never ever seen the yellow-and-stripes flag, and who may be too young to remember, not just the war pre-1975, but also a lot of the harsh represssion that followed in the decade or so afterwards. All they have ever seen was the red-and-star flag which they use to display their patriotism. To them, the red flag is sacred while the yellow flag is alien and meaningless.

The Bolsavik has expressed the thoughts above publicly on Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese service. Click here to listen (in Vietnamese); the Bolsavik comes on at around before 50%.

That RFA interview played a major role in the Bolsavik becoming a main target of the protesters. Not just outside extremists are unhappy, but quite a few older people working at Nguoi Viet were not pleased either. The Senior Editor who had approved the survey in question backtracked. At one point, the protesters laid out a row of VC helmets labeled with names of the accused communists. Right beside the Bolsavik’s name was the name of Thien Giao, the RFA reporter who had interviewed him.

BTW, if the above photo looks familiar, that’s because the Bolsavik took it at the same event that later gave rise to Trung Nguyen’s notorious Photoshop scandal.

The OC Register’s Martin Wisckol is working on a piece about OC Viet politicians’ position on the anti-communists. He’s been posting bits and pieces of his interviews on Total Buzz.

Click here to see OC Weekly’s Nick Schou quote from this Bolsavik blog about the arrest of Trong Doan, the protester against Nguoi Viet newspaper.

Click here to read USA Today’s William M. Welch quoting one sentence by the Bolsavik - or rather his meek-Daily-Planet-reporter alter ego.

Click here for a longish introduction to Bolsavik 101, by the OC Register’s Martin Wisckol.

And Red County/OC Blog jumped on the Bolsavik bandwagon here.

The artist at the center of an ongoing protest against Nguoi Viet Daily News, Chau Huynh, recently was named a “2008 ArtSeen Emerging Artist” by L.A. ArtSeen.

Read the announcement here. Click on number 19 to see a sample artwork by Chau Huynh.

Chau Huynh’s artwork published on Nguoi Viet’s special Tet issue became the target of a group of protesters who claim the work demeans South Vietnam’s flag.

The protests are still ongoing, with about a half-dozen people camping out in front of Nguoi Viet’s offices continuously.

Google Chau Huynh’s name in Vietnamese (Hu?nh Th?y Châu) and you get hundreds of hits at Vietnamese web sites and blogs. Like this. You would wish your name would bring up that many hits!

Chau Huynh was a Robert & Colleen Haas Scholar when she was at UC Berkeley, and she’s now a graduate student in the MFA program at UC Davis.

For a background on the protests, read story by My-Thuan Tran on the L.A. Times here. The Bolsavik’s termination as Nguoi Viet’s managing editor is mentioned but not by name.

The OC Weekly also has a story by Nick Schou here. Over the phone, however, Schou didn’t realize that there’s supposed to be another quotation mark inside the Bolsavik’s quote, like so: “People came up to me. ‘My mom thought it was inappropriate’; ‘my dad thought it was inappropriate.’ It’s not an extreme position to think it was inappropriate.” Oh well, not his fault.

ArtSeen is an art exhibit and charity auction event to benefit AIDS research.

The jury for 2008 ArtSeen Emerging Artists reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary art curating:

Stephenie Dillon- Capital Group Companies, Curator

Howard Fox- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

David Gere - UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures, Associate Professor AIDS/Arts Activism

Rebecca Morse- Museum of Contemporary Art, Assistant Curator

John Murdoch- The Huntington, The Kully Director of Art Collections

Glenn Phillips- The Getty Research Institute, Consulting Curator in Contemporary Programs and Research

The Bolsavik’s here because he was fired from his previous job as an editor at Nguoi Viet.

Read story by My-Thuan Tran on the L.A. Times here.

Actually the way the Bolsavik was fired was a little complicated. In early February when the protests began, he was dismissed from his position as Managing Editor but still kept on staff as a Vice President with no portfolio and told to stay away from the office. During February from time to time the CEO would be sending him stuff to do at home. It wasn’t until March 4 that the Bolsavik was told of his termination from the company.

 

 

 

That’s the Bolsavik above, pictured on someone’s poster.

This photo was taken by Keith May of the OC Weekly. The photo on the poster was taken by Etcetera (not his real name) of Viet Weekly.

Bolsa•vik (bowl sa vik) n. A person steeped in the political, economic, cultural, social life in the turbulent waters known variously as Little Saigon, Vietnamtown, or even (gasp!) Saigon Business District.