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Ben & Jerry's franchisee apologizes for use of fortune cookies in flavor honoring Lin
Ben & Jerry's found itself with an unwanted part of the Linsanity spotlight over the weekend. The Harvard Square Boston franchisee of Ben & Jerrys apologized after the scoop shop offered a handmade flavor called Taste the Lin-Sanity last week whose ingredients included fortune cookies. It became the latest instance nationwide in which the ascendance of Taiwanese-American star Jeremy Lin in the NBA had led to a company running afoul of stereotypes or inappropriate language regarding Asian Americans. Following an uproar of indignant response in papers and on websites across the country, not to mention Twitter, the Ben & Jerry's scoop shop's Jason Sweeney issued an apology on behalf of himself and his team at the Cambridge, Mass., franchise. In it, he noted that New York Knickerbockers point guard Lin had graduated from Harvard University. We are proud and honored to have Jeremy Lin hail from one of our fine, local universities and we are huge sports fans, Sweeney wrote. We were swept up in the nationwide Linsanity momentum. Our intention was to create a flavor to honor Jeremy Lins accomplishments and his meteoric rise in the NBA, and recognize that he was a local Harvard graduate.

With that, Sweeney offered his sincere apologies, and said he'd pulled the fortune cookie pieces in favor of waffle pieces, according to The Boston Globe. Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerrys director of public relations at its corporate headquarters in South Burlington, said Monday that all of the companys franchisees have the ability to create limited runs of flavors such as Taste the Lin-Sanity. Generally, however, those custom flavors are for someones birthday party, and dont create a national furor. Greenwood deferred questions about the use of fortune cookies in the ice cream flavor to the Massachusetts franchisee, who could not immediately be reached for comment. A week ago, sports network ESPN apologized for three different instances in which an Asian-American slur was used in stories or commentary about Lin -- on ESPN's mobile site, on ESPNNews and on an ESPN radio station.