Stay Tooned, Part Two

The animated fallout over my Aug. 17 story "Red Scare in Little Saigon," which detailed the anti-communist boycott of Garden Grove-based newspaper Viet Weekly ain't over yet. First there was the cartoon on Take2Tango, a Vietnamese-language website by an artist named Buibaro depicting me as an ugly, big-nosed puppetmaster with my hand up the rear end of Viet Weekly publisher Le Vu. The cartoon--based on photos of me covering a confrontation between Viet Weekly staff and angry store employees in a mini-mall--seemed to suggest I'm some kind of outside agitator pulling the strings on Little Saigon commies.

We're still scratching our heads over what the cartoon really means--and why Buibaro depicted me with a fountain pen for an arm.

Meanwhile, in its latest issue, Viet Weekly has its own take on the cartoon controversy, an almost Escher-esque chain of hand-in-rear puppeteers. According to the artist, who goes by the pen name Gucci, the 'toon "suggests that Buibarao's motive has been incited by many other Vietnamese political and media interests in Little Saigon with the help of Take2tango.com for posting around on websites."

While all the attention is flattering, the caricatures themselves are not--even less so than the one that ran of me in L.A. City Beat several months ago which gave me a big fat head and a teenie-weenie little hand.