Food for Sport

This just in. MSG apologizes for name, considers change. In the wake of publicity surrounding recent gaffes over Jeremy Lin, the scrawny looking, Chinese-American, Harvard graduate who has become one of the greatest sensations in the history of the National Basketball Association, the board of MSG Sports, owners of the New York Knicks and Rangers, has called an emergency board meeting to address the company’s name.

Lin, who plays point guard for the Knicks, has unleashed an outburst of “Linsanity” across the land and a corresponding outbreak of apologies for insensitive names and boorish behaviors. Most recently, Ben & Jerry’s Boston Scoop Shops apologized for its "Taste the Lin-Sanity" flavored ice cream, whose recipe included pieces of fortune cookies (http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-jeremy-lin-yogurt-20120227,0,1130363.story). Earlier Jason Whitlock of Fox Sports had apologized for a stunningly offensive tweet, which for some reason did not get him fired, and ESPN has suspended one employee and fired another for verbal incidents.

The latest fireworks, according to an unidentified source, arose when the parent company appeared to be caught off guard when a reporter asked about its name. An anonymous spokes “person” later issued a statement: “We should have been more aware,” it said. “We were a big corporation before we realized we were an ingredient in Chinese food. We apologize for our insensitivity.”

In related news:

Several delicatessens in Brooklyn have stopped offering the “Reuben;” McDonald’s will no longer refer to the things on which it serves its “meat” as “buns;” and the Episcopal church has disassociated itself from white bread.