Rosie finally apologizes
The fall-out from Rosie's "ching-chong" moment on The View continues. In case you missed it, Rosie - commenting on Danny DeVito's drunken appearance on the show - said that the story was so huge that even Chinese papers were covering it. "Ching chong ching ching ching chong Danny DeVito ching ching chong drunk The View ching chong." To date, Rosie's response, made through her publicist, has been along the lines of "get over it." As you might imagine, this response hasn't exactly been embraced by certain Asian-American public figures and organizations including New York City Councilman John Liu. (You can see Liu's letter to Barbara Walters and other Asian-American organizations' responses to the incident at AngryAsianMan.com.)
Today, however, Rosie actually apologized in her own, strangely ironic way. Utilizing a bastardized version of the Japanese poetic form the haiku, Rosie wrote to one of her Asian fans via her blog:
i am sorry it hurt u
i didnt think of it the way it was taken
i will b more sensitive
promise.
I was just watching The View, however, and I'm not sure Rosie actually understands why anyone would be offended at what she said. Barbara imitated a German man who was sitting next to her at dinner, and in response, Rosie freaked in a playful way - "Was that a German accent? You're going to get letters." Clearly, Rosie doesn't understand that she wasn't doing a Chinese accent. She was doing a buck-toothed Mickey Rooney impersonation from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Rosie doesn't need to set out on a Michael Richards-style apology tour, but seriously, a woman who gets her panties in a twist over the slightest, perceived homophobic gesture, could at least pretend to understand why Asian-Americans might be offended at her spontaneous chingchongery.
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