ABSTRACT
I was surfing late-night TV in April 1995 and I caught Jay Leno at the end of his monologue announcing that the Dancing Itos were back. That froze my finger on the remote, as you can well imagine. Five Asian American men dressed identically in judges’ robes, black beards, and glasses swept onstage, lifted their robes revealing high heels, stockings, and garter belts, and danced the can-can to the delight of the audience. I was both charmed and stupefied, and watched for the next few nights to see if the Dancing Itos would make a reappearance. They did — the next time, they did a conga line through the audience — and I was more and more perplexed by the implicit racism of their act. Were the Dancing Itos simply a spoof of authority and celebrity? Would any judge presiding over this trialof-the-century be danced across Jay Leno’s stage, lifting his robes and flashing his gams?1
