By now, you've heard about Joel Stein's idiot-ass column (an attempt at humor, allegedly) in TIME, about the large population of Indians in his hometown of Edison, New Jersey. Hi-larious.
In turn, Indian American actor Kal Penn has written his own satire-inflected retort in the Huffington Post: The "Hilarious" Xenophobia of Time's Joel Stein. Right back at ya, Stein!
Growing up a few miles from Edison, NJ, I always thought it was hilarious when I'd get the crap kicked out of me by kids like Stein who would yell "go back to India, dothead!" I was always ROTFLMAO when people would assume that I wasn't American. He really captured the brilliant humor in that one too!Now that is funny. Read the rest of Kal's piece here. I'm still pretty stunned that TIME would publish a piece in such bad taste. But then again... maybe not. More here: Indians 'Shocked,' 'Offended' By Joel Stein's TIME Article.
Critics might call Mr. Stein's humor super-tired or as played out as the jokes about that cheap Jewish car that stopped on a dime to pick it up, or that African American kid who got marked absent at night school. Although unlike Stein's Indian American piece, in 2010 those other jokes don't show up in mainstream media like Time Magazine. I wonder why that is...
