Well Joel Stein...

The Indian community is showing outrage to your satirical piece, My Own Private India.
I, on the other hand, laugh. I am slightly offended, but not to the same extent as the Indians who have labeled you a racist. I didn't feel like you were targeting Indians as a whole, I felt like you were targeting Indians who live in Edison, New Jersey.
Almost every Indian family who live in the United States, I can definitively assure you readers, know about this quaint little town known as Edison, in New Jersey. Almost every Gujurati family, I would assume, have some family member, family friend, or acquaintance who resides there. But, I am no fan of this town. I have a large disdain for this Edison, stemming from the fact that it is chockfull of Indians.

You were not trying to be edgy with your humor, because that would be exactly the opposite of what a TIME writer should be doing. They don't want to offend anyone with racist articles, of course.

It also seems as if you were insulting Hinduism with your statement: In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if "dot heads" was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.. But it was misinterpreted by the readers. He wasn't insulting Hinduism at all! In fact, he was insulting racists.

Many were also extremely offended by this following quote:

For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.

However, just because it is offensive doesn't make it less true. It's a very valid point.

And you weren't missing the Edison that you had before the Indian immigrants arrived; that was not what you were nostalgic about, so it seemed to me. You were nostalgic about the Edison in which there were these Indian immigrants, and because of that the better restaurants and friends.

So dear Joel Stein, it is apparent that your piece has been misunderstood, and your humor went over their heads. But, it does ring true.