Remember when Danny DeVito appeared drunk on 'The View'? Well, it later turned out that he wasn't exactly drunk, only with a very serious hangover from a wild night of hitting the bars with his good friend George Clooney. However, the talk host for the show, Rosie O'Donell tried to mend an embarrassing situation by cracking a joke, which only blew in her face.

A few days after the DeVito incident, Rosie was telling her audience that it would surely make all the international news. 'The fact is that it's news all over the world', she said. 'You know, you can imagine in China it's like, 'Ching-chong, ching-chong. Danny DeVito. Ching-chong, ching-chong-chong. Drunk. The View. Ching-chong.'

Little did she think that her innocent joke would be taken as an insult, a direct offense to a certain group of people. Spokespersons for Asian-Americans sent a joint letter to Barbara Walters, the producer of the show, in which they said that, quote, 'the use of the distorted phrases is insulting to the Chinese and Chinese-Americans, and gives the impression that they are a group that is substandard to English-speaking people.', claiming that they were belittled by the way O'Donnell spoofed their language.

And they were right: in a world were we are theoretically aiming at correctness on all fronts, O'Donnell's words came as a bomb. Then again, there was the fact that, although a very sensitive defender of gays' rights, she wasn't even aware that she was completely off the line.

In the latest edition of 'The View', Rosie apologized (sorta), by saying that she only became aware of what she had done after she spoke with an Asian staff member. However, her speech was one second of honesty short of an apology and her 'misunderstood sense of humor' can no longer be called in to stand for her lack of appropriateness.

'This apparently was very offensive to a lot of Asian people. So apparently "ching-chong", unbeknownst to me, is a very offensive way to make fun, quote unquote, or mock, Asian accents. Some people have told me it's as bad as the N-word. I was like, really? I didn't know that. [I] never intended to hurt anyone, and I'm sorry for those people who felt hurt or were teased on the playground. There's a good chance that I'll do something like that again...[But] not on purpose.', O'Donnell said in her so-called 'apology'.

But the people who felt offended in the first place are not buying it and many say that she just went on the show and said all of the above because she doesn't want them to 'cause waves'. So, in the end, the matter is still open to debate. We'll keep you posted here with more details.