Puru Pratap's design to spruce up the Google logo for a day (see below) beat out designs from other Indian contestants. It ran on the home page Saturday and Pratap got a laptop for himself and the equivalent of $2,100 for his school. His counterpart in America, meanwhile, will take home a laptop, $15,000 for herself and $25,000 for her school. Granted, a dollar goes further in India than in the U.S. But $2,100 vs $40,000 is a huge divide.

Asked Shalini Singh at the Indian website TechGoss: "Are we children of a lesser Google?" Maybe. Or perhaps Google is trying to deliver India's kids a lesson in the harsh realities of globalization.

(Pic by Anil Jadhav)

This particular incident is imbued with racial overtones and, as such, is likely to be something of a YouTube sensation. According to a translation posted on YouTube, the Chinese woman said the fight started when she asked to sit next to the other woman, who is African American, and was rebuffed. "She has no heart, always bullying chinese people," the woman reportedly says. YouTube commenters are discussing the matter in their typical nuanced, racially sensitive manner (i.e. being flaming bigots, repeatedly).

The racial angle aside, the incident is yet another example of how you really can't freak out on mass transit or on the streets or in airports any more:

• Have a tantrum because you missed your flight? You may well be remembered as the Cathay Pacific airport lady, for the rest of your whiny life.
  
• Flash your dick on the subway? There's an app for taking a picture of that.
  
• Shove a guy off his bicycle, while he's in motion? Someone will film it, and you'll have to pay.

After infamous Post cartoonist Sean Delonas published a panel depicting a dead monkey who wrote President Obama's stimulus bill, associate editor Guzman sent an email to other reporters saying "I had nothing to do with the Sean Delonas cartoon... I have raised my objections to management." Naturally, the note went public.

The Post fired Guzman last week when it discontinued her section, Tempo. But sources inside the paper tell the Huffington Post's Sam Stein that it seemed management was looking for an excuse to get rid of Guzman.

She has been on their shit list and they were trying to look for a reason to get rid of her.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/ny-post-fires-editor-crit_n_311432.html

Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns the Post, is, by all accounts, an organization especially obsessed with loyalty and hierarchy. And Guzman spoke out of turn. Yes, she was correct, and her comments were, even then, restrained. Yes, Murdoch agreed with her, writing that the cartoon was "a mistake... I want to personally apologize..." And yes, in an era of Twitter and Facebook overshares, there are editors who regularly slag their own publications far harder. But it would appear that none of these mitigating circumstances matter in the insular culture of News Corp., where a plainly bigoted but loyal cartoonist remains on staff while the mildest of dissenters is shown the door.

Jennifer 8. Lee of the New York Times gave the app a "yikes" for the "ching-chong voice" used to read the captions. We found the gong and clichéd string refrain similarly distasteful. But some commenters thought we were being too sensitive; people consulted by LuckyFortune developer "FunVid Apps" apparently felt the same:

We have no intention of making fun of Chinese people. In fact, prior to its release we showed the application to a few Chinese-Americans and asked them if they found it offensive and they all thought the application was fun and were not offended at all. One person that I showed the app actually said, "You know Chinese people have a sense of humor too!"

Yes, well, this app isn't going to start, like, personally disenfranchising Chinese Americans any time soon, and there is a certain hilarity in its complete and utter descent into total caricature. But this isn't Eddie Murphy in whiteface, or even Robert Downey Junior in blackface. More like Ted Danson, in that it is fairly unredeemed. LuckyFortune comes not so much to parody Chinese stereotypes as to revel in them, and in the service of the fairly lame goal of reading cheesy fortunes lifted from Phantom of the Opera lyrics. If that's uplifting to you, then you can at least take comfort that, although you may be taking enjoyment from a caricature, you're not doing business with a racist, because, judging from its statement, FunVid Apps is certainly not that.

The company's full statement follows below. (It is signed in the company name. Yesterday we emailed Charles Hill, to whom the FunVid domain is registered; this is the first response we've received.)

We downloaded the app after it was flagged on the personal blog of Jennifer 8. Lee, the Chinese American New York Times reporter who wrote a book on the evolution of the fortune cookie. In a post titled "Now You Can Get Fortune Cookies on Your iPhone with a Ching Chong voice," Lee writes that the voice in the app "definitely doesn't sound like a native Chinese speaker, just what someone who thinks a native Chinese speaker would sound like in English... Yikes."

Yikes indeed. In addition to the ridiculous voice (see our brief video above), there's also the sound of a gong, and a brief string refrain that's become the calling card of all-too-many caricatured "Chinese" moments in film and television. We've emailed app author Charles Hill to get his thoughts, and will update this post if we do. For now this app looks pretty unredeemable. Of course judging by the popularity of stupid "ching-chong" poses among Olympic athletes and teen celebrities, the app should still enjoy some decent sales until Apple yanks it.

Now the software company has to explain why it shamelessly pandered to racist customers in the first place. We recommend blaming a Polak. Always messing up, those people are.

Based on the white/black fellow's visible, hand, and the blurred building where the black guy's head was replaced by the white guy's head, we'd say the black guy was Photoshopped out rather than vice versa. But either way, couldn't Microsoft just spring for some fresh clip art, which would at least be less obvious? As Engadget writes, the software company really does suck at Photoshop.

HuffPo first ran the above image in April on a syndicated story about how India's divorce rate is growing amid as legal and cultural norms become more modern.

It ran the same picture again yesterday with an except of a Time story on how economic problems are undermining marriage in Iran.

Neither of the originating websites used the image.

Where will this young, vaguely ethnic couple be found next? Our money is on Latin America.

Dobbs wished everyone "Happy St. Patrick's Day" on his radio show, because otherwise the UN guys in black helicopters will sniper him to death, immediately. Then, in defiance, he said he detests the drunken Irish holiday, along with that one for the Eye-talians, the Catholics and filthy Anglicans ("St. Joseph") and whatever those Asians do, "you know, 'St. Jin-Tao-Wow."

And also what's with the Jews? Don't they have some kind of day to worship their version of "Saints?" No? Of course not.

Thanks to Media Matters for discovering and recording this gem, a fine basis for a drinking game. How about a shot every time Lou insults, oh, a million ethnics? That will make it a short night.

Mmmm, "Obama Fingers:" These "tender, juicy pieces of chicken breast" are "coated and fried." Then they're served with a delicious curry dip. So: Fried chicken and a sauce that could be from Indonesia or maybe Pakistan. (And to think the White House was once upset over some silly Sasha and Malia dolls.)

German food company Sprehe says: you're welcome, America's first black president!

"It was supposed to be a homage to the American lifestyle and the new US president," said... Judith Witting, sales manager for Sprehe...
"Americans are more relaxed. Not like us stiff Germans, like (Chancellor Angela) Merkel."

It never even occurred to Sprehe that the company might be accused of racial insensitivity. Anyone who thinks "Obama Fingers" are racist just needs to chillax with a carton of their "Obama Ice" watermelon sorbet.

(Pic: AP)

That is to say, Motoko Rich of the New York Times has a section-fronting article on The Kindly Ones today, and that's just the icing: Michiko Kakutani slammed the title in the same space last week, former Simon & Schuster editor in chief Michael Korda raved about it in the Daily Beast, and the whole hullabaloo is a repeat of basically identical controversies in Britain, Germany and originally in France, where it the novel made its debut three years ago.

Kindly Ones involves brutally graphic Holocaust memories — gassings, beatings, worse — of an unrepentant former SS officer, along with his raw sexual fantasies. Littell, an English-speaking American, wrote the book in French. One French critic called it the "new War And Peace." Kakutani: "a pointless compilation of atrocities;" Korda: A work of "astonishing brutality, originality, and force."

If the debate over what Kakutani called an "odious stunt" sounds familiar, that might be because Jonathan Burnham, the publisher who brought the book to the U.S., presided over a similar hubub when HarperCollins bought James Frey's post-fabrication novel, Bright Shiny Morning.

If Burnham is building a reputation among some as a sensationalist, at least he's showing the especially-troubled book industry how to take the right sorts of risks — and in so doing to better compete for consumer attention, as basically every other form of traditional media has learned to do — along the way.

(Pic of Littell by AFP via Getty)

From an editorial on its website:

[The cartoon] was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.... But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

After this very slight contrition, the editorial immediately turns to lashing everyone who has disagreed with the Post in the past, saying they used the cartoon as an opportunity for "payback."

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

We're sorry you issued a pointless apology, Post.

Up top, a clip of Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wondering bemusedly if he's been apologized to, since he's both a Post critic and someone legitimately offended.

Robinson and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann later speculated that recently-liberalized News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch ordered up the New York Post's uncharacteristic written regrets. Well, obviously. A toy does not operate so independently from its owner. (See end of video below for one of several instances in which Murdoch has publicly acknowledged meddling in the tabloid as he sees fit.)

No, the strangely warm conversation between the liberal comic and the conservative shouting head was most confrontational on the topic of Helen Thomas, whom O'Reilly had compared on his Fox News Channel show to the "Wicked Witch of the East" from Wizard of Oz. "If you're going to do a little humor, learn how to do it," Goldberg said. Zing!

Goldberg may have devised the most realistic strategy yet for effectively arguing with O'Reilly on his notoriously hostile show: hold your tongue. She endured absurd, delusional O'Reillyisms like the "bottom rung" comment and the assertion that O'Reilly understands "the Barack Obama phenomenon better than anyone else in this country." Her reward for ignoring this bait was the chance to make the point she was prepared to make, and the one that would most effectively rebut her host.

[via HuffPo]

It was noted in the comments on the Cyrus post that the teen star is from Nashville; hipster comedy goddess Sedaris is from Raleigh, North Carolina (by way of upstate New York), if you're into judging people by geography. Above is an image taken from a book signed by Sedaris on behalf of a Chinese American man's sister in Pennsylvania.

There's also a video from a blogging conference, sent in tonight by a tipster, where Sedaris calls a fellow panelist "Ching Chong over there."

ALSO Sedaris listed her "turn-offs" in The Believer as ""The beach, having to pay for things, racist people, Orientals."

But does anyone honestly believe Sedaris called people "Ching Chong" (twice) because she hates or stereotypes Asian people? It's as clearly comedic — in intent at least — as the New Yorker's Obama cover, or Sarah Silverman "Chink" joke on Conan O'Brien's Late Night (on trying to avoid jury duty: "My friend is like, why don't you write something inappropriate on the form, like 'I hate chinks.' ") The worst that can honestly be said is that it's in bad taste, and what the hell is left of Amy Sedaris' comedy if you take away her well-deployed bad taste?

Anyway the Cyrus thing offends people because it seems so utterly simple and brainless, like all these sorts of pictures do. The implied punch line is along the lines of, "ha ha isn't it hilarious we can look like these strange exotic stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb Orientals."

Or at least that's what many of us assume; a 16-year-old with a father in country music and a show for pre-teens on the Disney Channel is granted less irony credit than a bestselling humorist with a Comedy Central series under her belt and an apartment in Greenwich Village.

In other words, if Cyrus had posted the above photo to her Tumblr with the caption "Here's our Chinese friend Wilfred doing his highly offensive white people impression; we had to fight back, No Justice No Peace" she would have been pretty much fine.

But, come on, Cyrus and her buddies are, like, redneck tobacco-chewing squirrel-eating Southerners who probably went to Wilfred's house and lit a cross on his lawn right after this was taken, YOU KNOW HOW THOSE PEOPLE ARE AMIRIGHT?

(Top image via Angry Asian Man)

King declared "black is in" on CNN Wednesday after talking to an eight-year-old Barack Obama fan named Cannon, who claims to be King's son from his 19th and current marriage, but is obviously really Wolf Blitzer's kid. Bob Woodward politely changed the subject.

Also, on LA radio, King wondered if we'll soon be ruled by a lesbian or something, on account of America's torpid lust for Obama, which proves we're freaky and queer and who knows who we might go for next, maybe a midget.

This would explain, in King's mind, why MSNBC's recently-installed lesbian Rachel Maddow is topping his ratings among the younger demographics. The fact that he says such things out loud would explain why she's doing so, in reality.

[via Telegraph]

Dowd bragged to MSNBC that Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen couldn't get into her big inauguration party last night. She's a celebrity! A crowd gathered behind her during the MSNBC interview, because, the cable network dubiously claimed, members recognized the columnist and were fans, apparently enamored of Dowd's pointless pop-culture references and tired arch emasculation of various male liberals.

Anyway, Dowd said she's very happy about racial discord ending forever — she grew up with black people, you know — so she drank champagne and ate croissants at the Lincoln Memorial, in celebration of DC being integrated. What? Why would Dowd tell this story? Is she trying to parody herself? On peyote? Off of Ritalin?

In another bizarre, self-undermining statement, Dowd said she would go easier on Obama than on Bush, but implied this was only because she was terrified the diverse crowd behind her would tear the columnist limb from limb. Whatever.

Thanks to intern Stacey Fitzgerald for finding this awesomely surreal interview. Clip above.

Saltsman is a big loser just like his old boss, Mike "Failuretown" Huckabee, who once made a Barack Obama joke so distasteful it couldn't get a laugh at an NRA convention.

Saltsman has likewise completely overshot with his demagoguery, alienating a group of Republican party leaders by handing out, as part of his campaign for chairman, a CD by political satirist Paul Shankman, which includes the "Magic Negro" song.

Shankman, who is white, sings in an imitation of Al Sharpton, who in the song puts down Obama as an inauthentic sell out. The tune is supposed to be a parody, or something, of this LA Times op-ed, in which Obama is descirbed as a fantasy figure for whites, who vote for him out of guilt. Here is the stupid thing, via Wonkette:

The song is, at best, an awkward, unfunny example of political blackface, embraced by bigots who could care less about parody or academic op-eds in the LA Times.

The song already stirred up controversy months ago, when Rush Limbaugh played it over and over.  

Why would someone put the tune in the vanguard of his campaign for chairman of the Republican National Committee, guaranteeing a pointless intra-party war over race? It makes no sense. Unless that person is the political wizard behind Huckabee '08. Chip Saltsman clearly intends to squander all hope of victory as quickly as possible before persisting in a pointless, grinding campaign that gets him nowhere.

“We’re not immune from having thieves and people who engage in fraud,” Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League told the New York Times. "Why, because he happens to be Jewish, he should have a conscience?”

Well, yes, that's kind of the point, according to other Jewish people interviewed by the Times about Madoff's impact on Jewish people. Someone raised in the Jewish community ought to have a conscience:

There is a teaching in the Talmud that says an individual who comes before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first one of which is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?” ... The full scope of the misdeeds to which Mr. Madoff has confessed in swindling individuals and charitable groups has yet to be calculated, and he is far from being convicted. But Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal.

Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker.

And then Foxman comes and says there's absolutely nothing to worry about, because there are plenty of conscienceless Jewish thieves. Oy, Abe, bubbeleh, you're not helping! You'd think that the head of an organization devoted to rooting out the slightest sign of anti-Semitism would be more, say, self-aware. Why don't you get back to worrying about Internet commenters saying mean things?