Via TPM:

Robert DeNiro offered a clarification of his joke at an Obama fundraiser Monday about whether the nation was “ready for a white first lady.” The line drew an outraged response from Newt Gingrich earlier in the day, who told a Louisiana audience that DeNiro was promoting racial conflict and that the president should apologize on his behalf.

DeNiro’s response was polite, if not particularly apologetic.

“My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone — especially the First Lady,” DeNiro said in a statement to TPM.

A campaign spokeswoman for the First Lady, who was present at the fundraiser, said earlier in an e-mail that the joke was “inappropriate.”