are they from the university of miami hurricanes?

DA U

Is this a surprise? They were obviously smarter and more suited to overcome challenges than any other contestants. The only two people who would have had a chance would have been a brother and sister team of surgeons.

That being said, they obviously don't need the money. They should give it to the deaf kid.

Quinn remains!!!!!

are they from the university of miami hurricanes?

DA U

I'm not huge on being pc, but way to call out the "deaf kid". Would it have hurt just to say "the show's [first] deaf participant"?

Former Thelen and current Orrick partner the Glass Cock here, admitting that he is a huge fan of the Amazing Race and wagging his finger at Kash for an Elie-like error. The lawyers beat a pair of former cheerleaders, who came in second. The deaf kid and his mother came in third. The Glass Cock may apply for the next year's race and would welcome Kash as his teammate.

these two are insufferable.

Tammy and Victor deserved to win. They were the smartest, most consistent, team. Margie and Luke were good, but their frustrations ended up hurting them; being able to keep your cool and remain focused is part of the game. Also, I was surprised that Luke, the valedictorian of his college class, had never heard of Chekhov.

Quinn remains!!!!!

Cheerleaders would have won if they did not get the bad taxi.

The deaf kid was a little shit. He pushed, shoved, and elbowed another racer on several occassions, then blamed the poor girl for attacking him. Then, when called on his lie, he and his mom played the deaf card.

I'm glad Victor and Tammy won. They were class acts throughout.

While Victor and Tammy were not my first choice (I am partial to the two redheads, especially in light of the assets they displayed last night), they were the strongest team, and finished first in more segments than other any other team.

Nevertheless, the media is right to question whether it was fair to have a team that speaks Mandarin, reads and writes some Mandarin, and who were in Beijing las year - when three hours of the program were in China. But that's just like Biglaw, so defensible: a non-to-subtle advantage for the Asians, and none for the deaf kid and his mother.

How many 'bonus' points did Victor and Tammy get for being of Chinese descent when they appled to Harvard Law School? And a question for all you Harvard grads - how many Causausian siblings do you know who graduated from Harvard Law in the last 15 or so years?

. .

Still cried like a little bitch

The deaf kid had the race won. 10 minute lead going into the last challenge and couldn't remember the last 48 hours of challenges. He will be crying himself to sleep for a very long time. I feel for him for that.
That being said. Victor was a beast on the last challenge and it was a fitting ending for the team that was consistently the strongest, yet made people root for them.

I am glad they won. She is smokin'.

why do girls (sorry, women) have the need to use the exclamation point in all their emails? I'm sure it was fun! and I can imagine they were busy! but seriously...why all the exclamation points?

!

I work at QE and I have to say that 16 is right - she is smokin hot. When I first heard that they were on the show, and saw a pic of her on the CBS web site, I couldn't believe she worked here. The scenery here, at least in L.A., is awful. SF is lucky to have her. Me love you long time Tammy.

13 - you, sir, are an idiot.

Asians do not get affirmative action "bonus points." Asians get points deducted from their applications in any affirmative action scheme because they are over-represented in higher education.

Affirmative-action hurts asians more than it hurts whites.

17,

It really is "Top of the Muffin to You! "

Mr. Lippman

3 - I am pretty sure Deaf and Poor are not synonymous.

As someone who works at a different OMM office and only knows Victor through his research and writing workshops (which, by the way, are excellent), I can say that he will never live down the bawling. I mean, you can't make fun of a guy for winning $500k. Nor do you want to bring it up a lot, because it just reminds you how dry your own life is. But crying on national TV over a race; yeah.

I wonder what it is like to pound Tammy in the ass?

Victor

12: Agreed. I detested that kid, though his mother was pretty cool. I liked the black sisters the best and was legitimately sad for them when they lost.

As to the advantage in speaking Chinese, I don't know. I suppose it's an ability to speak the language just like any other skill, but the show's producers would do well to vary the countries even more to avoid a too-weighty advantage in speaking a language.

Kash and her asslobster would have won this contest, hands/claws down.

Tammy is smoking hot Victor. I will let you know how she is. Quinn sucks by the way. I just hope Tammy does too.

Yeah, you show the picture of them all covered up. For most of the leg, Tammy was in a bikini. For the final task, Victor took off his beach shorts and was in his speedo.

Tammy's comment at the finish line when the win was still sinking in was classic: "I have no pants on."

Is it true that Asian chicks always cry during sex?

17, I'm with you, I hate exclamation point abuse. But where I am, it is not limited to women. Everyone does it to show what a team player they are! Sure, I'd love to head up that doc review! Thanks! I hate having weekends off and I would be glad to spend it all in the office!

One of these times, it's going to cause me to punch my computer screen.

i met tammy briefly in september. in a short period of time she managed to come off as extremely arrogant. she was incredibly off-putting. ugh.

god its a slow news day

29 - Well put.

I see the exclamation point trio a lot around this place and it drives me insane, especially when folks are being passive aggressive about bullshit.

29: I believe you mean "Thx!"

32: Ha ha ha - so true.

33 - around here its: Thanks!!!

Really, your gratitude for receiving the latest fed reg. notice is that strong?

18- What the hell do you expect? When your firm has no dress code, the women working there stop showering and wearing make-up. I've been to your offices twice for depositions. I've never seen so many stanky homeless chicks walking around.

Business casual has its drawbacks, but at least it's an improvement on the eyes.

19, come on. I'll give you the point that AA doesn't help Asians, but you're out of your mind if you think it hurts Asians more than whites.

yawn

too long, didn't watch

Victor and Tammy deserved to win, and I'm really glad that they did. They were the most gracious, smartest, likable team on the show. I've been rooting for them ever since they figured their shit out and started just having fun on the race. Congrats!

Margie was one of the best individual competitors in the history of the amazing race. Luke, her deaf son, was a huge drag on her abilities. She deserved to win, but he really didn't. He constantly got frustrated and basically gave up, while she pushed through and rocked all the hardest challenges.

The black sisters were not strong competitors. They are physically strong, but most distinguished themselves for repeatedly making bad decisions. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was other teams screwing up worse.

Victor and Tammy were annoying, but clearly the best team. I think they would have won even without the language assistance - they only had one leg of the race where they were near the bottom; otherwise, they were at or near the top every time.

So much of the race is about merely reading and following directions, and paying attention to details, and that's why lawyers always do well.

The deaf kid was a jerk on most of the race. I was glad to see Victor and Tammy win.

37 - depends what you mean by "more." More whites are disadvantaged by affirmative action than asians because there are more whites in the country. But asians outperform whites on all standardized tests, and are therefore more over-represented among top-scorers than whites (who are actually proportionally represented, more or less). Accordingly, when a school or business wants to worship at the alter of "diversity," they have to set the bar higher for asians than for whites. Hence, affirmative action is a larger deteriment to any individual asian applicant. But a larger number of whites are affected by it.

I bet 18 is one strapping male specimen.

13, 19, 37:

I think that every AA hurts me commenter should be forced to post their hard stats and 3 soft stats and the schools from which they think they have been wrongfully excluded.

13 - you personally may have a solid argument, but I have a feeling that there are a lot of hurt 161's 3.5s out there complaining that ,with AA , they would have been Yale material.

45 -- that should read with AA applied to their specific situation and/or without AA being in place.

Kash,
"a deaf kid?" Really? If you plan on becoming a respectable journalist and not some hack contributor to ATL, I would recommend giving more considerations to the tone of your pieces.

42 - Agreed.

OCEANS RISE

CITIES FALL

QUINN REMAINS

ALSO, FUCK 26

37 - I wrote a thesis on the effects of affirmative action, and there have been empirical studies that show that in general it adversely affects Asian Americans more than whites. Most schools that discontinue affirmative action experience a measurable increase in Asian American admissions with very little change in admission rates among whites. I don't know if that holds true for law school admissions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

This is a farce. The other couple relied upon CBS to provide a fair and balanced competition. And, after all of their hard work, they get the Shanghai Shaft.

If only they could file some sort of claim. . .

40: I agree regarding Margie - she would've won with a worthier partner. I did, however, have a soft spot for Kisha and Jen because I thought they were very nice to each other and respectful of the various Third World, low-wage earning workers they came in contact with (unlike those twats Jaime and Cara). They didn't turn on each other, even after Jen's moronic decision to pee privately during their last leg.

52 here, fully admitting that I was way too invested in the Amazing Race. Guilty as charged.

47,

He really can't hear. And he's a young man, so referring to him informally as a "kid" makes sense. Together: deaf kid. Unbunch your panties. Jeez.

Signed,
Not Kash

47: I represented a deaf client pro bono and his social worker told me that using "hearing impaired" was extremely offensive. I thought that was a bit high-drama (she actually compared it to saying the "n" word), but "deaf" isn't a slur. Not sure if that's what you were getting at.

52 - I never had anything against Kisha and Jen, but I didn't find them to be strong competitors. They were like Dan and Andrew from last season - bumbling their way through but surviving because of others' more serious mistakes.

And yes, Jaime and Cara were horrible. They should have been eliminated much earlier too.

I'm disappointed that the twosome who couldn't even manage to dive straight down in Beijing actually won the race. Victor should have just given up after weeping on national TV. Half a million to console yourself with the fact that he's a loser.

45 - 19/37 here.

I don't see why my personal experience matters, as this is a statistical issue (most studies bear out 50's research). But, if it makes you feel better, I am white and got into every law school I applied to, and went to a top 3 school. I have no personal ax to grind here, if that's what you were trying to insinuate.

Nevertheless, I've done a lot of reading on this subject, and asian applicants really do get the worst of it when it comes to affirmative action.

39 - That's what she said. Wait. What?

56: Yeah, you're probably right (though Victor and Tammy did give them the Road Block, so they must've perceived them somewhat as competition). I just thought they were cool. Also, as a Luke-hater, of course I loved that Jen called him a bitch.

Victor was quite the jerk to his sister Tammy during "the race." I hope his clients saw that and move on.

Plus, it's supposed to be a race around the world, but only THREE continents this season, including North America? Pathetic considering the show is good about usually doing 5-6 continents. This season it was only N. America (which doesn't really count anyways), Europe, and Asia. Wow.

Victor is a giant pussy. What kind of biglaw partner goes on a reality tv show, cries like a bitch and lets his little sister be degraded like this (http://asianistablog.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/12.jpg) at the same time?

I was so glad that Tammy and Victor won. I was cheering for Kisha and Jen, but got so mad at them for all the stupid decisions they made. I'm glad Margie and Luke did NOT win because Luke acted like a brat, elbowing Kisha/Jen then acted like she couldn't fight back just because he's deaf. As to the language, they did have an advantage sometimes, but in the leg before the finale it didn't really make a difference (their driver was slow I think).

Yes, 61, I'm sure Victor's clients will find new representation because Victor had a fight with his sister. You know the mind of GCs well.

Come on, Kisha and Jen couldn't even swim! And yes, the week in China was incredibly unfair. They should have spent a week in a deaf country and another week in an NFL cheerleader country to make it more fair. And I'm pretty sure the latter would increase viewership.

I really felt for Luke. Margie and Luke really killed everyone at the luau thing. Seriously? The 2 other teams couldn't even play "monkey see, monkey do" to realize that they would be better off carrying the pig on their shoulders?!

I liked Victor and Tammy, but I really wanted Margie and Luke to win. The African American sisters weren't strong competitors. Jen was a whiny, whiny quitter, who should have just peed on herself in Beijing. Her sister was the classy, patient one -- not whiny little Jen.

And Team B00b was insufferable. The B yelled at every person in each continent as if they existed to serve her. The taxi dispatcher in Hawaii had it exactly right.

Margie is a great mother and a tough as nails competitor. Luke is a good kid who was prone to frustration, and that frustration cost him the race.

Yes, it was totally unfair for Victor and Tammy that they spent time in China. None of the other 11 teams could have foreseen that they might be going places where other languages were spoken, and that learning another language might be useful.

During one of the China challenges, Kisha or Jen said "they all look the same" when they were trying to find their original cab driver. Not consistently racist like one of the cheerleaders was, but I still lost a lot of respect.

But I was pulling for Victor and Tammy all along anyway. I know Victor; he's good people (isn't that a stupid expression?).

58 - 45 here. I am actually on your side on this one.

I feel that many AA opponents are crying "Unfair, unfair!", when in reality, there are many qualified candidates, and if we were to limit the pool strictly to LSAT achievements, the result she is seeking (admission to top 3) probably wouldn't be possible.

This probably doesn't apply to 13 but I visualize a strong T25 candidate feeling that he is somehow being "jobbed" out of his HYS spot by some undeserving minority, when, in essence, the person never was that caliber and could only hope for a 6% ordinal increase.

it's good that AA hurts asians more. They take all the fun out of college and add little to the compelling interest of "diversity"

"In the absence of affirmative action laws, admission rates at public universities have risen for Asian-American students, while numbers for white, black and Hispanic students have declined."

http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12237/without-affirmative-action-asian-admission-rates-rise-1.1671413

"Since [the adoption of Proposition 209 banning affirmative action], the percentage of black and Latino students admitted to the University [of California Berkeley] has dropped 6.5 percent while the Asian-American percentage has jumped 6.2 percent" to 41% of the total student body, which is an 18% actual percentage increase from 35%.

"the general rise of the Asian-American population in California does not account for their increased representation at public universities."

"Affirmative action opponents had mixed reactions to the study. Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, an organization that lobbies against affirmative action, said since Asian Americans are "disproportionately well qualified," he was not surprised that "a color-blind admissions process favors them."

Some of the report's findings were less believable for Clegg.
"I'm skeptical of the finding that white students would not also be helped by a policy that gets rid of discrimination," Clegg said. "Our studies have shown that white students are hindered by politically correct admissions policies.""

47 here,
I did not mean to imply that deaf was not PC. I was getting at how the classification was presented. Much like commentator 6, I believe that stating this pair beat out "a deaf kid" is a dismissive description of the individual. It is like say, all you will be to society is a deaf kid, and you will always get beat.

It is hard to argue, much like deaf, black is a un-PC. What if the sentence read: beat out some black kid, or beat out some woman. I just don't like the connotation and I think a professional journalist should be conscious of such a tone.

72: "Professional journalist" is where you went wrong in your analysis.

That being said, I do think you have a point. I don't mind the classification because Luke was an absolute jackass, but "some black guy" or "some dude in a wheelchair" would rub most people the wrong way.

You know, asians make up substantial shares of T10 law school classes. But seem oddly absent from the ranks of firm partners, T10 faculties, and the bench. Especially women. It seems like AA opponents are having their cake and eating it too. And don't even think about blaming the the other victim here: blacks are about 4% or less of BigLaw and are quite rapidlly pushed out or quit by the mid-levels. The only people taking their spots on the top are the same people protecting them from unfair AA.

You people should stop saying Luke is a college graduate, especially since the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, where he was valedictorian, is a K-12 institution. He's not that bright, anyways, which explains his performance during the race. He acted like a little bitch most of the time, thinking he's hot stuff when he u-turned those other two. But, if someone calls him a bitch, he gets all offended and whiny. Also, Jamie's the biggest twat I've ever seen. Hot, but her attitude and personality are a huge turn-off.

The cheerleaders are getting a bum rap. Taxi drivers should know where to take their fares. In London, drivers have a pass a test on "The Knowledge", so they know where everything significant and insignficant is -- plus they carry an A to Z street guide. I would be unhappy too, if I got in a cab, gave the driver a location, and he/she didn't know it. I'm expected to do my job well -- I expect others, no matter their profession, to do theirs well too. Moreover, the taxi dispatcher is responsible for making sure "her" cabbie takes his fares where they want to go. To the extent that he doesn't know where it is, then, yes, she *is* their personal concierge.

The cheerleaders were total bitches. They couldn't tell a cab driver where to go because they couldn't figure out how to say the name of the place correctly, and then as soon as Tammy and Victor told the cab driver the name, Jaime and Cara stole the cab. Of course, karma's a bitch because Victor didn't get a chance to tell the cab driver the full name of the place, so the driver took them to the wrong gate of a large campus. If they had been nice, they could have just followed Tammy and Victor's cab. Or if they had been paying attention instead of blaming the poor driver, they could have told him the full name of the place.
Tammy and Victor's Chinese skills were only an advantage in the next to last leg, where they chose the Chinese-speaking detour. The previous leg, the other teams followed them around and there was a foot race at the end. One leg out of eleven is not an unfair advantage, especially since it was not the final leg.

I agree 100% with 76. The locations that the racers go to in each country are usually pretty prominent places. Cab drviers should know how to get to places where their fares want to go, or should be able to quickly find out. I don't blame the cheerleaders for being frustrated that their cabbie can't find their destination - ESPECIALLY when we are talking about a small island, and there is no language barrier at issue.

62 thanks for the link. Man she is fugly. Why do you think that it is her brother's responsibility to prevent her from doing stupid things?

Did the cheerleaders ever stop for a minute and wonder why they were nearly always the only contestants who consistently had cab trouble? They were beyond offensive at every turn. I mean, if I'm some Indian dude making two rupees a day driving a car, am I really going to put the pedal to the medal for some bitch sighing and yelling in my ear and talking nonsense about some race where she's going to win $1 million?

"Some of the report's findings were less believable for Clegg.
"I'm skeptical of the finding that white students would not also be helped by a policy that gets rid of discrimination," Clegg said. "Our studies have shown that white students are hindered by politically correct admissions policies."""

AHAHAHAHA RACISM FAIL

Oh noes teh white kids are not teh smartestests!!

79, you sound like a real winner. How about you post a picture of yourself in a bikini so we can judge your superior physique?

81,

I chuckled reading that.

82,

I'm all in favor of said recommendations.

81 - Hilarious. In my opnion, most White folks who complain about affirmative action are merely looking for a scapegoat for their own inability to be accepted by the schools they feel they "deserve."

About ten or so years ago, the L.A. Times ran an article on AA and the University of California Regents (the board which controls the UC campuses). The article reported on the shenanigans so-called opponents of AA engaged in to get less qualified White kids into Berkeley and UCLA. One regent, when confronted on how he helped a White girl from a well-to-do family get into UCLA with a 3.3 and a 980 on the SAT, finally stated she "deserved" to get in, impliedly based on her White affluent status.

White cry-babies can't deal with the fact that the Asians out work them, so they (continue) to shit on the Blacks and Browns. Yes, Asians are overrepresented in nerdiness and non-party aptitude, but they put it down when it comes to the books, which is the primary focus of school.

Of course, this lack of social swag bites many Asians in the ass when it comes to law firm politics, but that discussion is for another day

The race was fixed. Double time in China with a chinese language skill challenge at a restaurant. The deaf contestant couldn't choose that task. And then a swimming component when the black sisters couldn't swim. I'm surprised they didn't have a clue card perched way above the reach of the short stunt guys. It's almost as unfair as life is.

Yes 84, one example of an absurdly over privileged white girl is completely indicative of the entirety of white people.

deaf kid is just as senstive as ahole writer.

If Luke is the deaf kid, is Victor the effeminate guy of ambiguous sexuality?

That deaf kid was a real downer... what a retard loser.