{"id":2810,"date":"2003-02-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/02\/03\/2003-02-03-magazine-apologizes-for-offensive-gandhi-representation\/"},"modified":"2003-02-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-03T12:00:00","slug":"2003-02-03-magazine-apologizes-for-offensive-gandhi-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/02\/03\/2003-02-03-magazine-apologizes-for-offensive-gandhi-representation\/","title":{"rendered":"Magazine Apologizes for Offensive Gandhi Representation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/news\/181_152226,00050001.htm\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, USA, January 31, 2003: A massive online protest by Indians and pacifists from many countries has forced Maxim, a British and American soft-porn magazine, to apologize for its literal Gandhi-bashing caricatures in its latest issue. In that issue, a martial arts expert is show in a series of cartoons &#8220;exercising&#8221; by beating up a character that looks like Gandhi. The apology from editor-in-chief Keith Blanchard came after more than 5,000 Indians clogged the magazine&#8217;s e-mail addresses with protest messages. Many of them followed up the online protest with angry telephone calls. Maxim vacillated a great deal before coming out with the apology, however what seems to have finally worked was a threat by IndiaCause, a US-based activist group, to approach advertisers with appeals to stop giving ads to a publication that has &#8220;insulted the apostle of peace.&#8221; It even put out a sample letter to corporate heads on its website. Issuing the apology late Thursday, Blanchard said: &#8220;We apologize if our cartoon depicting Mahatma Gandhi&#8230;was interpreted as offensive. An edgy sense of humor, laced with irony, has always been a central element of Maxim&#8217;s editorial. For some people, this piece may have gone one step too far.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE WASHINGTON, USA, January 31, 2003: A massive online protest by Indians and pacifists from many countries has,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}