High profile, racially offensive attempts at humor and satire seem to have increased since President Barack Obama became the front-running candidate last summer.

And although the way white artists, satirists and cartoonists have portrayed President and Michelle Obama snatched the most headlines, no racial group is immune from bearing the brunt of cloddish and racially offensive attempts at clever political or social observation.

The most annoying and head shaking aspect of this increasingly apparent pattern, is that once the group which is the subject of the "satire," and its allies, point out that said satire is not effective and is insulting, the creator of the work and his or her allies dismiss all criticism! The protest voices are discounted and brushed aside right into the soundproof booth of the "they are just too sensitive" category.

The excellent blogs Angry Asian Man and Resist Racism bring us the latest example of this behavior:

An e-mail that referred to College President-elect Jim Yong Kim as a "Chinaman" and warned the campus to prepare for "Asianification" has sparked controversy on campus, less than three days after the announcement that the Harvard professor and global health leader would be inaugurated as the College’s 17th president. The e-mail, which was sent to approximately 1,000 students and alumni, was the Tuesday morning edition of the Generic Good Morning Message, a student written and edited tongue-in-cheek compilation of each day’s news. [ ]

The Tuesday morning e-mail led with a feature written by anonymous GGMM intern "Lozar Theofilactidis."

"On July 1, yet another hard-working American’s job will be taken by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler’s checks," the message states, in part. "Unless ‘Jim Yong Kim’ means ‘I love Freedom’ in Chinese, I don’t want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant." Source

And like clockwork, as protests grew louder, the apology appeared. Cue apology:

The author of the original e-mail apologized for "inappropriate" and "insensitive" comments in an e-mail to the GGMM listserv on Tuesday, saying that the comments were intended to be satirical. The GGMM staff also offered a follow-up apology, saying they regretted their lack of oversight. Source

Resist Racism breaks down the predictable third act of this drama:

In addition, this incident is a good example of how racist incidents encourage and embolden other racists. Clearly there are more than just three racists at Dartmouth. From the posts at the Dartmouth Review:

Just when you thought this hilariously over-blown situation was about to resolve itself, …[ ]

Got that? Hilariously over-blown.

[ ] only the specially-trained first responders at OPAL are qualified to deal with this calamity, which in our estimation scores somewhere between the Rape of Nanking and Japanese internment on the Richter Scale of injustice.

What the f**k? Source

Maddening. Read more over at Resist Racism.