About six months ago, I offered to take my son anywhere in the world for his college graduation gift.  I was hoping he would pick Tahiti.  Instead, he came back with North Asia.  That's what happens when you major in political science.

 

So, we are off to Japan, South Korea, and China, where I've been invited to do an event based on my book "The United States of Trump."  It's a speech, then Q&A with government officials and the Chinese media.  Pray for me on that.

 

One word I cannot say is "orient."  That is banished officially in the USA and also in most Asian nations.  But why?

 

The original orient description came from the Romans.  Oriens, meaning east of Rome.  Then Chaucer uses orient in "The Canterbury Tales."  So far harmless.

 

Enter the hideous newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst.  In 1909, one of his papers headlined "Oriental Contamination."  Hearst himself is quoted as saying: "I am strongly in favor of Japanese exclusion, to prevent Orientals from swarming into the country and absolutely overrunning it." Nice.

 

That was it for oriental.  In 2016, President Obama signed HR 4328, highlighting "oriental" as a racist term.  Yes, that's woke, but there is valid context.

 

So it's North Asia for us.  We live in a complicated world.  For sure.

 

See you this evening for May's last No Spin News.