Eyesore update

A second slant-eyes pose, this time from an Argentinian sports team, as emerged.

But I'm actually kind of glad it did, because it started a lively discussion among Consumerist readers, who are a bit more mature than your average Yahoo and at least can post halfway intelligent responses (for the most part).

Many thought it was slightly offensive, but not to the extreme as blackface. A few didn't think so at all. An Argentinian even responded to say that it is not considered offensive in his country and described the action as "friendly and playful." He was quite nice and said that "if any Chinese friends out there find this offensive I apologize for my misunderstanding."

Finally, a commenter asked if there were any Asians out there who would say whether the photo(s) offended them, to which I and several others had the same response: Yes, it's offensive. Yes, we've seen it all before, including people saying to us, "ching, chong, ching, chong," as if that means something in Chinese.

However, aside from one, all the Asian commenters grew up in North America or Northern Europe. Have we become so overy sensitive that we can't take a joke? Or is the rest of the world so isolated from other cultures that they still find other types of people curious and amusing? The one Asian commenter not from the West said he lived in Seoul, and when he asked a friend whether the photo was offensive, his friend said no.

That doesn't change my personal feelings toward the photos, which is that if there were a question as to its taste, do something else. Just be polite.