Posted 8:26 AM by Floyd

Political correctness is stupid; one of the reasons I say this is that people under its influence say stupid things. Consider for instance this review of the movie "Better Luck Tomorrow", written by a movie reviewer at the politically correct Los Angeles Times, and published in the politically correct San Jose Mercury News:

``Better Luck Tomorrow,'' which opened last week and continues to show at Bay Area theaters, doesn't break down the ``model minority'' stereotype of Asian-Americans as straight-A offspring of pious immigrants; it blows it to smithereens with a morally ambiguous tale of sex, drugs and violent death.

In the movie, overachieving Asian-American high-schoolers escape their dull suburban existence by dealing drugs and stealing computer hardware until their fast lives culminate in a grisly murder.

Because this was, well, a movie, I had my doubts as to its veracity. And sure enough I read further:

The plot is loosely inspired by the real-life case of Stuart Tay, a Tustin teenager bludgeoned to death in 1993 by fellow Asian-American teens. Both victim and his killers were from well-to-do suburban families with Ivy League futures.

Lin said he followed the Tay case in the newspapers but describes his movie as a work of pure fiction that draws on an amalgam of influences, including the Columbine shootings, to tell a story about youth violence.

You can only "blow a stereostype to smithereens" by showing many instances where it is not true. Not by creating a work of fiction where the stereotype is violated. Assume that the stereotype about former Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy is that he could get to the big game but not win it. (For the non-football inclined, Levy's Bills went to four straight Super Bowls in the early 90's and lost them all.) Would I blow this stereotype "to smithereens" by producing a movie in which the Bills won the 1993 Super Bowl?