So you may have heard that Hearst Entertainment & Syndication president Scott Sassa has “left the company” after his fellow executives learned that he had been exchanging “steamy, illicit” texts (aka “sexting”) with a stripper. Hearst executives discovered this information when the stripper’s boyfriend approached them with the aforementioned texts in an effort to blackmail him.
Now, let’s first consider the regrettable absurdity of this whole story: Sassa, who is both single and an adult, exchanged racy text messages with another consenting adult and he had to give up his high-level position for that? Seriously?!!! When did sending and receiving private x-rated texts between consenting adults become an offense leading to the loss of one’s job? Most of us would be out of a job if that were the case.
And it’s not like Sassa is a religious figure who’s taken a vow of celibacy (and we know how well that works out anyway), he’s an executive at a company that was founded by a man (William Randolph Hearst) who openly lived with his mistress (Marion Davies) while still married to someone else; a company that currently publishes magazines like Cosmopolitan which at the very moment I’m writing this blog, boasts this headline on its homepage:
Instead of letting Sassa go, shouldn’t he and his fellow executives have been more focused on say—turning the blackmailers into the authorities since blackmailing is still a crime the last I checked?
But I what I find additional troubling are some of the social media posts I’ve read today from my fellow Asian Americans proclaiming that Sassa has embarrassed or shamed the Japanese/Asian American community through his actions. Again—seriously?!!!
Regardless of what he did, why should it reflect badly on the community? When a white person does something stupid or wrong, no one gets up in arms about how that one person’s actions makes all white people look bad. So why are we making it an issue?
And maybe you might have “moral” issues with what Sassa did or think he was dumb to be so intimate with a stripper, but in the grand scheme of things, is what he did really that awful? If sexting with a stripper is a crime punishable by job loss, then, hell, I’m guilty and someone should come over to my desk immediately and pry me from this laptop and banish me from the corridors of YOMYOMF forever.
See–nothing happened. I’m still here. I’m—what?…Oh shit…wait, someone needs to……………..
“We” make it an issue because it is who we are, we fight the fight as a people and consequently, take the blame, credit, responsibility when one of our own does bad, great hurts. For the same reason we feel pride when Jeremy Lin throws down the court, we feel shame when Sassa “left the company”. Of course, who the hell really cares what he did on his own time but I guess every Asian’s individual burden is our burden to carry.
Sounds like people really take the whole “We Asians are rising up so we better not fuck up” stance.
If we were a second class minority then yes I’d understand (remember the blacks during the Jim Crow days). But we’re practically American “American” these days. If we’re going to fuck up, then lets take it in stride and state “At least we banged the chick!”.
Perhaps it was a company mobile phone that he used? It’s a weak excuse for termination but it would fall under the porn on company technology policy. Since he was being blackmailed, it brings the law into this case and thus it could not be swept under the rug? Just my two bits.
The lesson here is to always get burner cell phone for these things…
The stripper lady is a TOTAL JERK!
I don’t get why this is even a big deal. He didn’t kill any young white girl, chop her up, and dump her in a ditch somewhere. It ain’t espionage. So the only reason he’s getting any media attention is because he’s Asian. That’s some petty ass publicity. Why aren’t there any stories about old ugly rich married white ladies having affairs with pool boys and all that jazz, because we dang well know they do that. If it’s about being “fair and equal”, then white women sure seem to get a lot of leeway in the media.
Agreed! How come he’s the one who had to leave???? It’s TWO consenting adults, for G’s sake… It’s like calling out others for picking noses when you yourself do it…