Western Confucian reports that Jon Huer’s column will be “suspended”; the Korea Times got tired of the flack.
And the K-Blogosphere is left with the question, which teapot tempest will we get outraged about now?
Or, given recent developments will we just. . . be happy?
(ps: talk about it, but comments that do nothing more than trash Jon Huer will be deleted. The man’s taken enough flack already, and character assassination is not what Hub of Sparkle is about.)
01/09/2009 at 9:15 am Permalink
LOL.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
01/09/2009 at 9:40 am Permalink
this is good news now i wish they would do the same for michael stevens and the trash he puts out. journalism was a highly respected field and people strived to write and publish the truth; unfortunately, over the decades the lofty standards that guided journalism of old have eroded and anyone and everyone who thinks they can write or has something to say tries to get published.
what is sad is, that there are always those journals and publications that will print the garbage produced by such people, which account for the existence of tabloidism and other hack media offerings
01/09/2009 at 11:25 am Permalink
The “golden age” of responsible journalsm is a myth.
Jst ask WR Hearst. Or Judith Miller.
01/09/2009 at 12:09 pm Permalink
He seems to have put a lot of work into it (50-60 pieces that’s a lot for such a short time) and his columns did get people talking. I’m going to miss my Mondays of reading the first few paragraphs of his columns and then just giving up.
His column sought to find understanding through the lens of sociology and pop-cross cultural communication. But if you really want to be happy and understand Koreans you should probably:
1. Study Korean
2. Take your shoes off when you go into someone’s house
3. Don’t be an asshole.
4. Don’t do anything you really don’t want to do.
5. Get out of any situation that seems fishy.
There, number 1 is how you understand Koreans, the rest will just help ensure that you have a good stay here. Anyway, Jon Heur, you be missed.
02/09/2009 at 12:48 am Permalink
“Don’t be an asshole.”
tl; dr
02/09/2009 at 1:33 am Permalink
“…and his columns did get people talking”
Sure, talking about what an imbecile he is.
02/09/2009 at 3:17 am Permalink
Well, not exactly a teapot tempest. People were right to be annoyed, and even angry, with this guy and his paper. How could such an “expert” be so ridiculously off the mark in nearly everything he wrote?
I did notice that he seemed to calm down once bloggers stopped linking to him, stopped giving him the attention he seemed to crave, but then again I haven’t read any of his pieces in months.
02/09/2009 at 8:28 am Permalink
I stopped reading him after about 5 or 6 columns and I wasn’t aware that 50-60 were published. Have to agree with Brian as Huer obviously did not do any research for his pieces and wrote whatever came to his mind.
I completely disagree with 3gyupsal. If you want to get along with Koreans, do your job well, stop being a spoiled person and learn to take care of yourself. the korean people are not your babysitters.
I miss good journalism and cnn certainly is not bringing it back. They now have a new show coming soon, called Amanpour, starring guess who, one of the worst journalists out there. I have watched her ‘reports’ and am not impressed.
02/09/2009 at 11:15 am Permalink
My biggest problem with Heur was that he was an awful, lazy sociologist ~ which is pretty astounding, considering his educational background. V. annoying sharing a field and a school with him and having the Marmot’s Hole gang talking about UCLA sociology as if *that* were the problem, as opposed to the man being so lazy he evidently hadn’t done any actual fieldwork on that which he wrote about. Lazy, lazy, lazy – in terms of theory and fieldwork.
Now mind you, perhaps in his actual area of specialization, and at greater length, he doesn’t come off as making stuff up, completely. But his characterizations and understandings of . . .well, everything, were so out of touch with what’s going on in the field and how we understand human interaction. It’s like he got his PhD decades ago and hasn’t done any scholarship or reading since. Otherwise, he’s committed just as big a sin if he understands things in a more sophisticated way but decided to dumb things down for a “general audience” who he assumes can’t understand him.
02/09/2009 at 3:55 pm Permalink
To wit, I had a letter published in the Times as to why, if he wanted to “understand” foreign teachers, he didn’t just check out some of their blogs or e-mail them. It’s not like there’s a shortage of us who have on-line presences to varying degrees.
But no, he had written a piece talking about the us foreign teachers and our “backpacks” (WTF?). Turns out he wasn’t just dealing in cliches, but he was dealing in cliches that were about 10 years out-of-date.
Good riddance.
02/09/2009 at 4:31 pm Permalink
Is tribalism a word that is still frequently used in sociology? I studied Anthorpology which isn’t the same but seems to ask similar questions. I agree with you that Heur seemed to aproach the study of Korean society the same way that a 1940′s national geographic nature documentary would aproach the study of chimpanzees, I think with quotes like:
“Beneath the surface, in the deep recesses of each Korean heart, is its refusal to forgive or forget. Unlike its surface change, the Korean heart is permanently locked into its bitterness of memory and its yearning for vengeance.” (How does Heur know? Also let’s not forget that people who witnessed Korea as a poor, divided, and invaded country are still alive, and those people talk. I suppose asking THEM to forgive and forget is very rational.)
From, “Is Koreaness an Anchor or a Yolk.”
or
“To say that Koreans are an emotional people is almost a truism.” (Is there a culture that lacks emotions? )
From, “Can Koreans Change Emotion into Sustained Passion.”
Many of the conclusions that Heur came to were things that couldn’t be proven, yet were written as if they were indisputible facts.
@Archeologist: I’m sorry that you totally disagree with me. What specifically do you disagree with? Do you think that people should be assholes and not learn Korean? Besides I didn’t say that people should try to get along with Koreans I gave ways to UNDERSTAND THEM, and stay happy here. The second part, staying happy. 3. If you act like an asshole, you are probably not happy. 4. If someone says, let’s go to the 4th bar for tonight and you are already drunk and want to go home and you don’t want to, don’t go. Don’t do things you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to teach a private lesson, don’t do it. 5. If your freinds are a bunch of hot heads, and they seem to try to be starting fights, and you don’t want to get in a fight, I suggest leaving. Now what do you disagree with about any of these things?
02/09/2009 at 6:25 pm Permalink
@3gyeopsal:
In a word, no. Neither sociology or anthropology use the term “tribalism” or half the other odd terminology he spouts to sound academic. There’s some use of the word neo-tribalism but it means something quite different.
02/09/2009 at 10:44 pm Permalink
I don’t know how much faith you want to put in this, but remember months ago Huer responded to a letter from a critic with this outburst? (The original blog closed down, so pardon the self-link, and unfortunately I only excerpted two paragraphs out of the rant):
***
I normally ignore comments not worthy of a response, but since you call me names (only for the crime of writing a column in a public forum that has nothing to do with you personally.) Yet you personalize a public matter and show your anger, which only reveals the state of intelligence. But I am a sociology teacher, have been for over 40 years, at various US universities, author of 12 books, including one that appeared in TIME magazine in case you are looking for my official qualification.
. . .
Have you ever learned to make a general statement on anything? Do you have to see everything from subjective, particularistic point of view or experience. If you are punched by a Chinese person, are you going to generalize ALL CHINESE as punchers? Only CHILDREN and RETARDED PERSONS have this sort of habit of mind. Obviously you take on their characteristics. You are quoting all those experiences. Does the world revolve around what YOUR experiences are? If you feel that way, you are not really worthy of one single word in response from me.
***
And in a comment from the blogger who posted the original letter, here’s a response Huer wrote as a follow-up, indicating that he’s a little out of touch:
***
As for the famous soci and anthro people you named, i almost forgot about them as I have not done any “sociology” for the past 30 years. My concentration has been on social criticism. I enjoy generalizing and my latest one is comparising the Holocaust efficiency with that of American capitalism.
***
Maybe the full-length response is somewhere on Dave’s, but I’m not going to dig through it to find it.