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NBC Says Airing Racial Epithet on Late Night with Conan O’Brien Was ‘Mistake’

Sarah Silverman on the Conan O’Brien Show.

“My friend is like, ‘Why don’t you write something inappropriate on the form like ‘I hate chinks’… I just filled out the form and I wrote ‘I love chinks’ — and who doesn’t?’’

So said comedian Sarah Silverman on an episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien aired July 11. Since then, her words have sparked an e-mail campaign amongst Asian Americans — and calls for an apology.

This weekend, Conan O’Brien did just that. During the Television Critics Association annual summer meeting, he said it was his fault that a racial slur aired on his late-night talk show.

“The ultimate responsibility to drop audio on something like that is mine. It’s my show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” he said. “If I had to do it over again, I understand that word is offensive to people, it hurts people. I would say, ‘Let’s drop audio on it.’”

O’Brien said he’ll be more vigilant about what his guests say from now on.

“We have a lot of different voices come on the show, we have a lot of really intelligent, bright people, and I’m very reluctant to edit people,” he said. “In this case, we clearly should have done that. To those people who got hurt hearing that word, I apologize.”

After the show with Silverman aired, Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), an Asian American watchdog group, complained, and NBC replied on July 18 that the racial epithet used by Silverman should have been removed from the broadcast.

The joke “was clearly inappropriate and the fact that it was not edited by our standards and practices department was a mistake,” the network said in a statement.

“We have reviewed our procedures to ensure such an incident does not reoccur and we will edit the joke out of any future repeats of the show,” NBC said.

Guy Aoki, president of MANAA, called the network’s statement “a nice start” but inadequate.

“It’s one thing for NBC to apologize on behalf of one of its shows and another for the show to address it ...”

While bantering with O’Brien on the show, Silverman said she had been called for jury duty but didn’t want to serve. That was her leeway into her comments about Chinese Americans. The joke drew uneasy laughter from the New York studio audience.

“She obviously chose to target a group of people that she felt she could get away with insulting,” Aoki said. “We’re not standing for it.”

MANAA also asked for an apology from Silverman but had yet to hear from the comedian, Aoki said on July 18.

Broadcast networks have been under fire by the NAACP, the Media Action Network and other groups for failing to offer ethnic diversity in their series.

“It’s not constructive to use such a hateful word and play it off for laughs,” Aoki said. “It just gives people permission to continue to use it.”