That's something I wrote in the comments to the previous post after an "LOL" directed at Jack Klompus. Klompus, reacting to my post, had written:
The "Ah! So..." triggered me into doing an impromptu Charlie Chan impersonation. Very problematic.
I had to look back at the post, which is about a WaPo article, "The Biden administration confirms some but not all of Trump’s Wuhan lab claims." Had I written "Ah! So..."? Yes, I'd quoted something from the article, then exclaimed: "Ah! So it's not that you've determined that any of these claims are false." The "Ah!" was independent of the "So," but the "So" directly followed, and I have inadvertently caused the "ah"/"so" combination to come into being in a post about the Chinese.
I'm sure some of you who comment here think there's nothing even wrong with saying "Ah, so!" intentionally, even with a Charlie Chan-style intonation, but I've got to find my own balance of correctness/incorrectness. In this case, I would never purposely exclaim "Ah, so!" while talking about the Chinese or even while talking about anyone else. It's just pointlessly disrespectful. And I do mean to imply that sometimes disrespect is justified and warranted. But casual disrespect — disrespect as a go-to demeanor — is lazy, dumb, destructive, and degrading.
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For a serious, critically acclaimed examination of the Charlie Chan character, read "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History" by Yunte Huang. I'd read it, but I've never watched any Charlie Chan movies, so I have no context — other than the context of hearing various Americans imitate Charlie Chan, usually by saying "Ah so" (and just meaning something like "Yes, I understand").