Racist Stereotypes: Still Not Funny
If the folks over at SalesGenie.com wanted to include every possible stereotype about the Chinese, they came pretty darn close. The online ad company's million-dollar promo for the 2008 Super Bowl included a pair of pandas, broken English and a struggling bamboo shop. The company's CEO, who wrote the ad himself, later apologized for offending TV viewers and agreed to pull the commercial, even though he said he and his Asian friends had no qualms about it: "People have been making fun of my accent for years. And I love it," Vinod Gupta, who described himself as half-Jewish and half-Indian, told the New York Times. (The company also aired a similarly insulting ad featuring an Indian character during Super Bowl XLII.) He later joked that perhaps the pandas would make a triumphant return — only next time, with Irish accents.