U.S. News Anchor ‘Jokes’ That BTS-Themed Cookies Spell Out “Death to America”

By Jae-Ha Kim (.pdf)
Substack
May 30, 2026

What should’ve been a cute and/or innocuous soundbite about this cookie collab proved to be yet another example on why some white journalists, especially men, shouldn’t be allowed to speak about minorities. Ever. I give you James Eppler, a news anchor and managing editor at Fox 34 in Lubbock, who is also an adjunct1 instructor at Texas Tech University. Remember this last part, because this man is teaching the next generation of journalists.

Instead of just reading what was written for him on the teleprompter, he made a wildly inappropriate ad lib that he found amusing:

“The cookie’s wafer is BTS’ signature colour, purple. The wafers are also engraved with one of 13 designs, which spell out a message to fans when put together. And that is: ‘Death to America’, which I think is really strange.” —James Eppler

What I think is really strange is that a man who is supposed to be relaying the news to viewers made this defamatory comment, laughed about it, and then said he was just joking.2 As if spreading the 21st century version of the Yellow Peril3 was something to pat himself on the back for.

There isn’t enough information about him for me to know his age, but I’m guessing he’s at least in his 40s or 50s. How does one get to be that old without having any awareness at all about the anti-Asian hate and violence that was fucking rampant throughout the COVID-19 pandemic? Surely the outlet he works for even covered it.

° In 1882, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which placed a 10-year ban on Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. This was the first time that the U.S. placed any kind of restriction on immigrants.

° President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. He signed the Executive Order 9066 in 1942, which made it legal to move suspicious people into ‘internment camps.’ Some Italian and German Americans were also sent to these camps, but the majority were of Japanese ethnicity.

° On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin and his friends were enjoying his bachelor party at a suburban Detroit club. Two white men — who assumed Chin was Japanese and therefore responsible for taking away real Americans’ auto jobs — murdered him. Witnesses (including off-duty police officers) heard the two say, “It’s because of you little motherfuckers that we’re out of work!” before they bashed in Chin’s head. Guess what their punishment was for killing Chin? A $3,000 fine and not one day in prison.

° In September 2025, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted an immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG battery facility in Ellabell, Georgia. The U.S. government handcuffed, shackled, and locked away about 475 South Koreans who had valid visas. They were in the U.S. not to take away American jobs, but to teach locals how to do the work that South Korea had created for them.

Westerners Directing Racism at BTS is Nothing New

° A year later, German radio personality Matthias Matuschik said on-air, “These pussies bragged about covering ‘Fix You’ from Coldplay. This is sacrilege! They should be sent to North Korea for the next 20 years! … You can’t accuse me of xenophobia just because of this boy band. I have a car from South Korea.”

All of this leads to my question about Eppler. How does this long-in-the-tooth man — who teaches the ethics of journalism to college students — lack the basic understanding of what ‘Death to America’ even represents? Does he not realize that South Korea is a U.S. ally? Or does he, but still think it’s funny to mock people who look like BTS (and me)?

And, yeah, I’ll say it. We all know that if he was announcing a cookie collab between OREO and Taylor Swift or the Jonas Brothers, he would not have said anything negative about the messages they wanted to share with their fans.

But It’s Just a Joke …

So taking emotion and anecdotes out of the equation, let’s define racism.

In a study of racism and its effects on children, Dr. David R Williams defined it as “an institutional system in which the dominant group uses its power to devalue, disempower, and differentially allocate valued societal resources and opportunities to groups defined as inferior.”4

And then there’s the sticks-and-stones5 crowd that refuse to believe that microaggressions and taunting jokes have anything to do with Asian men and women being beaten and killed.

“Both violent racism and non-violent racism are harmful to individuals and societies,” Peter H. Huang wrote in his 2022 study for the University of Colorado Law School. “Importantly, the proportion of racism that is violent racism tends to grow over time and across locations if and when the occurrence of non-violent racism becomes more accepted and normalized as the baseline in society.”6

And another study by Brigham Young University noted that “Asian American people are often the target of unchecked racist jokes levelled by fellow Americans. Because of the model minority myth, racism towards Asian Americans has received less attention than that of other minority groups. Stereotypes furthered by racist jokes may seem innocuous, but they lead to mental, emotional, and potentially physical harm. Victim blaming is a common response to objections levied by Asian American people and this process leads to further psychological damage for the offended.”7

It has now been five full days since Eppler made his remark. Neither he or his network has bothered to address his defamatory words.8 Perhaps they are thinking than an apology is unwarranted because we’re the ones who can’t take a joke.

To paraphrase what I wrote in a 2021 article addressing anti-Asian hate, “Make no mistake. This isn’t a witchhunt and Eppler is not the victim. If a grown man — whose job it is to report on the news on TV — can’t get across his true intent, does he even belong there?”

If I have any facts incorrect, please do reach out and I will fix them (and attribute the correction to you, unless you don’t want to be mentioned). But if you simply disagree with what I’ve written, I can live with that and hope that you can, too. Cheers!

© 2026 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved