Different people look for different signs that civilization as we know it is ending. Mine is America's rapidly disappearing sense of humor:
An article in the annual joke issue of Princeton University's student newspaper has left some readers accusing its staff of racism.
The Daily Princetonian issue included a column with a byline that closely resembles the name of Jian Li, an 18-year-old Asian man who filed a civil rights complaint against the university last summer after he was denied admission.
Li, who now attends Yale University, told The Associated Press on Saturday that his complaint against Princeton accusing the school of bias against Asian students remains under investigation.
"I think the article was extremely distasteful," Li said. "Whoever decided to publish it showed an extreme lapse of judgment."
Under a byline of Lian Ji, the article published Wednesday used broken English and spouted racial stereotypes to bash the school for his rejection.
The joke, of course, is that Asian students are discriminated against because they are too smart and tend to raise the curve, so the broken-English stereotype makes fun of a new stereotype. It's not that funny, but they were at least trying. Naturally, those who were offended had to trot out the R-bomb, and the student journalists had to say they were sorry for giving offense, blah, blah, blah. I'd like to see a new version of sensitivity training that begins with a subscription to The Onion.
