Melissa Chen

Melissa Chen is a Spectator contributing editor.

Monday

Melissa Chen

What the Art Basel Banana says about our world

From our US edition

Every December, I make my way to the orgiastic display of wealth and ostentatious show-boating that is Art Basel in Miami. I go primarily to keep my finger on the racing pulse of our culture of conspicuous consumption and hedonism, and also because of an unhealthy fascination with human irrationality at scale, the kind of irrationality which drives bubbles. The high end of the global art market has always been a curious blend of vanity, self-absorption and what to every untrained eye is quite clearly commercial sophistry. Yet it persists and continues to grow, with worldwide sales for 2018 reaching $67.4 billion, up from $63.7 billion in 2017.

art basel banana

Tuesday

Melissa Chen

Chick-fil-A ruffles a few feathers

From our US edition

Can this country go a week without a chicken-related controversy? Barely had we survived the Fried Chicken Sandwich War of 2019 when Chick-fil-A shook the world with the announcement it was halting charitable donations to three organizations that opposed gay marriage, including the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It made me miss the days when a chicken sandwich was just that — a crispy golden buttermilk-crusted hunk of chicken breast topped with mayonnaise and pickles, perfectly nestled between two buttered buns. Now, this Southern culinary export turned national icon comes served with a side of God or politics, although one could argue that they are really the same thing.

chick-fil-a

Friday

Melissa Chen

Armenian genocide and the theater of US politics

From our US edition

The House of Representatives passed two important bills this week amid deteriorating US-Turkey relations, one imposing sanctions on Turkish military and government officials over Ankara’s incursions against the Kurds in northeast Syria, the other officially recognizing the Armenian genocide. The latter is largely symbolic, finally acknowledging what scholars have long reached an overwhelming consensus on: that during World War One, amid the fading embers of the Ottoman Empire, 1.5 million Armenians were systematically exterminated. Turkey’s longstanding denial of this atrocity stands in stark contrast with how Germany has handled the moral stain of the Holocaust and continues to rob the Armenian people of dignity and closure.

Armenian genocide

Thursday

Melissa Chen

The unholy alliance between atheists and evangelicals

From our US edition

The setting was the Gladstone Library, a dramatic, imposing room named after one of Britain’s most cherished politicians, though on closer inspection, its grandeur was somewhat faded. Ornate faïence-tiled columns held up lofty, sculpted ceilings punctuated with chandeliers above mahogany shelves along the room’s perimeter lined with faithful replicas of the 30,000 volumes spanning 17th- to 20th-century political material now safely housed at the University of Bristol. In many ways, this staid, cavernous hall filled with ersatz books at the very heart of the National Liberal Club established by William Gladstone himself is the perfect metaphor for the state of liberalism today.

atheists

Tuesday

Melissa Chen

The NBA tosses an alley-oop for China’s censors

From our US edition

The co-creators of South Park have once again demonstrated why the cartoon remains, after 23 seasons, remarkably astute at delivering shrewd political commentary. Its 299th episode, ‘Band in China’, parodies China’s extreme censorship, restricted internet, and the capitulation of the American entertainment industry to cater to the political interests of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), which in an ironic case of life imitating art, got the show banned in China and virtually scrubbed from its firewalled internet.

south park nba

Tuesday

Melissa Chen

The unease of the Chinese diaspora

From our US edition

‘Are you Chinese?’ It’s a question I’m frequently asked living in New York City and it almost always stumps me. The conflict naturally arises from what my questioner actually means by ‘Chinese’. Ethnically, yes. I’m Han Chinese. But nationality-wise, no. I’m a daughter of Singapore, born and bred on the South East Asian island which boasts a majority Chinese population, though I now consider the United States my home. You’d have to go back to my great-great-grandparents’ generation to find someone whose feet touched the soil in China from birth. Apart from my facial features, I have no ties to the land known as zhōngguó, the middle country, the center of the world.

chinese diaspora

Thursday

Melissa Chen

Andrew Yang, Asian stereotypes and the discomforts of reality

From our US edition

Andrew Yang has garnered criticism over the course of his presidential campaign for making self-deprecating jokes that reinforce Asian stereotypes. He has alluded to Asians’ hard work-ethic and love for math, even selling merchandise inscribed with the word ‘MATH’ on it — an acronym for ‘Make America Think Harder.’ It reached an apogee after the Democratic debate last week when Yang memorably quipped, ‘now, I am Asian, so I know a lot of doctors,’ before launching into his answer about how to fix healthcare. Many prominent Asian Americans, such as the former Planned Parenthood president Dr Leana Wen and the former governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal, found it amusing.

andrew yang asian

Tuesday

Melissa Chen

How a New Jersey brewery unwittingly became the latest culture war battleground

From our US edition

Police barricades bookended South Broadway, the main thoroughfare of downtown Pitman, N.J, as parked police cars bathed the street in an eerie glow of flashing blue and red lights. Officers on duty stood around with arms folded, surveying the scene and instructing pedestrians where to walk. A crowd had gathered on the lawn of Ballard Park, so often the setting of food festivals and community events, across the way from a row of establishments – all shuttered except for one, the Human Village Brewing Company. What tragedy could have befallen this small leafy borough where not a single chain store is in sight, where children can safely bike around unsupervised, a place whose official slogan is ‘Everybody Likes Pitman?

brewery