Does Yang Rui still have a job?

Apparently, YES.

For anyone who may have missed last week's uproar, you can revisit my post here and/or take a look at this video summary of the affair from Taiwanese humorous news site NMA TV.

CCTV's inaction is hardly surprising, but it is depressing. Their 'star' English-language presenter has revealed himself to be a vile xenophobe (not to mention a moron and a borderline psychopath). It is completely unacceptable that he should remain in the employment of the national TV station.

I feel the need to repeat my call to action from the end of last Monday's post:

Get active on this, people. Tell your friends, tell your workmates - Chinese and foreign. Use Twitter, use Weibo, use Facebook, use anything. Lobby cable networks. Lobby advertisers. 

Bombard CCTV with e-mails (try the programme's feedback address: dialogue@cctv.com). Bombard them with phone calls or faxes (Tel. +86 [0]10 6850 9230 or 8824 4002, Fax +86 [0]10 6858 1282). 

Yang Rui Updates

Yang has torn in to Charlie Custer of the ChinaGeeks blog, who led the calls for a boycott of his Dialogue TV show - blustering at first about suing him for libel, and then resorting to bullying remarks about using his influence with the PSB to try to get Custer kicked out of the country.

Elsewhere (as reported by my mate Josh Chin for the WSJ, amongst others), he was making a half-assed attempt to backtrack slightly. He claims that his "foreign trash" slur was only intended to refer to criminal elements and not to the expat population in general. He also tries to make light of his abuse of expelled American Chinese journalist Melissa Chan by asserting that the term he used of her - 泼妇 - is more correctly translated as 'shrew'. (As if that's any kind of defence! In any case, I've talked with foreign translators and Chinese friends about this, and they are united in the view that it is an extremely disparaging and offensive term, and that 'bitch' is a more appropriate equivalent in contemporary English. The fact that it is an extremely harsh - and sexist - term of derogation is more important than the ostensible limitation of the basis of that derogation to being a scold/nag/troublesome woman. It is unwise to use gutter invective when addressing a serious and important issue, Mr Yang. It is even more unwise to yolk such terms to the adjective 'foreign', thereby implying some kind of essential connection or equivalence between the two and so constituting a slur upon all foreigners.)

I've also been told that Yang tried to head off the likely boycott of his TV show by foreign guests by jeering that anyone who declined to appear with him was "a coward" - an impressively mature and conciliatory attitude! [Unfortunately, this is the only source I've been able to find for this remark so far.]

Meanwhile, expat news blog The Shanghaiist has turned up more offensive nonsense from Yang's past musings on his Weibo microblog, indicating that he is also an anti-Semite.

And finally (well, not quite), a young English Sinologist has provided this amusing account of what an incompetent buffoon (and a swaggering bully) Yang Rui is, even when hosting a show in Chinese.

A few defences of Yang Rui have begun to appear, but - like this one, ostensibly by a Japanese journalist who's been a frequent guest on Yang's Dialogue show - they do little to help his cause, for the most part coming across as even more lame-brained and racist than Yang's original diatribe.

CCTV has apparently only commented to the extent of stressing that Yang's xenophobic remarks were his personal views rather than those of the station. They have not addressed the issue of how a man who expresses such contempt for foreigners can continue in a role where he is expected to act as a public relations bridge between China and the rest of the world. Keep sending the e-mails (letters and faxes even better - bury them in paper!).