Value Added One of the fun parts of watching the Super Bowl, of course, is watching the ads, and there were some nice ones: the Budweiser Clydesdale ad comes to mind, in which a horse is trained by a Dalmation after he doesn't make the tryout for the Clydesdale team. I also liked the E-Trade ad in which a baby talks about buying stocks online, and how he hired a clown with the profits. "Bobo, there. And, uh, I really underestimated the creepiness." Pretty funny.

But there were some amazingly offensive ads as well, and I say amazingly not just to indicate the depth of their offense, but to register astonishment that in the entire process of creating these ads, nobody thought to say, "You know what? It's not funny any more to make fun of people speaking with foreign accents."

For lots of reasons. But also because, you know, it's not like 98% of Americans could speak Chinese or Hindi.

Salesgenie.com did it twice, and I'm not sure which of their ads was more offensive; after some thought, I'd give it to the ad which featured two pandas, Ching Ching and Ling Ling, with the most stereotypical Chinese accents, having trouble with their "Bamboo Furniture Shack."

There are only two options here: That no one involved was troubled by this racism, or that they knew it was racist and thought they'd benefit from the controversy. Either way—gross.  ¶ 9:31 AM