"Wreck-It Ralph" Is A Tiger Mom's Worst Nightmare

I just saw the new movie "Wreck-It Ralph" with my two kids. I have to say that we all loved the movie. My son liked the action. My daughter loved the neon-tinted Sugar Rush scenes. I appreciated the nostalgia of the early video game characters brought back to life by the movie.

Afterwards, while I was thinking of all the cultural humor embedded in the film, I realized that my kids will probably never have the same understanding of American humor as I or most children do. Sure they were both born in the U.S. but that doesn't mean they LIVE in the U.S. You see, my wife is doing her hardest to make sure they don't grow up like American children.

She is horrified by how American kids are raised. She absolutely abhors the way children here play video games and watch TV seemingly for hours at a time. She keeps our children busy to make sure they don't have any opportunity to stray from her sure path to success. Kumon is forced upon them every day. If they're not sitting at the kitchen table doing that, they are practicing their piano or playing ping pong. Though we have a Playstation 3 in the house, the children don't even know it exists. They have never been allowed to play a single minute of it for fear their brains might become addled by Sonic the Hedgehog. When I play, I have to do it at night after they have gone to bed. That was the condition I had to agree to before she would allow the machine in the house.

The other main portion of "Wreck-It Ralph" involves scenes that take place in a video game filled with sugary desserts. My daughter loved all the scenes filled with gum drops, doughnuts, candy canes and ice cream. There is one reference to Oreo cookies that got the whole audience laughing. But again, this is all forbidden fruit. As I've mentioned before, my wife HATES American desserts. The children can have as much salty, vinegary food as they want but anything sweet is strictly limited. She blames them for the high rates of obesity and diabetes in Americans. She's partly right. But I feel anything in moderation is okay whereas for this tiger mom sugar is equivalent to poison.

So it saddens me that my kids are so isolated from American culture. Their mother wants them to achieve success in the U.S. but at the same time she wants to shield them from life in the U.S. Granted she's not doing this out of malice. She is reading directly out of the Chinese playbook for becoming a prosperous adult: a single-minded focus on hard work and intense study with little time for slothful pursuits like video games and snacking on unhealthy foods. Though our kids may succeed with this regiment, I think they will have lost some of the pleasures of life in doing so.

Why Are So Many Asian Americans Democrats?

While perusing through my sample California election ballot I couldn't help but notice that every Asian American who is running for office is a Democrat. Maybe it's because I'm living in a state where virtually every elected office is held by a Democrat. The AA's just happen to know who is on the winning side here and declare themselves a liberal to get elected. Is that too cynical? Or are left winged liberals really the political philosphy amongst AA's?

I would think that most Asian Americans would belong on the conservative Republican party. After all, most Asians hold pretty conservative, family oriented, business friendly views of society. We still believe in a nuclear family. Illegitimate births are still frowned upon. We hold strong views about crime. If we had our way, Singapore would be the model the U.S. should emulate when it comes to punishing criminals.

AA's have the highest income of any racial group in America. Many of us are entrepreneurial, owning small businesses. We want less business regulations that will impede our ability to make a good income. And don't even get me started on Asians and their attitudes towards taxes. To state it simply, the less taxes the better. In Asia, avoiding paying taxes is elevated to an art. My father's entire retirement and estate plans revolve around giving as little money to the government as possible.

Yet many AA's identify themselves as Democrats. Perhaps we have become too successful and comfortable in America that now we can focus on societal issues. Yes we are all for a cleaner environment, especially true for Asians who come from the grossly polluted cities in China. Many of us also believe in the right to have an abortion as that is considered a mainstay of birth control over there and people don't have any moral qualms about it. We don't understand why Americans have to have so many guns. Seems like having fewer guns around would make for a more peaceful society.

Is it a generational divide? The younger Asians have been raised so comfortably by their hard working parents that they now have time to indulge in comfortable issues like global warming. Many haven't had to scramble desperately for their next dollar like the past generations have had to do. And since most of the older AA's don't or can't vote while their children and grandchildren do, this will skew the politics of AA's towards liberalism.

Too bad the two party political system in the U.S. forces people to choose the lesser of two evils. I think most Asian Americans are really libertarians. But since people won't vote for a candidate that's unlikely to win, the young AA's vote with their hearts while the older AA's watch in benign amusement at the naivete of their offsprings.