Is Barack Obama trying to turn America into a Banana Republic or is this ad just political monkey business?

Neither, this Japanese spot is meant to sell cell phones for EMobile, who thought having the Ku Klux Klan introducing the all new WHITE iPhone would be a little bit too overly overt.

Actually, Obama is really popular in Japan which begs the question, did EMobile really have no idea how offensive it would come off having a black man portrayed as a monkey?

One expert says no:

“The commercial clearly is a parody of Barack Obama’s campaign… but I don’t feel that it reflects racist ideas about black people and monkeys,” wrote James, editor of the JapanProbe website, which is run by US expats.

“I doubt that most Japanese people would even understand how a pink-faced grey monkey native to Japan could be equated to African people.”

So basically this guy from JapanProbe is saying the Japanese would never use a mindless stereotype because they themselves are too stupid to even understand it.

I think my head is going to explode.  

story via, picture via