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Ashton Kutcher's new ad campaign for Pop Chips does a pretty unfunny caricature of an Indian guy, and has thus, understandably, riled up some folks. In the ad, Kutcher's skin is darkened, he puts on a pretty bad Indian accent, eats the chips and utters the comedic gem, "these are the Bomb-ay." Yeah...

The New York Times had details on the campaign this morning (making no mention of the racial depiction). Per The Times' Stuart Elliot:

The campaign, scheduled to be under way on Wednesday morning, features Mr. Kutcher’s portrayal of four different comedic personalities, all of them, natch, fans of Popchips. Mr. Kutcher has been involved with marketing Popchips since he was named the brand’s “president of pop culture” in 2010 ... ... The campaign, with a budget estimated at $1.5 million, will include video, outdoor ads and social media sites like Facebook andYouTube.

$1.5 million is a lot of money to pay for a PR disaster. As a general rule, when planning to disseminate something on the internet, it's probably best to have a very clear idea of why one is imitating another race for comedic purposes. If the answer is just that the accent seems kind of funny, as it seems to be in this Kutcher ad, it's best to avoid it and certainly best not to put aside millions of dollars to promote it. Already (in this case, appropriately named) rap group Das Racist, and a bunch of others, are on Twitter urging people to call or write in to Pop Chips, calling him out by his Twitter handle: "Hey, @aplusk what's with the racist brownface video you talentless, pretending to care about sex trafficking piece of shit?" Das Racist tweets. Kutcher, for his part, is linking to the campaign with the tweet, "Looking for love?"