Michigan Politician Airs Racially Insensitive Super Bowl Ad

By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 6, 2012 3:40PM

The Super Bowl has become nearly as much about the commercials that air during the broadcast as the game itself these days. One ad that aired in Michigan last night is gaining national headlines for its seeming racial insensitivity.

Former Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra, who's running for Senate against incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow, is drawing heat for the ad, which features a Chinese woman with a conical straw hat, riding a bike through a rice paddy field and speaking in pidgin English, thanking Sen. "SpenditNOW" for the rising Chinese economy. Some of the highlights of the ad (such as they are) include:

"Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good [sic]," the actress says, in broken English.

"Thank you Michigan Senator Debbie 'Spend-it-now'. Debbie spend so much American money [sic]," the actress says, without a Chinese accent. "You borrow more and more, from us…we take your jobs. Thank you Debbie 'Spend-it-now.'"

The Hoekstra campaign explained the ad as a satirical look at the "increasingly competitive Chinese education system."

"You have a Chinese girl speaking English, I want to hit on the education system, essentially," Hoekstra told Politico. "The fact that a Chinese girl is speaking English is a testament to how they can compete with us, when an American boy of the same age speaking Mandarin is absolutely insane, or unthinkable right now."

How Hoekstra hoped to convey that satire using a woman speaking broken English is anyone's guess.

One Michigan GOP consultant, Nick De Leeuw, called the ad "appalling."

"Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement," De Leeuw wrote on Facebook.

The Michigan chapter of Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group called the ad "disturbing" while using "harmful stereotypes" to foster "anti-Asian sentiment."