Top-of-the-Week Links: Who will win the Linsanity trademark? There is no pun here. Really

Via ChinaSmack

The day after an “Emmy Award-winning TV news correspondent” compared Jeremy Lin to Jackie Robinson in China Daily and wrote, “Lin is a devout Christian. But I think his success has more to do with Confucian rather than Christian values,” and, “But until his team eventually loses a game and the champagne corks stop popping” — even though Lin’s team lost on Friday — we present: your Monday links.

Can we please stop punning EVERY TIME we talk about Lin? Can we just… fucking please? “The Knicks sensation this week applied for trademark rights to Linsanity… Lin filed his application on Feb. 13, several days after two California men entered the cash-in derby to trademark Linsanity. But Washington, D.C., trademark attorney Josh Gerben told The Huffington Post that those claims will likely turn into a procedural air ball, costing the two men time and money.” [Huffington Post]

Corollary: “Chink” causes ESPN employee to lose job. [ESPN]

In the world we live in, this is actually the lead to a news story titled, “Ma Ying-jeou gets caught up in local ‘Linsanity’ fever, watches Knicks game”: “President Ma Ying-jeou said yesterday he watched the last five minutes of the New York Knicks-New Orleans Hornets game Friday, in which NBA sensation Jeremy Lin got his first taste of defeat as a starter when the Knicks lost to the Hornets 89-85.” [The China Post]

Hidden Harmonies’ melektaus is not a fan of James Fallows. In response to a certain phrase in this Fallows piece on Lin (in which the China correspondent emeritus linked to my video of Stephon Marbury in Taiyuan), melektaus shoots an email to Fallows, who replies back… [Hidden Harmonies]

China’s Sphinx? “If the traveler speaks Tibetan, Mr. Tashi, 65, will peer warily out into the road before swinging open the heavy wooden doors and allowing entry to the modest home where China’s most reviled and revered spiritual leader spent the first three years of his life. // If the visitor is Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, the gatekeeper might grumble vaguely about ‘the rules’ but then relent. // But if the supplicant bears patently Western features, Mr. Tashi can be relied upon to throw up his hands with dramatic effect and shoo the interloper back toward the vehicle that made the hourlong drive from the provincial capital. ‘Leave, leave now,’ he will shout. ‘If they come, you will be in trouble.’” [NY Times]

Censorship is the bitterest pill, acting on a subconscious level: “One [of the] biggest problems for Chinese writers is self-censorship, says Murong Xuecun: ‘It’s something that haunts me when I write…sometimes when I read over a text I realize that I’ve already modified it.’” [Publishing Perspectives, via Bruce Humes]

Corollary: “Starting March 16, Weibo (regardless of provider) is required to implement total real-name registration. It remains to be seen how it will affect the online discourse, which is seriously flawed to begin with. One thing I can report at this point is that Twitter’s Chinese community is seeing an influx of newcomers.” [Seeing Red in China]

Here is Louis CK circa 2001 on “growing up Chinese” (it’s the first joke):