I’ve never been good at rhyming slang.
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Has anyone checked his adult diaper lately? Asking for a friend…
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Agreed. But it’s hard to tell sarcasm and subtlety from text, and I have an axe to grind about how people so often want to identify with the main character of a show, whether the character is an awful person or not.
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He seems more like an Alf Garnett (the character who Archie Bunker was a toned down version of)
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Once these people realize they have fucked up and enter panic mode, they always keep digging their hole deeper.
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I honestly can’t remember if I ever even heard of that sitcom. I assume it was terrible if the star wouldn’t let his character be someone people would laugh at.
Wasn’t his character on Home Improvement basically the standard dopey sitcom husband/father figure who is always learning Important Life Lessons like “you should have listened to your wife the first time because she’s clearly the smart one in this relationship?”
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Not only that but in the title of the article.
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Exactly. And pompous/overly confident. I don’t think Tim Allen actually acts, he just plays himself in every show.
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Archie was a complicated and actually very well-written character. If a person would identify with him as a flawed and failed but overall well-meaning person I might be able to feel sympathy for them.
But most people that identify with Archie do that because they like the flaws in him and are proud to share those flaws. That is different, that is like identifying with Jesus because you like beating up people at the market. You are missing the point mate.
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Because ‘kike’ hasn’t been in wide usage since, oh, 1972 or so… Last time I heard of someone using itunironically before this was the early 80s when the owner of a local rib joint chain wrote a threatening letter to his Jewish dry cleaner, calling him a kike. The cleaner went to the local paper with the note and they ended up closing the restaurant across from my temple. He retired a few months later and handed the business to his son. I remember kids talking about it in Hebrew school. We’d heard OF the word but it was the first time most of us heard it used in context.
Now, if you want to slur Jews, you just call them “Jews” and make it clear from tone that it’s meant as a slur.
I also don’t imagine anyone will get too out of shape if one spells out ‘mick’ or ‘wop’, equally offensive terms that have lost their power through disuse.
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Agreed; we could really use the show again today to try and re-model his learning curve.
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Indeed it is, so considering the source is a valuable exercise. Mindy is a long term member in good standing who has a visible track record of her views.
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No, not really. From the mouth of Norman Leer, he noted how many people identified with Archie because they saw themselves as sharing his flaws of being standing against the changes happening in the US. They very much identified with his “flaws” of racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Those are “flaws” that would be better for people to grow out of.
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Maybe you should have included a sarcasm signifier?
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I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone use this slur like this in my lifetime, so the racism that he is emulating must be quite old.
Well, bigotry against Jews is “as old as the hills,” and still exists, but yeah, in daily parlance, usage of the k-word/slur has declined greatly. I imagine that a lot of young peeps have no idea what it means, let alone its derogatory connotations.
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I wonder how often people say “How about Puerto Ricans? How about white guys?” in response to people saying Blue Lives Matter. My guess is never, but maybe we should start. 
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I mean, what I said was a factual statement. Norman Leer has talked about this. Some admired Archie Bunker because they saw him as standing his ground for white men in America.
Unfortunately, we’re always going to have to deal with intent of the author vs. how people interpret their work, especially in popular culture.
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True that; I’ve seen at least one interview where he seemed pretty frustrated that so many people totally “missed the joke”.
Of course showing more negative consequences for Archie due to his shitty attitude and behavior would probably have gone a long way.
Someone upthread posted a comic where people constantly make the same excuse for asshole behavior - “that’s just how he is.” The problem is that nothing ever changes if nothing ever changes.
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