Tulsi Gabbard campaigned in New Hampshire while the top Democrats debated in Los Angeles.
While she continues her campaign for the Democratic nomination for POTUS, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is being asked to resign her Congressional seat. 2020
Gabbard, who is not running for reelection, is being asked by former Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who held the governorship from 2010 to 2014, to resign so the state can hold a special election to replace her.
As she campaigns for president, Gabbard has been largely absent from Congress, said Abercrombie in a news conference.
Abercrombie was a former member of Congress who resigned his seat when he ran for governor, so he speaks from experience.
“Trying to do my job in Washington and run for office, another office, in Hawaii was just too difficult. I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I had hoped maybe I could do it, and it became obvious that I couldn’t. So I resigned my seat.”
Abercrombie serves as co-chair of state Sen. Kai Kahele’s congressional campaign to succeed Gabbard.
“Hawaiʻi is Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s home and her heart,” said T. Ilihia Gionson, Gabbard’s Hawaii communications director. “Her pursuit of the highest office in the land has not compromised her and her team’s commitment to serving the people of Hawaiʻi in her fourth term in Congress.”
"A whole lot of things are going to be going on and happening here and in Washington over the next year and to essentially deprive half the state of Hawaii of representation in that sense is unacceptable," Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser
The groundbreaking show Fresh Off the Boat finished taping it's last episode Dec. 20. It was an emotional moment for the cast members, who have been together the last six years, especially for Hudson Yang, who played Eddie Huang. "I'm not afraid to say I cried," Yang posted in a tweet along with photo of him crying as he said goodbye. "I love my #Freshofftheboat family," he continued. "I always will." The show was historic in that it centered on an Asian American family as they adjusted to life in suburban Florida in the decade of the 1990s. It was originally based on the memoirs of restaurateur Eddie Huang, “We couldn’t be prouder of this game-changing show and the impact it has had on our cultural landscape. The success of ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ has helped pave the way for inclusion throughout the industry,” said ABC entertainment president Karey Burke.
“Nahnatchka Khan and her brilliant creative team have created an unforgettable series with an Asian-American family front and center, something that hadn’t been done in two decades. The cast, led by Randall Park and Constance Wu, is one of the finest and funniest on television. We’ll miss the Huang family and are eternally grateful for the incredibly heartfelt stories they have told these past six seasons.” It made Constance Wu and Randall Park recognizable names and faces in America's living rooms. It opened the doors for other shows to star Asian American actors or to have them play prominent roles in ensemble dramas. Besides Yang, Wu and Park, the rest of the cast included: Forrest Wheeler, Ian Chen, Lucille Soong, Chesley Crisp and Ray Wise. Most importantly, it showed that the immigrant experience was an American story and depicted Asian Americans as human beings. The last episode will air on ABC on Feb. 21.
The marquee outside of the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco
ASAM NEWS Awkwafina is about to blow our minds by pairing two unlikely things: Chinatown restaurants and the California punk scene from the 1970s and ’80s. The Crazy Rich Asians breakout and Jumanji: The Next Level star is collaborating with Topic Studios to develop a yet-to-be-titled feature film inspired by the Topic.com article “How Chinese Food Fueled the Rise of California Punk." Awkwafina is set to star and produce alongside Topic Studios.
Written by Madeline Leung Coleman, the article explores how, during the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chinatown restaurants from Sacramento to San Francisco started renting their banquet halls for rehearsal space and booking the young bands of nascent West Coast punk as dinner entertainment to bring in additional business. The Filipino restaurant, Mabuhay Gardens, dubbed as the Fab Mab in its punk incarnation, was the venue of choice for The Dead Kennedys, Iggy Pop, the Ramones and Debbie Harrie with Blondie. Located on the edge of what was once Manilatown, the Fab Mab was in a building owned by Caballeros de Dimas Alang, a Filipino fraternal organization. The article puts shine on these Chinese and Filipino restaurants and how they became some of California’s most important venues and the focal point of the seminal West Coast punk music scene. The project is being overseen by The project is being overseen by Ryan Heller, Topic’s SVP Film & Acquisitions.
Devo was one of the groups that played at Mabuhay Gardens.
“We couldn’t ask for a better partner to help us bring this vibrant world to life than Awkwafina,” said Maria Zuckerman, EVP of Topic Studios. “Madeline’s article explores an unexpected connection and collaboration which gave rise to an essential and very punk moment.”
Topic Studios recently produced Michael Angelo Covino’s buddy comedy The Climb which was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. Other Topic projects include an extensive list of critically acclaimed titles including Julius Onah’s Luce, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, Kimberly Reed’s political documentary Dark Money and Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat starring Meryl Streep.
In addition to Crazy Rich Asians and Jumanji: The Next Level, Awkwafina starred in A24’s The Farewell directed by Lulu Wang for which she earned a Gotham Award for Best Actress. She was also nominated for a Critics Choice Award and a Golden Globe Award. The busy actress will also star in the upcoming scripted situation comedy, Nora from Queens for Comedy Central and will appear in a landslide of projects including the upcoming Marvel Studios film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the live-action The Little Mermaid, Netflix’s adaptation of Broadway’s The Prom, the animated Disney film Raya and the Last Dragon as well as Tate Taylor’s Breaking News In Yuba County.
ASAM NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE EDGE Facebook Friday (Dec. 20) removed hundreds of accounts generated by the Epoch Times which included profile photos produced using artificial intelligence, reported the New York Times. The newspaper, founded in 2000 by followers of the Falun Gong religious movement “as an antidote to communist propaganda,” has reportedly been spending millions of dollars to reach new readers with its pro-Donald Trump message.
The Epoch Times is backed by the Falun Gong and tied to disinformation campaigns with a pro-Trump bias.
“This was a large, brazen network that had multiple layers of fake accounts and automation that systematically posted content with two ideological focuses: support of Donald Trump and opposition to the Chinese government,” Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said to the New York Times. NBC News described the publication as "straddling the line between an ultraconservative news outlet and a conspiracy warehouse." The newspaper dramatically expanded its U.S. coverage following the election of Donald Trump and has become one of Trump's most ardent defenders on social media, spending at least $1.5 million on pro-Trump advertisements in the first half of 2019. Shortly after NBC News published its report, Facebook announced that it had banned the Epoch Times from advertising on the platform.
It featured the fake news Trump likes to rail against except, of course, when it benefits him. The Epoch Media group denied to the New York Times that it is behind the accounts removed by Facebook and claimed Facebook did not contact it.
Examples of postings from the fake accounts.
The Epoch Media Group acknowledged some of its former employees are involved with the banned accounts, but said that is not evidence of a connection.
According to Fast Company, the Epoch Times strongly opposes the Chinese communist party with a decidedly strong pro-Trump bias. In news articles, videos and social-media posts, however, the Epoch Times — along with video production company New Tang Dynasty, which is also owned by parent organization Epoch Media Group — has repeatedly promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents claim that Trump is leading a secret effort to uncover a global pedophile ring that includes many top Democrats, media figures and other members of the so-called "Deep State." In August, NBC News reported the Epoch Times purchased 11,000 pro-Trump ads on Facebook at a cost of $1.5 million in six months. The ads spread conspiracy theories and criticized “fake news” media. Facebook banned the Epoch Times from advertising following the report.
Both the Epoch Times and the Shen Yun dance troupe make up the bulk of the outreach efforts of the Falon Gong. Shen Yun isn't just a dance show. It's also part of an elaborate messaging strategy for Falun Gong — also known as Falun Dafa — a Chinese religious and political group persecuted within China that opposes the country's ruling party. The Chinese government began to consider the group a threat in 1999 due to its large following. Dancers are trained at the Fei Tan Academy of the Arts, which is part of a 427-acre refuge for Falun Gong adherents in upstate New York. Profits from Shen Yun shows go towards maintaining the academy. The dance companies also, unusually, have a mixture of paid and unpaid performers, according to Hazlitt.
Shen Yun has a wide reach. It's playing in 94 different American cities this year, and has dozens of other shows in Canada, Mexico, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand — but not, as you can imagine, China. Shen Yun has resisted talking to media about the accusations, but social media is full of comments to indicate that dance entertainment is not the primary goal of the company.
On Friday, fact-checking website Snopes reported that an affiliated organization called “The BL,” for “The Beauty of Life,” has recently been posting pro-Trump ads on Facebook. The Epoch Times denies that it is tied to The BL, however, Snopes reported that it’s largely run by former executives from the paper.
Facebook has come under criticism for choosing to continue to publish political advertising that might have false claims. Other online companies such as Google and Twitter, have overhauled their political ads policies and severely limited campaigns’ ability to target voters — and Facebook is under mounting pressure to do the same.
The Verge reports that those fake accounts would post BL content in other Facebook groups while pretending to be Americans. Pro-Trump messages were often posted “at very high frequencies” and linked to off-platform sites belonging to the BL and The Epoch Times. The accounts and pages were managed by individuals in the US and Vietnam.
In an apparent shift from its policy, Facebook said that it removed 610 accounts, 89 Facebook pages, 156 groups, and 72 Instagram accounts that were connected to the organization. Around 55 million accounts followed one of these Facebook pages and 92,000 followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The organization spent nearly $9.5 million in advertisements, according to Facebook.
The Epoch Times claimed, "NBC News and MSNBC content about us has been riddled with inaccuracies, blatant errors, and misrepresentations.
“We take advantage of different marketing platforms to grow our subscriber base, including Facebook," The Epoch Times said in a statement to its readers. "On Facebook, we use video ads to drive subscriptions. The Epoch Times’ subscription advertisements have no political agenda. The only reason some of them are run as ‘political advertising’ is that online platforms require them to be categorized as such.”
"The Epoch Times is an independently owned media and not owned or operated by Falun Gong, as we clarified in our statement to NBC News," concluded the Epoch statement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a 2-1 decision ruled the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) unconstitutional and instructed the lower court, which had previously held the ACA unconstitutional, to determine whether the remaining portions of the ACA can stand.
“APIAHF is extremely disappointed in the court’s decision that puts the health of millions of Americans at risk, said Juliet K. Choi, senior vice president for government & external relations of APIAHF.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the ACA's individual mandate is unconstitutional, but stopped short of saying that the entire Obama-era law is invalid.
“The Fifth Circuit’s decision against the ACA could potentially disrupt our entire American health care system by leaving the decision to a sole judge who had already ruled against the ACA.," Choi said.
The Democratic attorneys general, led by California, who have intervened in the case shave already indicated that they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court chooses to hear the case, Texas v. United States, right away, the ACA's fate could become the centerpiece of the 2020 presidential election.
If the SCOTUS justices wait until the lower court rules, the future of Obamacare would remain in limbo for years.
The opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is an embarrassment, both to the Republican-appointed judges who put their names to it and to the federal judiciary as a whole, reports The Atlantic. (The third judge on the panel, appointed by Jimmy Carter, dissented vehemently.) Since the implementation of the ACA, sometimes referred to as Obamacare, the coverage disparity between whites and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had virtually disappeared.
Anticipating the matter will head to the U.S. Supreme Court, Choi said, "It is unlikely the Court would hear the appeal before the 2020 Elections, which underscores the need to elect leaders that will ensure our health care is protected.”
A school in Stockton, Calif. will be named after Flora Arca Mata, the first Filipino American teacher in the state of California.
Considered by many a pioneer, Mata gained prominence as the first Filipino American to graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles and served as the first woman of color to teach at the Stockton Unified School District. She taught there for 32 years.
Mata hails from Honolulu, but moved to Stockton at the age of two. Mata’s older sister labored as a farmhand to pay her tuition for UCLA, where she earned her teaching credentials. After graduation, she worked as a tutor and maid for the Campbell Soup family before moving to the Philippines with her husband in 1940 to teach.
The two sisters spent World War II in the Philippines, and moved back to Stockton, where Flora Mata continued to teach at the schools she had attended as a child. Even after retiring in 1980, she continued to substitute teach well into her 80s. Mata died in 2013 at 95 years old.
UCLA’s “Bruin Women Firsts” newsletter noted that she was hired during a time when it was difficult for minorities to secure teaching positions, and her work as California’s first Filipina teacher paved the way for other Asian Americans in education.
Mata will be celebrated for her achievements through SUSD’s new K-8 school. When SUSD welcomed name suggestions for the building, Stockton-based Filipino American organization Little Manila Rising kickstarted a successful campaign to put Mata’s name on the survey. According to Little Manila Rising’s Facebook post, Mata “overwhelmingly had the most votes.”
“Thank you for being such a beautiful community and standing up for one of our own,” the post added. “Your voices matter.”
The school is currently under construction and anticipated to open by 2020 in August. The school would be the third California school to be named after Filipinos. The first two is the Larry Itliong - Philip Vera Cruz Middle School in Union City and the Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary School in Los Altos.
Advertising and marketing spending targeted at multicultural audiences in the U.S. will expand to 6.3% in 2020, yet Asian Americans will only get a small share of that, according to the latest annual U.S. Multicultural Media Forecast report. The research examined three demographic groups: Hispanic Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans. Marketing Charts indicated that advertising targeted specifically toward these three groups is still far below each group’s relative population share — for example, Asian Americans make up more than 1 in 20 members of the population, but only attract 0.1% total advertising and media revenue.
Benzinga noted that of the nearly $26 billion spent on multicultural media in 2018, Asian Americans were the smallest but fastest-growing demographic, with revenues at $722 million, up 7.0%. African Americans saw revenues grow 6.1% to $7.2 billion, and the Hispanic media segment, which had the largest share at $17.94 billion, up 5.3%.
However, advertisers are starting to notice increasing potential in Asian American-targeted advertising. Nielsen estimated that Asian American spending power exceeded $1 trillion in 2018, and as a particularly tech-savvy group, Asian Americans are adept to using emerging technology and are a prime consumer group for digital advertising.
Multiethnic consumers are the fastest growing demographic in the country, forcing brand marketers to consider the multicultural media market if they “want to accelerate growth and increase overall U.S. market share,” said PQ Media President and CEO Patrick Quinn. “Nevertheless, multicultural media growth has slightly under performed the broader U.S. media industry and it still accounts for a mere sliver of the American pie.”
PQ Media conducted the research commissioned by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM)…
Quinn added that although multiethnic consumers from these three groups comprise 40% of the total U.S. population, multicultural media investments only attract 5.2% of overall U.S. spending.
The media research company Nielsen indicated that Asian Americans are “50% more likely to use the internet and apps for consumer reviews than the general population,” but Marketing Charts noted that almost one-third of multicultural media spending goes to TV advertising, “a proportion almost twice that of the overall media market (16.7%),” whereas multicultural digital advertising only receives 10% of spending.
Nielsen’s report into the Asian American consumer’s spending journey, titled “Informed Influencers and Powerful Purchasers,” also revealed that Asian Americans are more likely to purchase products based off of recommendations or reviews from friends or family.
“The Asian American path to purchase is affected by a myriad of influences that are heavily rooted in cultural traditions as well as their cross-cultural identity,” Nielsen’s research revealed. “Understanding these drivers of behavior is essential for marketers to exercise empathy and establish real connections with Asian American consumers.”
These insights may be crucial to accessing the Asian American demographic’s vast spending power — insights that brand marketers don’t seem to realize yet.
“Businesses face an imperative to reach these consumers, who wield $1 trillion in annual buying power, in order to drive future growth,” the report concluded.
After a hint of a relationship between Rose Tico and Finn in 'The Last Jedi,' fans expected much more.
We need to talk: Where's Rose Tico? What happened to "our girl" in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker? The prescient headline in Varietyread: ‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’s’ Kelly Marie Tran on Why Rose Tico’s Story Is Also Her Own. After the debut of the much awaited final episode of the space saga, Rose's fans are in an uproar at her marginalization, giving more meaning to the headline.
"Her character was aspirational, especially to Asian American girls who grew up on Star Wars but never saw anybody that looked like them represented in the galaxy far, far away," wrote Joey Marona on cleveland.com. After making Rose Tico, the first Asian American hero in the last movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi, in the 11-episode (9 plus 2 side stories Rogue One and Solo) telling the story of a "galaxy far, far away," the character has met the silent fate many Asian Americans face almost every day in school or on the job.
Rose's role in the Rise of Skywalker has been significantly reduced to barely more than an extra lingering in the background. Her extraordinary heroism in Last Jedi, ending with a kiss with John Boyega's Finn, one of the main characters, has long been forgotten. The new couple (or, so we thought) became appeared embarrassed at letting their emotions get the better of them in the previous (Episode 8) of the 9-part saga. I'm not sure what the decision process was in the making of what we are told will be the last Star Wars movie, for Rose Tico fans, including those Asian Americans cosplaying her at the numerous comic-cons, Rise of Skywalker is a major, major disappointment to say the least. One explanation offered on social media is that director and producer JJ Abrams yielded to the fanboy trollers who like their women in spandex and their heroes white. After Rose was introduced in The Last Jedi, they went on a hate-filled on-line campaign causing Tran to cut herself off social media and forcing the director Rian Johnson and Abrams to go on the record in interviews defending the Rose Tico character and Tran. After becoming the moral center of The Last Jedi and saving Finn's ass (Boyega) from a senseless suicide attack, Rose deserved better. We expected better.
The Variety article, written before the general release of Episode 9, foretells Rose's fate, but ends with a tinge of hope from Tran: "And now that the Skywalker saga is ending, Tran thinks that Tico offers a new hope, especially for young Asian American fans – that they, too, can have a place on the big screen, in a galaxy far far away. In these made-up universes and real-life spaces that are still evolving to include them.
“'I cannot wait to see what this next generation does ‘cause the rules that we grew up believing are so…' Tran pauses and lets out a laugh, 'They’re lies.'”
Andrew Yang was, well, Andrew Yang during the December Democratic debate.
Even with only seven candidates on the debate stage, presidential candidate Andrew Yang still had the shortest time answering questions during the Democrats' Thursday evening's debate among the top seven contenders. I'm not sure if its his speaking style, less BS, the other candidates basically ignoring him therefore having the less time to respond to attacks that never came, or its his failure to insert himself into the clashes between the other candidates. Yang's lack of aggressiveness is reinforcing the stereotype of Asians not asserting themselves, or put another way, being overly polite. Yang only spoke about 10 minutes, or about half the time of the talkative Bernie Sanders.
CNN GRAPHIC
Unlike the debates hosted by MSNBC, this time the opportunities for Yang to expand on his answers beyond awkwardly twisting back to his Freedom Dividend as the answer to all the ills facing the nation. For instance, in this debate and the five earlier debates, he answered a question by saying the Democrats need to address the reasons why people voted for Trump in 2016: that is jobs disappearing because of automation. Now that he's pointed out the need (repeatedly), I would finally like to hear during the debate what solutions he has to offer.
In this clip, when he is asked by the first Pakistani American moderator NewsHour senior correspondent Amna Nawaz what it means to be the only candidate of color on stage, he again reverts to his stock answer of a so-called Freedom Dividend instead of talking about institutional racism and biases ingrained in our political system.
In fact, the other six candidates -- all white -- failed to mention the shortcoming and the lack of diversity among the debaters. In his answer, he delivered his best line of the night, "I grew up the son of immigrants... and I had many racial epithets used against me as a kid," but instead of getting personal and relating how that shaped him, he reverted to stats showing how it blacks and Latinos face begger obstacles, which allowed him to refer to his plan for a universal basic income. Bernie Sanders' attempt at humor fell embrassingly flat. When the 77 year old was asked about his age, he sarcastically inserted, "And I'm white." In the following clip, I didn't like the way Yang seemed to brush off Russian interference in US elections, Trump inciting racists and impeachment in one sentence as if they were not factors in the Trump administration. Instead, listen to how he once again, reverts to his promise of $1,000 a month for every adult.
The consensus by most pundits is that Joe Biden came out on top or at least, didn't hurt himself. His ho-hum, but adequate performance only confirmed his status as the frontrunner.
Amy Klobuchar came out firing, -- something Yang should learn to do -- and should raise her standings when the polls come out Thursday morning.
It appears that Yang's campaign will last through the Iowa Caucus 45 days from now. After the holidays, CNN and The Des Moines Register will co-host the January debate, which will take place at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. It will be the first of four that events that will take place in rapid succession over the first two months of 2020 prior to the Iowa Caucus.
Marcus Samuelsson (center), host of 'No Passport Required' enjoyed a laugh and a Filipino breakfast in Seattle.
Filipino cuisine got a big boost this month as it is featured in too food-centric television shows, The Great Food Truck Race and No Passport Required. The food of the Philippines, long overlooked in favor of the food of Asian neighbors, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Korea and Japan, took a big step into American kitchens this month when the food truck Lia's Lumpia food truck made it into the finals of The Great Food Truck Race and famous chef Marcus Samuelsson checked out Filipino American restaurants in Seattle for the first episode of the second season of No Passport Required. The Great Food Truck Race, held its finale Wednesday (Dec. 18) with Lia's Lumpia, crewed by amateur chef Hunter Spencer, his mom Lia Santos-Hunter and friend Tanya Garcia, during the winter, a far cry from the San Diego, Calif. climate they're used to. In the finale, Lia's Lumpia was squared off against the Big Stuff food truck manned by Brad Brutlag and Eddy Cumming, two professional chefs who work on private yachts for very picky and wealthy clients. They were joined by their marketing whiz friend Mike O’Neill.
They were the final two trucks in the shortened four-episode season which took place in wintry New England with five-trucks in the competition.
From the beginning, Lia's Lumpia had to overcome the New England customers' unfamiliarity with Filipino food by serving up familiar New England flavors, such as turkey stuffing, apple pie or lobster mac'n cheese in lumpia wrappers.
In the end Big Stuff won the competition, serving up items in tacos didn't have to explain their food because Mexican-inspired tacos have become part of America's diverse cuisine.
But because of their efforts to always to proudly present their Filipino heritage through their lumpia and adobo, New England is a little bit richer and little bit more aware even as Lia's Lumpia introduced their traditional pork shanghai lumpia and chicken adobo.
INSTAGRAM
The Lia's Lumpia team was made up of Lia Santos-Hunter, Spencer Hunter and Tanya Garcia.
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, Samuelsson, who made his mark with his award-winning restaurant Red Rooster Harlem, went to Seattle, where he spent time with immigrant and second-generation Filipino Americans who are taking charge of their city’s food scene. As Filipino food gains more national, mainstream recognition, members of the community are working to tell the story on their own terms. In this episode, Marcus meets chefs and restaurateurs who have been serving Filipino food in the city for decades, including in Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market, and also gets to know younger chefs and entrepreneurs to see how they put their spin on their culture’s food traditions. What I love about the premise of Sanuelsson's show is he uses food as the entryway to the ethnic community. In the episode, Dorothy Cordova, leader of the Filipino American National History Society headquartered in Seattle, explained the immigration history of Seattle's Filipno American community. Also, activist/comedian Sara Porkalob was able to tell Samuelsson how the ethnic enclave of Seattle's International District created a mini-UN of different ethnicities and how they were forced to ally themselves with each other to counter the racism they encountered. From chicken adobo to ube cheesecake, with longganisa, arroz caldo, and lots of lechon in between, the food in this episode represents a community that’s proud of its history and its future.
0:02 / 5:21
What's cool: If you go to the the No Passport Required PBS website, you can get recipes for pork adobo, pad de sal and oyster kinalaw.
The late travel/food TV host Anthony Bourdain predicted that Filipino food would be the next big thing among foodies and did a couple of shows in the Philippines. Because of shows like The Great Food Truck Race and No Passport Required, Filipino cuisine is gradually moving out of lola's kitchen and into the American culinary landscape. EDITOR'S NOTE: No Passport Required airs on your local PBS station on Fridays, 9 p.m. The Seattle episode is available online. Watch Lia's Lumpia's journey on The Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network app, Hulu or on demand. Check their website to find out where the pop-up kitchen will be at variouis locales around the San Diego region.
Reality TV got real ... too real for Survivor contestant Kellee Kim.
When Kim accused another player of inappropriate touching, the successful Survivor series stumbled badly
Wednesday night, Kim received an on-air apology from executive producer and host Jeff Probst.
"You were right," Probst told Kim. "You were right to speak up. You were right to step forward, despite a lot of risk and to speak your truth."
"I want to acknowledge and apologize for your pain. You didn’t ask for it and you didn’t deserve it," said Probst.
During the show's season finale, Survivor: Reunion Special, Kim was given an opportunity to voice her feelings concerning how CBS and the show's producers handled the inappropriate touching that she brought to their attention.
Earlier in the season, Kim spoke out about being repeatedly touched by fellow contestant, Dan Spilo, despite her repeated requests to stop.
Producers on location spoke with Spilo and told him to stop touching Kim and all the other women on the show. He, however, was allowed to stay on the show and compete, much to Kim’s disbelief.
Kellee Kim, right, confides in fellow contestant on 'Survivor.'
Kim told Probst Wednesday evening, “I think one of the things that has been the hardest thing was the fact that Dan remained in the game even after I spoke up.” Tearing up, Kim explained, “When someone goes through something like this or anything remotely like it, to not be supported and not be believed is really the hardest thing.”
Ironically, during that episode when Kim voiced her objections to producers, Kim was eliminated from the competition. Two weeks later, Spilo was kicked off the show after more allegations of inappropriate behavior were reported by one of the show female crew.
Probst told Kim that he and the network learned from the incident. The incident eventually brought change to the show and established new policies and procedures in how the show will handle similar incidents that might occur in the future.
“I think the most important thing, when I think about this situation and what happened, is that I hope that this season of Survivor isn't just defined by inappropriate touching sexual harassment,” said Kim. “I hope that it's defined by change, you know?”
For more on Survivor visit the show’s page at CBS.com.
