It's all about the names. New York politician Anthony Weiner is running for mayor, but what people are talking about most is his resignation as a congressman a few years ago after he was found to have sent pictures of his "Weiner" to female fans online. A New Jersey man who gave his kids Nazi names - including Adolf Hitler - has lost custody of them, and was refused a visitation request by a court.

Now, KTVU, a major TV station in San Francisco, has humiliated itself in its coverage of the Asiana plane crash at the San Francisco International Airport that claimed the lives of three Chinese girls.

It told viewers on its lunchtime news program last Friday that it had learned the names of the four pilots on board. An anchor then read out in a solemn tone: "Sum Ting Wong," "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk," and "Bang Ding Ow."

And a New York-based NBC TV station chose to censor the word "Fuk" on their screen, which was baffling to many Cantonese-speaking Chinese Americans whose last names are spelt this way.

I won't conceal my sympathy for KTVU. The pronunciation of foreign names can be a tough challenge for many Americans - the vast majority of whom speak no languages other than English. If I had a cent for every time someone has called me "soaking wrong" I'd be rich.

In a hurried attempt to get the scoop, the TV station became a victim of a cruel prank. The reporter had even checked with the National Transportation Safety Board, and had the names confirmed by an intern. Both entities apologized, but the TV station is still being sued by Asiana.

Nonetheless, the sympathy won't go far when you think back a bit.

In February 2012, at the peak of basketball player Jeremy Lin's stardom in New York, an editor at the sports channel ESPN used "chink in the armor" in a headline about him.

In 2006, comedienne Rosie O'Donnell mimicked Chinese news reading by using the word "ching chong."

And in 2005, after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed 230,000 people in 14 Asian countries, New York's radio station Hot 97 played a parody song in its morning talk show program that even had a line about the "little Chinamen swept away."

All of these caused uproars in the Asian community. The personas involved were either fired or publicly apologized, or both. Some of them seemed to honestly have no idea that they were adopting offensive racial slurs.

If you believe some of this is based on pure ignorance rather than malicious intent, you have to question why the journalists and entertainers concerned were so dumb.

These are people in the media industry who are supposed to know better and whose job is to inform and educate the general public. The Asiana suit is a warning that such behavior won't go unnoticed in the future.

Asian countries, especially rapidly growing China, no longer see themselves as second best to the Western world, but as equal partners. In this interdependent but also competitive relationship, the one that knows the other side better will be more likely to take the lead.

In general, Asians know much more about Western culture than the other way round.

For example, there may be many more Chinese who know the second-tier US cities of Austin and Buffalo, the sitcom Friends, the health reform law Obamacare, and what a filibuster is, than Americans who know their equivalents in China.

Many generations of Americans may have done just fine by thinking all Asian faces, names and languages look and sound the same. But to keep thinking like that in today's world may be not only a matter of embarrassment, but also a danger to survival.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@ hotmail.com