Ohh! My Eye!!!!!
27 posted on Thu Dec 13 2012 19:01:31 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time) by sgtyork: “Ohh! My Eye!!!!!”
Okay, enough jokes about her name. She's Korean, and married to an American husband.
And since her photo has become an issue, here's a better photo of her: 
You don't want to even try to pronounce my wife's name or my daughter's name. There are reasons why in the United States our family uses English names taken from Scripture rather than the original Korean names which are unpronounceable and unspellable to many Americans. My English name is unpronounceable and unspellable to Koreans, so sooner or later my Korean relatives will probably come up with some sort of Korean name for me, too.
She is a member of the Asian-American Journalists Association, and has done some ticket-punching at some fairly decent moderately conservative newspapers. I don't know her personally in any way, but I do live in Missouri, I do know people working for the Kansas City Star, and from what I know of her reputation, I think the Kansas City Star could probably have done a whole lot worse. It is a major metro newspaper in serious trouble that's part of a left-of-center newspaper chain whose powerhouse papers are leftist operations on the West Coast, so anything even close to moderate in the head office is better than many alternatives.
A few years ago back when she was at the Idaho Stateman out in Boise, she was one of only three Asian publishers of mainsteam (i.e., non-ethnic) daily newspapers. I do not know how many there are now, but Asian publishers are pretty rare.
Here are some profile pieces on her:
http://kcpt.org/blog/2011/11/01/rising-star-mi-ai-parrish/
http://www.mcclatchy.com/2011/06/14/2414/mi-ai-parrish-named-publisher.html
And here's her denial of the report that she let employees choose which one would get the axe: http://www.bottomlinecom.com/star-publisher-denies-reports-employees-forced-to-choose/
My guess about this situation — and it's purely a guess with absolutely zero inside information — is that she was trying an Asian collegiality method to manage workplace issues that blew up in her face.
Asian woman in management have a reputation for being “dragon ladies.” I guess I'd rather see a top-level Asian woman try to manage by consensus than throw more logs on the fire of the well-earned “dragon lady” stereotype.