every thursday night i watch my favorite line-up of tv shows: friends, will & grace, and ER. tonight, ER REALLY offended me. i started telling rich about it and he told me to email nbc, so i did. (ha. me being an activist... who'dve thought? damn comm major.) anyway, here is my email:

"i am a regular viewer of this show and i have NEVER been more offended than when i watched tonight's episode, Shifts Happen. its portrayal of filipinos is not only inaccurate, but a completely BLATANT act of racism of an ethnicity that gets badmouthed enough already as it is. media already portrays filipino women as mail-to-order brides and incompetent third-world servants. and then this highly-acclaimed show portrays them as "fresh off the boat" nurses who can hardly speak english? you HAVE to be kidding me.

we are not an "invasion from manila", as one your characters described. while it is true that many nurses are filipino, we all speak proper english, we are not all submissive saying, "yes, doctor" with our eyes to the ground, and we are NOT all the third-world incompetent nurses you portrayed us to be.

i am a first-generation filipino-american whose father owns a successful small business and whose mother is a retired physician who worked for the state of california as a physician for 25 years. my parents are successful professionals, speak proper english and are not at all "fresh off the boat." i have filipino friends who are not only nurses, but lawyers, doctors, engineers, wall street traders and elementary school teachers. i accept that as filipinos, we are a minority, but that doesn't mean that during the rare instances that we are portrayed on television, we have to be presented in the most offensive light.

i never knew a show i enjoyed so much, could be so ignorant."

you can email too: ER@NBC.com