Rosie O'Donnell, a regular on the television talk show "The View," apologized Thursday on the show for mocking the Chinese language after being slammed by protests from Asian Americans across the country.
"I'm sorry for those people who felt hurt," O'Donnell said, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
According to the Chronicle, on Dec. 5, O'Donnell imitated how she thought Chinese broadcasters might sound discussing actor Danny DeVito's drunken appearance on "The View."
"You know, you can imagine in China it's like, 'ching chong, ching chong chong, Danny DeVito, ching chong chong chong, drunk, "The View," ching chong.' "
The Chronicle reports that on Thursday, O'Donnell expressed surprise when she learned that some Asian Americans considered speaking in that kind of sing-song accent a grave insult. She sympathized with Asian Americans who were teased for their ancestral language while growing up.
But an association that represents journalists from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, including Chinese American, told the Associated Press that OíDonnellís apology wasn't enough.
Karen Lincoln Michel, president-elect of Unity: Journalists of Color Inc., said to the AP that O'Donnell's remarks "really didn't sound like an apology to me."
Lincoln Michel told the AP that Unity was waiting for Barbara Walters, who created the show, to respond to a letter asking her to publicly acknowledge that O'Donnell's remarks were "patently offensive."
"I think by allowing Rosie O'Donnell's cheap jabs at Chinese Americans to go unchecked, then the network is essentially condoning racial and ethnic slurs," Lincoln Michel told the AP in a phone interview.
However, O'Donnell warned that she is a comedian and does accents of all kinds, including Dec. 5's, which she characterized as "Chinese, Asian, pseudo-Japanese, sounded a little Yiddish."
