you decide to go along with mass-culture misunderstanding and then make jokes about the subject based on what it actually is not. Everyone laughs along with you, and the misunderstanding is then further supported.
Thanks for the reminder of the cold bitter truth. We don't know how much Jimmy knows about Taijiquan, but the joke surely doesn't help the already tarnished image of Taijiquan. Likely, it helped promote the tarnished image further.
In that case, it's kind of disgraceful that we have someone putting down their own culture. However, it also seems like this has become a popular format these days with stand-up comedy. There's Russell Peters making fun of East Indians, Dave Chappelle making fun of African Americans, just to name a few.
I guess all of us here know how the tarnished image developed along the lines of mass commercialization and the subsequent "mass stupidity". Yet, there are the odd few of us who still believed there's something amazing in Taijiquan and were driven to search for it. What's the source of that faith?
I honestly don't know how to answer that for myself. I guess I am attracted to the charm of Chen style Taijiquan, and really wanted to find the "truth" of it. When I was looking around right before landing on Marin's page, it was rather bleak though. I wonder how many were lost simply because they just couldn't find it (especially before the Internet age). Would more exposure of the non-commercial Taijiquan help improve the public image?
Curious what fuels the faith in the rest of the members here. Maybe some are just masochistic and like the pain? (power to you)