HBO’s ‘38 At The Garden’ Is One Big Lie Of Omission About Asian Hate

HBO’s recently released documentary short “38 at the Garden” tells the story of “an undrafted Harvard graduate” who “shocked fans, stunned his teammates and galvanized the Asian American community when he scored 38 points at Madison Square Garden against the Los Angeles Lakers” in February 2012. Unfortunately, it also juxtaposes Jeremy Lin’s “stature as a groundbreaking, cultural icon” with “the recent hate crimes against … Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

With left-wing activist Lisa Ling as an executive producer, there wasn’t a chance that a retrospective on “Linsanity” wouldn’t be hopelessly woke. But that’s no reason to spare the execrable “38 at the Garden” a well-deserved bashing.

The spectacle starts immediately, as the incredibly unfunny comedians Hasan Minhaj and Jenny Yang explain what most Americans think about Asians with no reference to polling or focus-group findings. With his Emmy and Peabody awards visible over his right shoulder, Minhaj lectures that someone viewed as “small, passive, diminutive, unathletic, and submissive” cannot be perceived as “brave, courageous, covetable, desirable, or a leader.” Yang gets more specific and says Asians are viewed as “dry cleaners,” “IT guys,” “emasculated, no-d-ck-having, no-luck-with-women-having dudes,” “dragon lady,” “sex workers,” and “masseuses’ happy endings.”

Given that people of Asian descent in the United States outperform all other groups in socioeconomic metrics such as out-of-wedlock births, divorce rates, life expectancy, educational attainment, and household income, it’s at least theoretically possible that non-Asian Americans admire the cohort’s penchant for hard work, knowledge and skill cultivation, strong family and community ties, and clean living. Someone should inform Minhaj and Yang.

But it’s Lin himself who — unintentionally, one hopes — commits the documentary’s worst foul. Dutifully parroting the dubious charge that white supremacists are running amok, targeting BIPOCs, he asserts that today, “It’s like the worst time to be an Asian American.”

Really?

Worse than in 1942, when liberal icon Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, sending 120,000 Japanese people — the majority, U.S. citizens — off to internment camps?

Or worse than the myriad large-scale atrocities and hate crimes committed against Asians across the country in the 19th and 20th centuries?

Lin didn’t learn much about U.S. history at Harvard, evidently. The bias and brutality Asians had to overcome in past centuries is a testament to their undaunted tenacity and America’s national progress in putting prejudice in its rearview mirror.

Besides, the narrative of white supremacy posing a risk to Asian Americans has no credibility. Earlier this month, in a detailed analysis, the Manhattan Institute’s Diane Yap concluded: “The refrain that most anti-Asian crimes are committed by white people is misleading, if not meaningless.” Severe methodological defects and the corporate media’s laziness and knee-jerk receptivity to any accusation that the United States is irredeemably racist aid the woke mob’s “attempt to redirect outrage.” 

Yap also noted that a focus on rare “hate crimes” ignores important questions:

A more pertinent question would be: “Who is responsible for the greatest proportion of violent crimes against Asians?” The Criminal Victimization report from

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