Posted on 02/17/2010 8:08:46 AM PST by Candor7
When you go into politics, for good or ill, NOTHING is off limits. That is the reality. Family Guy won't pay the price. I suspect the ratings will go up. Sarah will, and is paying the price, for appearing to humorless and thin skinned. That is the reality too.
Is that a dig at people of limited patience? My brother is a person of limited patience and I think you have just insulted him!;-)
Has Sarah Palin ever commented “There’s Something About Mary?”
Is the issue that Trig is off-limits or that humor involving the mentally challenged is off-limits?
and indifferentiable too!
The simple fact is they are bringing Palin’s kids into the mix. It doesn’t matter if they show them in a good or bad light. Our society says it’s not ok to exploit the Rat kids, so we should do the same with Republcan children. The kids are off-limits.
Damned straight. Woe be unto the anal orifice that mocks Trig.
How was the female character “made fun of”? Someone else said there was a song by stewie, but nobody else has discussed that as having made fun of the girl.
So far as I can tell, the complaint is that the girl has Down’s. How is “having Down’s” an attack on another person who has Down’s?
Clearly they wanted to draw attention to Sarah Palin and her fight over the word “retarded”. But given that Sarah has publicly and repeatedly said that her child has Down’s, how is simply making the connection that her son has Down’s and “attack” on him?
What did Family Guy do to the girl with Down’s that would be construed as an attack on Down’s Syndrome children? And how does that translate into an attack on Trig?
Are we supposed to honor Trig who has Down’s, or are we supposed to pretend to ignore Trig with Down’s?
“did the song imply that robot strength was bad, or that the robot strength was a result of her having Down’s?”
I don’t know...you tell me if that’s the kind of quality ‘mainstream society’ accepts in ‘hot chicks.’
And yes, the song was ONLY about “Down’s Syndrome Girl.”
Personally, I love Family Guy, but this episode was not particularly funny or good.
Sarah needs to rise above this. She’s only calling more attention to lowlifes like McFarland (sp?), who stoop to the lowest forms of humor and cater to the lowest common denominator. At least South Park and SNL are funny, on occasion. I just don’t get the appeal of Family Guy.
But anyway, she knows as well as anyone else that people with no other talent to speak of will stoop to base humor for a cheap laugh. They’ve been with us since the birth of theater and they’re not going away.
If Sarah’s going to be the next Reagan, she needs to carry herself as such. Ron’s family took some lumps in the media too, but he always carried himself with dignity. Trig’s going to discover soon enough that there are mean people out there who will make fun of his condition, and they’re not all on the schoolyard. It’s what you do about them that counts.
Look, I understand what you say. The character played in the scene was actually fidelic to the behavior of young adults with Down’s Syndrome. Even the demand for a backrub — because physical contact — hugs, rubs, with adults and strangers is a big part of the experience of children growing up with Downs.
But you’re wrong for at least a few reasons I can, hopefully, make clear.
The first is what I suggested with my first post — Family Guy is a bad hangout. By placing an obvious take-off on Trig in that setting, is like placing Trig himself in bad company. Yes, it’s ‘virtual’, being a cartoon, but ‘virtual’ life is more and more linked with real life.
It’s a False Lights slander. I’d guess most Freepers know what that is already. Sarah was hobbled by another, similar, False Lights slander, when funny gal Tina Fey dressed up like Sarah and said “I can see Russia from my front porch!”
Sarah never said that, but many people STILL believe she did. False lights were used by shore pirates to draw ships in shallows where they’d wreck or beach. As a doctrine of slander it means that something not really associated with a person or the discussion at hand is used to smear it.
Another way it would be wrong to leave the skit go unchallenged is that to allow it is to allow or condone future use of Trig as a stock item by comedians, something that would surely result in more despicable characterizations.
The kids are off-limits.
What if instead of a DS kid it was a pregnant teenager who said her mom was the Gov of alaska. That would be crossing the line.
Now if it was a pregnant teenager but didn’t tie it to Sarah Palin or Bristol then it’s ok...have fun.
Just ask what would the NY Times say if they did the same skit with Chelsea when Clinton was President. That appears to be the standard and we should expect the same for all politcians as it really is a reasonable standard.
The issue is that the kids are off limits when it comes to politics.
A woman should be allowed to take herself seriously in her career and NOT have people attack her and her children relentlessly with hate.
Very good point. Though Reagan and his family were often attacked viciously, I can' think of a single example when he complained about it or called attention to it.
In the real world, they aren't and will never be. Get used to it. Sarah should too.
Well, Chris Burke is especially high functioning.
My problem with all of this is that I don’t know what Sarah Palin wants. She seems to go back and forth betweening protecting Trig (which I agree with) and telling us what we should think about people with Down Syndrome (which I don’t agree with).
The most popular radio show for years in DC was “The Don and Mike Show.” Chris Burke was a guest fairly often and they seemed to have fun with him. He also seemed to be incredibly self-aware about his disability. They teased him, but everyone seemed in on the joke.
At the same time, when they thought a caller was stupid, they would play a clip of Chris Burke singing “Poison Ivy.”
Family Guy crosses every line there is - racial, religious, you name it. It’s had characters dress like Aunt Jemima. It made an incredibly crass joke about abortion.
I don’t find the show terribly funny. But I also feel like we should be allowed to make jokes about everything - race, religion, disability, etc.
Is Palin saying that we can’t?
Ar you saying family guy shouldn’t have any child characters? Or that they shouldn’t have any child characters with disabilities?
BTW, I realize that shows like South Park and Family Guy can be very offensive to people with disabilities, and people who have religious beliefs, as well as many other people. They exist partly to offend groups of people.
I just don’t see how this particular clip of a girl with Down’s is an attack on Trig, and it seems the only people who brought Trig into the Family Guy discussion are Palin and the others complaining about it.
Like I said elsewhere, what if they had had a girl without Down’s, but who was pregnant? Would that have been an attack on Bristol? What if the girl was older, and had just gotten back from Iraq. Would that be an attack on Track?
They made a stupid joke about the mother being the ‘ex-governor of alaska’. They clearly did it to get Palin to react, and I think Family Guy is quite happy with the response, and I think we’ve done nothing but build up their ratings, and validated the left’s penchant for punishing people with political correctness attacks.
Rush knew this, and I think he responded in an interesting way, supposedly supporting Palin, but yet ignoring her requests not to use the word, and in fact defending the use of the word “retarded” to label stupid liberals.
I don’t see how someone can “love” Family Guy and then get offended at anything on the show?
Were you offended when Peter talked about the one-handed abortionist and that “five months later, our daughter Meg was born.”
Were you offended when Stewie wanted to have sex with Brian?
I said this from the start: The Palins were overexposing their children, which was going to bring them some grief. It also puts the children in danger with all the nuts running around.
...”This is called hypocrisy in action folks, and the truth is, most of these depraved and pathetic leftist pukes would have shipped off Sarah Palin to Communist China for a forced abortion, had it been within their power and Trig wouldn’t even exist today”...
To me, it is beyond hypocrisy..It is Satanic.
The thing you forget and others is that these episodes, according to Rush, are made about a year ahead of when you see them. So this one would have been made around election time, a little later? And we’re talking big, fat, sick, libs here. They just suddenly decide to put in a character who has DS and a mother who was Governor of Alaska? Skewed so that people can ask ‘what was wrong with that?’.
You trust these libs to ‘not’ be taking a dig at Trigg? Do you really?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.