Location. The Korean Demilitarized Zone intersects but does not follow the 38th parallel north, which was the border before the Korean War. It crosses the parallel on. Arab times – kuwait news the first english language daily in free kuwait.

From an explosive Boeing 720 crash to a plane flying with inflatable WINGS: Nasa releases treasure trove of old research videos to YouTube. Nasa has a rich and varied. FLEMING: I was surprised to see that the exits of Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park got turned into a referendum on race, but that seems to be the way it goes in these. Latest breaking news, including politics, crime and celebrity. Find stories, updates and expert opinion.

Are ‘Hawaii Five- O’ Cast Exits About Race? Bart & Fleming.

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. Daily Variety. In this occasional column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business. BART: In a former career, I covered two race riots and one war, but I cannot recall a time when newsmen faced greater obstacles. In this moment of divisiveness, every story seems to be a potential landmine; even reports about salaries on a TV show that I haven’t watched in years. News stories about the departure of two Asian actors on Hawaii Five- O suddenly revive a two- year- old imbroglio about two other actors, Kevin James and Matt Le. Blanc. They became vulnerable when bloggers claimed that CBS was hung up on shows about middle- aged white guys, ignoring the need for diversity. Does every story about pay — or programming — have to become a story about diversity?

Here’s the headline on Page 1 of the Los Angeles Times: “For Asian actors, few leading roles and lower pay.” Yes, it’s about Hawaii Five- O. CBSFLEMING: I was surprised to see that the exits of Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park got turned into a referendum on race, but that seems to be the way it goes in these highly sensitive times.

The anti- Asian narrative was fueled by Twitter fire from several who took the exits of Kim and Park as some evidence that their race was why they didn’t get paid as much as show leads Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan. It looked to me no different than every news- making TV show salary re- negotiation. It is always about leverage than anything else. It must have been awkward for CBS, whose chief Les Moonves is married to Julie Chen.

Angry tweets aside, Moonves has a track record of being a tough businessman. Remember when he sacked George Eads and Jorja Fox, two supporting actors on top- rated show CSI in 2. They were re- hired, but this was pretty shocking at the time. My understanding of the Hawaii Five- 0 situation was this: Believing that O’Loughlin was a TV star in the making, Moonves kept putting him in series – Three Rivers and Moonlight came first and failed – before Hawaii Five- O hit. It was the same tactic used for actors including George Clooney, who bounced from one series to the next until Moonves- run Warner Bros unlocked his stardom with ER. CBS built Hawaii Five- O around O’Loughlin in a version of the iconic Steve Mc. Garrett character and cut him a piece of the backend that has made him millions.

I believe he’s the only star on the show who got that, despite reports that Caan is in the same boat. Caan’s fee does match O’Loughlin’s $2.

From what I’ve heard, CBS offered Kim and Park close to that salary for Season 8, but the network wasn’t cracking open the backend on a mature series that already reaped its syndication windfall. We’ve seen versions of this over the years as supporting players tried for parity with top- billed stars. On Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis- Dreyfus and Michael Richards performed characters as indelible as Jerry Seinfeld, but it was his show and they had to console themselves with raises that got them $6. Seinfeld’s backend was worth tens of millions of dollars, by comparison, and made them seem underpaid. It’s all leverage. I remember when George Litto, the former rep of Hawaii Five- O creator Leonard Freeman, shopped that property initially as a movie.

Every studio wanted it. Litto had total control, too much for the liking of those studios, which is why it languished so long. I recall him telling me once he intended to make a deal that would allow his family to steer the ensuing movies/TV shows long- term the way Cubby Broccoli handed down James Bond to his family. He subsequently got in a legal battle with the estate, and he isn’t steering the series now.

He had leverage, until he didn’t. BART: A cantankerous comment on diversity was offered this week by Mike Hale, a TV critic for the New York Times, who argued that supporting characters who are Asian tend to have duller roles and more boring lines on TV shows. On Hawaii Five- O, Hale says, one of the two leads originally should have been Asian or a Pacific Islander or even a native Hawaiian.

The two Asian supporting actors who have left the show, he notes, are of Korean heritage – Koreans represent a mere 2% of the population of Hawaii. Grace Park is of Korean descent raised in Canada and Daniel Dae Kim was born in South Korea. David Buchan/Shutterstock.

FLEMING: I often watch Hawaii Five- O and Blue Bloods right after because you get to a certain age and that’s a happening Friday night. Watch Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason Download Full more. Kim and Grace are fun to watch, and I’ll miss them. CBS will find out soon enough if they are indispensable. As for what you said of criticism about white- guy sitcoms with Kevin James and Matt Le.

Blanc — what part of that isn’t sound TV business judgment? Each guy starred in one of the most successful and lucrative sitcoms in TV history. Who wouldn’t try to re- create that magic with either of them?

In the case of James, his King of Queens TV wife Leah Remini is poised to join Kevin Can Wait as James’s first- season Kevin Can Wait wife Erinn Hayes exits. If 3. 0 Rock‘s Alec Baldwin decided today he wants to do a sitcom, don’t you think every network will back up the Brink’s truck to his doorstep, with not even a modicum of this white guilt you cite? It seems naive to convey Kim and Park as suffering in oppressive roles they now are liberated from. It’s rare when supporting players reach pay parity with stars who scored big original deals, and if reports like the one in Saturday’s LA Times is right, Kim and Park got close in the per- episode pay grade to O’Loughlin and Caan. One of the few examples I can remember where things went differently was when The West Wing ensemble banded together and were brought up to the pay scale of Rob Lowe, who was the big star name when the series launched.

Whether it’s David Caruso on NYPD Blue or James Gandolfini on The Sopranos, TV re- negotiation is bruising business that is all about leverage and profit, not skin color. Kim has gone to pilot with another show as producer; ABC has picked up The Good Doctor, and if that one hits, or if he is the top- billed star on another show after runs on Lost and Hawaii Five- O, he’ll be in the money as a back end participant. BART: If diversity stories are radioactive, so are pieces about sexual harassment. Last week a Fox sports executive and the host of a Fox Business Network show both were fired or suspended on charges of sexual harassment.