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AsianWeek story tells readers why they should love black people. Hear that, Kenneth Eng?

A A A Comments By Joe Eskenazi Wednesday, Dec 19 2007

After AsianWeek made national headlines in February by running a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks" from an avowed Asian supremacist, the newspaper threw a changeup earlier this month. Emblazoned on its cover above an image of a cute young interracial couple was the headline "Black-Asian Love" — a phrase you probably shouldn't run through a Google image search while at work.

The intense rancor columnist Kenneth Eng's overt racism brought down upon the San Francisco–based paper earlier this year was not once mentioned in the Dec. 7-13 "Black-Asian Love" edition. When asked if this cover story was some form of atonement, editor and publisher Ted Fang seemed taken aback.

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"It's not a step in a new direction," he said. "It's a continuation of the direction AsianWeek has always been on. We've always encouraged diversity."

Well, except when Kenneth Eng was writing his God of the Universe column for you.

Since being fired by AsianWeek, Eng has continued to offend, albeit not under his own byline. In May, the New York writer bragged to the Village Voice that Virginia Tech mass-murderer Cho Seung-Hui had been inspired by his writings. What's more, Eng said he'd have shot up New York University's campus himself — if he could have afforded the guns.

In August, a New York Daily News headline writer penned the masterpiece "Queens Loon Held Without Bail" regarding Eng. Eventually, Eng was sentenced to a year of intense mental-health treatment after pleading guilty to threatening to kill his neighbors and waving a hammer at their dog. Immediately following his plea, he was rearrested and whisked off by federal authorities for charges stemming from alleged threatening phone calls made to an NYU classmate. His parents posted the $500,000 bond for his release.

Hoping to glean how Eng felt about his former paper running a story about "Black-Asian Love," we called his home in Bayside, Queens. The phone was answered by a toddler who, after much cajoling, handed the receiver to an elderly woman who declined to take a message.

SF Weekly sent an e-mail to the Web site Eng uses to advertise his sci-fi fantasy novels about dragons. On the site, Eng refers to himself as God.

He did not answer SF Weekly's prayers — or its e-mail, which bounced.

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