Car And Driver, Crossing The Line?

In the new March issue of Car and Driver, John Phillips has a humor piece titled "My dinner with the Big 1.5". The premise is that he went to a holiday dinner with Kwame "The Navigator" Kilpatrick, mayor of Detroit, Ford's CEO Bill "The Kid" Ford Jr., and Rick "The Wagon Master" Wagoner of GM. Here is an excerpt:

"My peeps are doin' me dirty", said Detroit mayor Kwame "The Navigator" Kilpatrick as he hacked at the undercooked Butterball. "Soon's they reelect me, they demand a recount. Gonna cost $500,000 they say".

In case you didn't know, despite his rather Irish sounding name, Kilpatrick is black. And Phillips practically dressed him up in blackface. "Soon's the reelect me".

I'm not a P.C. type of guy, but this piece surprised me for its brazen-ness. The premise isn't bad, and some of it is really funny (Ron Gettelfinger is nicknamed "Butterfinger").

Did C&D go too far with this one? Should Kilpatrick send his aptly named police chief, Ella Bully-Cummings to come to C&D's offices and open a can of good old-school Detroit police brutality on their asses?