Can people start focusing our energy on people who are actually racist? Confucius say uproar at Amy Sedaris is waste of time bigger and less fruitful than polluted Yangtze Valley.

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"So glad you couldn't be here. You think Jerry Lewis is funny, so you wouldn't get my humor."

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It might not have seemed so funny if Sedaris had inscribed books with following (and I apologize for these examples):

To a Jew:

"So glad you couldn't be here. Why didn't you buy this book at a discount?"

To an Irish person:

"So glad you couldn't be here. Well, the Irish are drunk illiterates, anyway."

(Plug in ethnic group and stereotype of your choice.)

What is it about the Chinese and Mexicans that makes it OK to mock them?

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The difference between the New Yorker cover and what Sedaris did (although I don't know her work that well; I didn't like Strangers with Candy) is that New Yorker illustrated a set of very specific attacks on the Obamas, for example, that Barack was a muslim and Michelle a black radical.

Contrast that with the broad Republican attacks, Barack as an Uncle Ben figure on a package of pancake mix, or as a "magical Negro."

Sedaris's humor seems to fall in the second category, broad, pick-a-random-stereotype and hide behind it as humor.

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Though after reading American Born Chinese (which you should all read, btw), it's hard to laugh at any of this anymore, really.

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As for Sedaris, except for brief flashes and the apparently astonishing fluke of Strangers with Candy, too much of her work seems as much like random exhibitionism by someone who's figured out how to get a rise out of an audience (or to titillate hipsters who know others will be appalled/offended) than any kind of genuine humor.

Of all the Sedarises I've experienced or read about, the only one I think I'd like to have known is their mother...

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