Ben & Jerry’s apologizes for offending Jeremy Lin ice cream ingredient
Feb 28, 2012, 3:26 PM EDT
AP What they should be apologizing for is the fact that their Taste the Lin-Sanity ice cream flavor is almost identical to their Stephen Colbert Americone Dream. Instead, Ben & Jerry’s is folding to public pressure and offering a frozen mea culpa to “those who were offended” by their Lin flavor, which they rolled out last week. Available only at the Harvard campus Ben & Jerry’s outlet, Taste the Lin-Ssanity originally included fortune cookie pieces as one of its ingredients — a development which offended several people, who considered it racially insensitive. Ben & Jerry’s almost immediately replaced the fortune cookie ingredient with pieces of waffle cone — but only because the fortune cookies were getting soggy in the ice cream. Then the backlash set it.
“On behalf of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Scoop Shops, we offer a heartfelt apology if anyone was offended by our handmade Linsanity flavor that we offered at our Harvard Square location,” the company said in a statement.
“We are proud and honored to have Jeremy Lin hail from one of our fine, local universities, and we are huge sports fans. We were swept up in the nationwide Linsanity momentum. Our intention was to create a flavor to honor Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments and his meteoric rise in the NBA, and recognize that he was a local Harvard graduate. We try to demonstrate our commitment as a Boston-based, valued-led business and if we failed in this instance, we offer our sincere apologies.”
Because what represents Harvard and the Boston area more than the fortune cookie? (*Record scratch*).
Actually frozen yogurt, Taste the Lin-Sanity had swirls of lychee honey in vanilla yogurt, with pieces of fortune cookies. The Asian American Journalists Association was not amused.
“Is there a compelling reason to draw a connection between Lin and fortune cookies, takeout boxes or similar imagery?” the Asian American Journalists Association said in a statement. “In the majority of news coverage, the answer will be no.”
Anyway, those hoping to taste the controversy are too late. It was a limited edition batch, and it’s all sold out, according to Ben & Jerry’s spokeswoman Liz Stewart.
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- silverdeer - Feb 28, 2012 at 6:33 PM
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The funny part about all of the politically correct outrage is that fortune cookies are an American item not Chinese.
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- frankvzappa - Feb 28, 2012 at 10:11 PM
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There is nothing funny about high-horse riding, holier-than-thou mental midgets trying to turn this world into a stale humorless dystopian void.
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- skids003 - Feb 29, 2012 at 7:53 AM
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Now you can’t even make ice cream without offending some PC jerks. Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does. Are there actually people who sit around and look for crap to be offended by?
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- jimsjam33 - Feb 29, 2012 at 2:37 AM
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Ben and Jerry ,
How about introducing a new flavor that has a carton with both of your pictures on it . In keeping with your tradition of arapoe names for your ice cream , name yours ” Tasteless and Crude . “
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- deni1958 - Feb 29, 2012 at 10:42 AM
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seriously….? Albeit that I’m pretty open minded, something you won’t be able to grasp…I’ve never found any of their names offensive, even using the wildest of imagination. Do people have so little to do that they LOOK for a flaw even if it doesn’t exist. Frankly, I would be flattered beyond flattered if someone iconed an ice cream for me…! And a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to boot. Don’t develop an ice cream with anything but a plain, not catchy or cute name EVER again, so you can be spared the crap you catch because of it. Stop being the masters of original because you’ll only be punished for it. Rest assured there are still some of us here who appreciate your imagination and creativity and defiance to fall into the vacuum of ordinary.
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- s1att5 - Feb 29, 2012 at 4:12 PM
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What the hell is “arapoe” because it certainly is not a word? You also realize that neither Ben nor Jerry own the company anymore; it was purchased by Unilever in 2000. In addition, the flavor was created locally at the Harvard Square location (Harvard is where Jeremy Lin went to school, hence the creation of a flavor named after him) and is not a flavor that was released nationally – something you would have picked up by reading the article. You really should have paid more attention in school.
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- anotheryx - Feb 29, 2012 at 9:49 AM
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I’m Chinese and this is the dumbest thing I ever heard…. Really? Someone got offended by hippie ice cream? Who the heck get offedned by ice cream!
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- johninpa - Mar 2, 2012 at 1:26 PM
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Fortune cookies are now some how derogatory to those of far eastern descent? I live in rural Pennsylvania, and that one hasn’t reached us yet. If I go out for Chinese, and ask for a fortune cookie at the end of my meal, I’ve slighted an ethnic group? If I ask the stock person at the grocery “Where are your fortune cookies?”, he might throw me out of the store because of my obvious prejudice? Beam me up, Scotty, I just can’t take it anymore.
