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97.5 million viewers gathered across the nation to watch the Giants take on a last minute victory over the Patriots. This past Super Bowl was it “the most-watched Super Bowl and second-biggest event in American television history.“

Aside from the game, the one of the most talked about aspect of the Super Bowl is the ads. Now, ads cost millions of dollars and inspire some of the most artistic ads that could be considered modern day art. However, two ads in the Super Bowl made my stomach churn in the worst way possible, the two ads sponsored by SalesGenie, a unit of InfoUSA.

One ad has a panda bear named Ling Ling eating bamboo sticks, calling on another panda in a genie hat for advice to save his business in a thick stereotypical Chinese accent. Here’s the ad.

The other ad by SalesGenie has a South Asian worker, Ramesh, who is yelled at by his boss about needing to be more productive and increase sales. Ramesh replies back that he has seven kids to care for and searches for ways to improve his sales, and alas turns to SalesGenie as the solution. Here is the ad.

Now, what is bewildering fact about these ads is that Vinod Gupta, chairman and CEO of Sales Genie’s parent company InfoUSA, wrote the commercials himself. And who is Vinod Gupta and why is he important? Gupta was once appointed by Bill Clinton (when he was prez) to be a member of the Board of Trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

According to the New York Times, Gupta is a valued rainmaker, contributing nearly $1 million to the Clintons and other candidates from the 1980s on. According to the Washington Post, InfoUSA let the Clintons use their private jet for campaigning:

“The jet travel for the Clintons was charged to the company as “business development” expenses, the lawsuit said. The company jet took them to vacation spots, whisked the former president to an international conference in Geneva and to a commemorative speech in Oklahoma City, and shuttled Hillary Clinton to a campaign fundraiser in New Mexico.

The Clintons complied at the time with federal law by reimbursing Gupta for a portion of the costs for the flights Hillary Clinton took to political and other events. The Clintons do not have to reimburse InfoUSA for any of Bill Clinton’s travel, and they had to pay only the equivalent of first-class airfare for her travel, a fraction of the actual cost.”

People say that the Clinton’s have done a lot for our communities by appointing many APIA leaders to positions of prestige. But, what if these people don’t carry the values and seek the advancement for our communities?

The quality not the quantity matters, at least to me.

– Maytak Chin