I was listening to and Old Time Radio tape of “Burns and Allen.” They often do war time (world war II)promos in their skits. Like “and remember to buy war bonds…the more you buy the faster ‘Fortress Europe’ will come tumbling down.”
Gracie is in the kitchen talking to her pet duck Herman.
Herman) Quack Quack Quack
Gracie) What’s that? Why Herman that is waste kitchen fat. The government needs us to save all our waste kitchen fat
Herman) Quack?
Gracie) Why? Why for every pound of waste kitchen fat turned in you can make a bullet. You see waste kitchen fat contains glycerin. That is used in making bombs and bullets. Why just think Herman that pound of waste kitchen fat may just make the bullet that gets Hitler
Herman) Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack
Gracie) Yeah I hope it kills him too.
In a way I was shocked to hear someone wish death upon someone. Granted I know it’s Hitler, but I was thinking if you said the same kind of thing about say Osama Bin Laden today, you’d probably have people protesting.
Do You think you could get away with that today on like a televison show in Prime Time (yes I realize on Mad-TV or SNL they would be able to do it)
This is the price we pay for having an enlightened society.
There are always going to be people in societies like ours who will say “It’s not right to kill someone because they disagree with us.” Such people are called “idealists” by polite people and “Fucking retarded morons” by the rest of us.
What gets me is whole “save your kitchen grease” was propaganda stirred up by FDR and his bunch to make gullible americans feel better about rationing.
I dunno. Seems to me that’s no different than the late-night talk shows riffs on bombing Osama straight to Allah or such. They’re clearly wishing for someone’s death.
Ahem., civilized people do NOT kill other people becauew they disagree with us. That, ironically enough, is Bin Laden’s philosophy you’re defending.
In any event, I want to see Bin Laden and his followers dead, not because I disagree with them, but because they perpetrated a heinous attack on our soil that killed thousands of American civilians.
I don’t like to give exasperated sighs very often because it’s a tad impolite and is unlikely to help anything. But honestly, that’s the only response I can think of that truly conveys what I feel about his statement.
I isn’t right to kill someone because they disagree with us. It is just not right. People may do this sometimes, but it’s not OK. If the only reason that you kill someone is because they disagree with you then that’s wrong.
And calling people who believe this “Fucking retarded morons” is venomous and unpleasant in the extreme. In reply I would have to call someone who actually kills someone for no other reason than that they disagree with them a “psychopath”.
I don’t mean this to be an attack on anyone, what I wrote above. But statements like the one above bother me a bit. I don’t feel that believing that killing is wrong makes you a " Fucking retarded moron". To me killing someone only because they disagree with you is pretty close to killing someone for no reason, not the same, but not so far apart in the whole scheme of things. There are so many much more convincing reasons for killing people (though most of them are still wrong most of the time, in my opinion).
I was watching All the Family and was horrified to see Archie refer to “Jigs and Kikes.” My fingers feel dirty just typing that. How the hell that show ever got on air is beyond me. My father said it was hilarious, especially the episode with Sammy Davis Jr, but I know that it would never got on the air today.
A dark-skinned person, especially of African ancestry. Similar to calling an Irishman a “mick” or a Jewish person a “kike.” Nice to see that at least one person has never heard the term.
BTW, ivylass, I trust you know that Archie Bunker was intended to be taken as an example of a bitter, ignorant person with despicable ideas, in comparison to his enlightened daughter and son-in-law. He was not held up as a role model.
Maybe you missed it, but jokes about killing Osama bin Laden have been pretty much constant on television for the last three years, and I haven’t heard of a single “Be Nice to Osama” protest yet.
Er, just curious, but are you trying to be ironic?
I can’t think of specific examples of the top of my head, but I’m sure I’ve seen such jokes on Conan O’Brian. And that sort of humor (which is both cruel and pandering) seems perfectly in personality for either Letterman (who can be more than a little mean) and Jay Leno (who panders like he’s writing for Star Trek).
And, of course, there was an entire South Park episode devoted to hunting down and killing bin Laden. To say nothing of what they’ve done to Saddam Hussein. Not a talk show, but a heck of a lot more graphic than that routine by Burns and Allen.
I probably just should’ve taken a different tack: joking about somebody’s death isn’t the same as wishing for it. I don’t like wishing death on anybody, including bin Laden, but I can’t see my way to begrudging people jokes about it.
Wanna hear something really, really sad? Though you are correct that that was the intent of the show’s creator; many, many Americans (bigoted, White Americans) thought that Archie was the heroic protagonist of the series, and not a fatally-flawed one.
I can’t help but think the course of Germany would have been different if they’d been led by a Kaiser Syd. Although I bet they still would’ve pissed off England with a new version of “God Save the Queen.”
