If you caught a slice of the Joel Stein versus ABCD Hollywood hero Kal Penn (Kalpen Modi) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kal-penn/the-hilarious-xenophobia_b_634264.html slugfest on the net about a feature in Time magazine about the Indian takeover in Edison, New Jersey, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html you would get a sense of how to successfully play up any racially motivated controversy to gain publicity.

First take up the most recent example of said race bashing (however tongue in cheek), then respond to everything literally at face value, proceeding to demonstrate visibly that you clearly don’t have a speck of a sense of humour because if you did you’d see that most of the poor rehashed jokes were milder than usual stuff you get to read/see/hear across the world. Finally, throw in names of the few great people from or troubles faced by the said race (you know Gandhi/Buddha if you are Indian, Martin Luther King/ Mandela if you are black, Einstein / holocaust if you are Jewish etc etc- interestingly who do you quote if you are a white man-hmmmm!!! a nice question there-white apostles of peace don’t easily come to mind maybe because they don’t get quoted as much…. except BINGO!! Mother Teresa… See they do come in all colours!!). You express your distress at your victimization in the strongest possible language with several exclamation marks (now that’s just like this piece of writing fluff!!sic!), get an apology and in the process fry up any possibilities of free speech clause flourishing through to the next generation.

The piece is poorly written and is certainly not worthy of taking up space in a well reputed international magazine but that is the publication’s problem and the author’s, who shows up like a real brat grown up into a jerk who can barely write the comic stuff he purports to write and fits neatly into our stereotype of a typical ugly American. Also, the racial stereotyping in the feature is surprising, coming as it does from someone of Jewish ancestry (Stein- Jew, you’d think so!!), the most vociferous group of people who have perfected the art of reacting to any such racial targeting through the above mentioned process. That Stein recanted so promptly means he has been made aware of the growing Indian readership of Time, which flows well into the mercantile temperament of our American stereotype….. he now knows where a significant amount of the money comes from (because of target reader/market status)and bows to it!!

Kal Penn on the other hand has expressed outrage successfully and garnered significant publicity in the process. He does talk about the poor writing and the absence of humour on other races in this publication, but Gandhi also shows up (to be fair the reference was initiated by Stein on twitter-http://twitter.com/thejoelstein) while the free speech clause flies straight through the window. But, I wonder why it all gets so personal? Possibly because where Penn grew up is predominantly white and he did get a lot of grief from peers in the process. Will his reply stop that, unlikely.

What will shut Stein up successfully is if we stop reading such trite and poorly researched nonsense which goes into print masquerading as lifestyle features. The loud griping gets the author more publicity and is really counter-productive. Besides, we can’t protest every time someone lets their creativity flow just because it doesn’t parallel our view-point. It is important to hear what other people are thinking and unless it reaches print how would you know that. But if you feel the targeting is systematic and if you don’t like it, write to the publication and more importantly don’t renew subscriptions, basically vote with your wallet. Now that would really underline the statement you want to make.

Let’s face it, we are the new target for minority bashers in the developed world as non-resident Indians become more affluent and our domestic economy looks stronger. So be prepared to be a more universal butt of jokes going ahead and hope the lines get a little more creative than Dot-Head, so one can actually laugh at them. But, please lighten up and laugh a bit as well. Walk rapidly sideways into a door to rediscover that funny bone if you must but for the sake of our reputation, let’s learn to see the funny side of things. If you still don’t get it, get lessons from your neighbourhood Sardarji.