Vancouver: 'Too Damned Many Asians'?

"Vancouver is nice except there are too damned many Asians," said Estonian hockey star Karl Kepp in a televised interview with Russia's channel Rossiya 1. Immediately, the Russian propaganda machine attempted to turn Kepp's interview into an international scandal. Russia's daily Pravda, published the interview and used Latin letters to misspell Estonia: eSStonia. "They put words in my mouth," Kepp later said in a prepared statement. "What I was talking about was the colorful mosaic of Vancouver as it was enriched by the Hong Kong exodus and later establishment of such rich cultural treasures like the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden." Kepp said that he, as an Estonian, could appreciate other cultures due to "Estonia's limestone escarpment, its winter capital of Otepää, and centuries of mudbath tradition in our beach city of Pärnu." An Estonian government spokesman added that mudbaths were 50 percent off on Wednesdays in Pärnu for speakers of Cantonese or Mandarin.
Estonian hockey star Karl Kepp (above) says he was misquoted. "Slanteyes are okay with me," he later said.