When somebody gets flak for making a terribly racist video these days, the formula is a simple: Take down the online footage and issue a no-pology. That’s exactly what wannabe OC bed queen Jennifer Murphy did after the interwebz discovered the wretched “I Want to be Neenja” song she performed in “ching chong” voice at her wall bed line’s Laguna Hills launch party. But this is one “Neenja” who just won’t stay down.
First, the former Miss Oregon beauty queen and The Apprentice contestant dug herself deeper when she started whining about how people got the whole shtick wrong. Then, she doubled down by actually bringing “I Want to be Neenja” back with its new (almost) finished music video. “I made this video in FUN,” Murphy wrote on her YouTube channel of the “very controversial” song. “It’s meant to spread smiles…like all my videos are intended to do.”
All “Neenja” version 2.0 really does is induce the cringe even worse than before. The video begins by splicing footage of her Chinese-American critics over at Double Chen News because there’s no better way to offend Asians by riffing off them in repackaging the song! “Many of our viewers sent us her second video where she used our clip,” the Double Chen crew tells the Weekly. “We had no idea she did that, she never contacted us regarding the usage.” In the excerpt, a bewildered Mike Chen asked, “First of all, who’s Chow?” That cues up the backstory of GoGirl vs. Chow, the evil Ninja who steals the Murphy Bed patent after breaking into her home with a pair of chop sticks. Oh, so that’s what ninjas have to do with wall beds!
When Murphy first started getting heat for the song, she tried explaining her Asian friend Peter did a great impression of Chow from the Hangover films. He appears in the new video, and has a sleek ninja move hiding out in the drawn down wall bed, but that’s about it. Everything else is a few cheap takes at Hangover Chow’s laugh that fall as flat as Murphy’s own “dumb blonde” jokes. Murphy, as GoGirl, vows revenge on Chow anyway once she learns the way of the ninja, and so begins the song.
Murphy then meets a martial arts dude in a park who begins her ninja training. She begins by failing horribly at pull-ups, cartwheels, and rolls. Needless to say her training is incomplete. That’s where the much hyped bridge section, missing from the launch party performance, comes into play. Dennis Woodard, the song’s producer and co-writer, claimed it to be the funniest part of the whole song.
During the bridge, Murphy recounts going to the “misty mountains” of China where she meditates with the ancient Buddha of Asia, providing the clarity needed to become a ninja. Of course, this narration is all provided in Murphy’s godawful racist Asian accent. Yeah, Woodard, that sure was the clincher!
At the end of ten minutes of torture, the Double Chen News guys are brought back. “Why did you have to do that in an Asian accent?” Dan Chen asked. “Why was that necessary?” Murphy’s never given a good answer for that. The last we heard from her before the emergence of the new video, she complained about online bullying a week-and-a-half ago sharing comments from folks calling her a “racist whore,” and “bimbo blonde bitch.” Misogyny isn’t how to fight racism but while Murphy is trying to recenter this, the best rebuke came from a commentator who wrote “Racism is a form of bullying too.” Mic drop!
And bringing the racist song with new video scenes is just damn arrogant. “We’re basically just shaking our heads here. Her first video offended many people, not just Asians,” the Double Chen News guys add. “Her second video, oh my… I think she’s digging herself into a deeper hole here.” The upside is that this all has “career-ending” written all over it. Well Murphy, it’s definitely a (wall) bed that you’ve made. Now it’s time to lay in it.
Gabriel San Román is from Anacrime. He’s a journalist, subversive historian and the tallest Mexican in OC. He also once stood falsely accused of writing articles on Turkish politics in exchange for free food from DönerG’s!