Mike Lawrence

    A CO-WORKER poked her head above the cubicle wall the other day and hit me with a question I had no idea how to answer.

    “Why do the media care so much more about Jeremy Lin than Danny Chen?” she asked.

    That’s a paraphrase, but her point was clear: Why has there been so much press coverage, particularly in the U.S. but also abroad, of overnight NBA star Jeremy Lin’s athletic feats and personal history while there’s comparatively little coverage of Pvt. Danny Chen, the Chinese-American U.S. Army soldier who fatally shot himself Oct. 3 after enduring months of racial slurs and physical abuse from fellow U.S. soldiers while serving his country in Afghanistan?

    There’s no doubt the stories are related. Both deal with what it means to be an American of Chinese descent today. Both placed an unexpected spotlight on not-so-hidden, still very prevalent racism in America. Lin was born in California, Chen in New York. Lin is 23. Chen was 19. Both their stories drew the attention of international audiences.

    But for very different reasons, and to very different degrees.

    For Lin, the negative fallout of his stratospheric rise to fame and global media attention, dubbed “Linsanity,” includes an apology from sports network ESPN, which used a racial slur on a Web headline after Lin had numerous turnovers in a New York Knicks loss; an apology from Ben & Jerry’s, the U.S. ice-cream maker that put fortune cookies in its “Taste the Linsanity” flavor; a slew of questionable comments in online forums; and more.

    For Chen, the fallout — in addition, of course, to his death and his family’s grief — includes potential court-martials and criminal proceedings for eight soldiers.

    Chen’s family has said, according to New York media, that in one October incident, soldiers pelted Chen with rocks while forcing him to crawl across 100 yards of gravel. Other reports say he received daily verbal and physical abuse that began as early as basic training. His family believes that abuse led Chen to take his own life.

    It wouldn’t be an isolated incident. Asian-American Marine Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, 21, shot himself April 3 last year after hazing from fellow service members, the Marine Corps Times and The Washington Post reported.

    Have you heard of Harry Lew? Of Danny Chen? I don’t need to ask whether you’ve heard of Jeremy Lin.

    The fact that Lin, of Chinese descent, is holding his own in the NBA is galvanizing global media. It’s galvanizing checkbooks, too, under the bright lights of New York City’s advertising market.

    Just weeks after the start of “Linsanity,” Nike began production of Jeremy Lin shoes. The Knicks rushed production of Lin jerseys. The publicity has been boundless.

    So did the money draw the attention? Did we gobble up “Linsanity” because of the glitz and glamour so evident in Lin’s story and so absent from Chen’s and Lew’s?

    Or was it that people want to read positive stories, rather than face painful truths that hit very close to home? Or have years of Iraq and Afghanistan war coverage allowed the death of another soldier, no matter how tragic and appalling, to get lost in the never-ending news cycle?

    My Chinese co-worker and I discussed all these things over the cubicle wall, exploring reasons for the hype of one story and the low profile of another. I hadn’t thought about the comparisons until she brought them up.

    I didn’t know what to tell her.

    But I shouldn’t imply that American media have completely ignored the Chen story. Far from it.

    New York magazine published a heart-rending portrayal of Chen in January. The Washington Post wrote about criminal charges in December. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and newspapers across the U.S. have written in recent weeks about Chen’s brutal treatment and its heartbreaking result, along with coverage of ongoing court proceedings.

    I showed my co-worker some of those stories, but it was half-hearted. I felt like I was making excuses, in defense of my country and our shared profession.

    Because, obviously, the Chen coverage came nowhere near the U.S. and global media blitz that was and will be “Linsanity.” Want to guess which story lasts longer?

    I told my co-worker I’d write about her questions and the issues they present, and about Danny Chen, then send the column to some newspapers I’ve worked with in America, to try and raise the questions there.

    If more people in the U.S. read about Danny Chen, if media hits them over the head with Chen’s story like we’ve all been hammered with Lin’s, maybe we’ll discover why the real insanity was much less noticed, and change those reasons for the better.

    Or maybe not.

    “If you can help me get an answer, I would be very happy,” my co-worker said. “But not every question has an answer.”

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)