In other words, a character right out of a ["]Polish joke"- he even has the name.

That is, he seems to have acted like a character in a Polish joke (which doesn't entail approval of such jokes or that one subscribes to the idea that Poles are stupid) and as it happens his name even sounds like a Polish name (whether it is or not).

Cf.:

Use-mention distinction
...
In written language, mentioned words or phrases often appear between quotation marks ("Chicago" contains three vowels) ... Used words or phrases (much more common than mentioned ones) do not bear any typographic distinction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction

It's not "insensitive" on LEP's part, while, arguably, you are being over-sensitive.


Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.