Communist Fashion by Lucky Brand?

Apparently, communism is vintage and fashionable according to Lucky Brand. The popular clothing company launched a sweater with the Communist Vietnamese flag in the front and a map of Vietnam in the back with “Nha Trang” headlined on the top.

Earlier in November, President Bush visited Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, “looking to burnish his foreign-policy credentials.”

The White House website featured a graphic with the flags of the three countries he’s visiting on his trip — Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. One problem: instead of displaying the Vietnamese flag, the White House graphic featured the old flag of South Vietnam. That flag hasn’t been the official flag of Vietnam since South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam in 1975.

The display of the old flag is highly incendiary to the current Vietnamese government and people. NPR reported last year the display of the old flag anywhere in the United States — much less on the White House website — “could create tension amid warming relations between the United States and Vietnam.”

Sad to say, but it seems like powerful figures and companies are ignorant and insensitive to the Vietnamese culture.

*Sources by AngryAsianMan and ThinkProgress.

Sunday Finale: Yul Kwon Wins ‘Survivor’

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

NEW YORK — His former competitors awarded Yul Kwon, the “godfather” of the CBS game “Survivor: Cook Islands,” with the $1 million top prize Sunday in a classic finale that pitted brains vs. brawn.

Kwon, a management consultant who was the soft-spoken strategic whiz in the 13th edition of the game, bested Oscar “Ozzy” Lusth, the effortless athlete who dominated physical challenges as the game neared its end.

With the money on the line, it was a 5-4 vote.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever felt bad that somebody didn’t win,” host Jeff Probst said. “It was so evenly matched.”

Kwon, a 31-year-old management consultant who lives in San Mateo, Calif., was the brain with degrees from Stanford University and Yale Law School. He controlled the strategic aspect of the game, particularly after he found a hidden piece of jewelry that guaranteed him one-time immunity from being voted off the island.

“The key to winning the game is maximizing the good luck and minimizing the bad luck,” he said later.

Lusth, who has two years of Santa Barbara City College on his resume and works as a waiter near the surf in Venice, Calif., mastered the tropical game’s challenges. He won two very different ones on the show’s final two-hour telecast Sunday: winning a race to complete a complex puzzle, and showing his endurance by standing on a tiny platform for two and a half hours.

For the first time, “Survivor” brought a third contestant into the final vote, but 28-year-old Rebekah “Becky” Lee was a non-factor.

For a game that began in racial controversy, it turned into a showcase for the nation’s diversity, according to Kwon.

“Survivor” producers were criticized for segregating four, four-person teams along ethnic lines at the game’s start: white, black, Hispanic and Asian American.

The game’s final four contestants included a black woman, Mexican-born man and two Asian-Americans. The fourth was Sundra Oakley, a 31-year-old actress from Los Angeles.

Those four people made up the game’s Aitu tribe, which at one point competed against the eight-member Raro tribe. Methodically, that core group of four voted all eight of the others out of the game, the final one Sunday being Adam Gentry, 28, a copying machine salesman who lives in San Diego.

Lee hoped to garner votes by convincing her former tribe members that she had mastered the social aspect of the game, in order to survive so long.

They weren’t buying it, particularly after Lee and Oakley had to compete in a tie-breaking contest that required them to build and sustain a fire. After an hour failing with a flint, Probst gave them matches. Lee won because Oakley ran out of matches.

“After 35 days out here, you should both know how to make fire,” Probst scolded.

Rosie O’Donnell Speaks “Ching Chong”

The View co-host is in hot water for using the expression “ching chong” to describe Chinese people talking about Danny DeVito’s drunken appearance on her show.

“The fact is that it’s news all over the world. That you know, you can imagine in China it’s like: ‘Ching chong … ching chong. Danny DeVito, ching chong, chong, chong, chong. Drunk. The View. Ching chong,” O’Donnell said on a Dec. 5 episode of The View.

On Thursday, O’Donnell expressed surprise when she learned that some Asian Americans considered speaking in that kind of sing-song accent an insult as grave as calling a black person by the N-word. She sympathized with people who were teased for their language on the playground while they were growing up.

However, she warned that she was a comedian, and she did accents of all kinds — including the “Japanese Yiddish” accent of Dec. 5.

Finally, this morning on The View, she apologizes for the remarks, following mounting protest from Asian Americans across the country.

“There’s a good chance I’ll do it again next week,” she said. “That’s how my brain works.”

HotAir.com made a news video comeback response. See for yourself.