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Super Bowl Ad Hits Racist Notes

Shows woman in rice paddies speaking broken English.

There were plenty of inspirational Super Bowl ads that tried to play on fears about America’s decline, but former Rep. Peter Hoekstra’s Senate campaign took a different approach. The ad, which aired during the game in Michigan, features an Asian woman wearing a conical straw hat, riding a bike through a rice-paddy field and saying things like “Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good.” Despite controversy about the ad, Hoekstra’s spokesperson stood by it, saying that it was satirical and the woman’s broken English was meant to bring attention to the Chinese education system. “It exhibits another way in which China is competing with us globally,” said the spokesman. Asian-American groups and even some GOP consultants have criticized the ad.