Phil Robertson "Fired"

[fuzzygobo]

Oh, yes... definitely. That's the reason he was seen more as a joke than a menace. It's not so much that he shouted a bunch of angry hateful sounding nonsense as a passive aggressive come back, it's that he completely and utterly bombed and had a mental breakdown. It was a crappy last ditch effort to shut a bunch of hecklers up, and he'd pull any kind of extreme insult no matter who was in the audience heckling him. He went for a racial thing because he was angry and not thinking straight.

There are many other comedians that can defuse that situation and make the hecklers look like the biggest losers out there. I read something about Patton Oswalt totally handing a heckler's butt to himself. Michael wasn't savvy. He probably was pretty lousy as a stand up comedian, and he really had no legitimate work for years, and here he is in a dive bar being heckled. He acted out of anger boneheadedly, but was considered to be a joke over being offensive.

I take it back a bit... it probably cost him his career, but he probably didn't have much of one to begin with anyway. Though he did totally have a cameo in Bee Movie that had to go uncredited or Alan Smithee'd.

Probably the best comedian I've ever seen put a heckler in his place was Tim Allen.
This was 1990, about a year or two before "Home Improvement" exploded, and you just KNEW this guy was about to break it big. He had to deal with a few drunken bums, but he handled himself so well, Mr. Richards could take a page from Tim's book. His act was definitely raunchy, but he didn't have to fall back on ethnic slurs to save face.

 

[jvcarroll]

The fact this guy is so adamantly against homosexuality (claiming religion as a cheap excuse) yet, even if it was in a joking manner, endorses marryin' 'em young speaks bounds about how smurfed up his values are. I'm sure he has lots of videos of "gaffes" that continue to paint him in a terrible light in his past and future, respectively. And not one of them will get the show cancelled or pull paychecks out of the family's mouth. And even if it did, it wouldn't scrub his mind clean.

I'll agree with the South Park referenced "Tolerance Death Camp" (or whatever) herald brought up. Nothing is going to get this guy and fans of his that sympathize with him to stop thinking in offensive long lost values. All we can hope is that others find how ridiculous that mode of thinking is and lets it die out generational. I tend to see it as passing generations become more tolerant because... well... they stopped giving 2 craps about it.

It's a shame that tolerance has become a meaningless buzzword to so many people. It's something we all should do and should want to do! It's basically the Golden Rule.

 

[Drtooth]

Probably the best comedian I've ever seen put a heckler in his place was Tim Allen.
This was 1990, about a year or two before "Home Improvement" exploded, and you just KNEW this guy was about to break it big. He had to deal with a few drunken bums, but he handled himself so well, Mr. Richards could take a page from Tim's book. His act was definitely raunchy, but he didn't have to fall back on ethnic slurs to save face.

Desperate frustration makes you say very bad things if you're not careful. Savvy standup comedians can diffuse a situation. Here's the Cracked Article I was talking about. Michael didn't know stand up, he didn't expect heckling (rookie mistake), and the hecklers just happened to be African American, so he went to the obvious angry hateful frustrated place. He would have done the same if the hecklers were any other race. The lesson? Not everyone can do stand up, and when you can't, you bomb gracefully or at least try to be clever.

It's a shame that tolerance has become a meaningless buzzword to so many people. It's something we all should do and should want to do! It's basically the Golden Rule.

And P.C. too. I am sooooooooo sick of the term PC adapting to every stupid little news story that gets passed around via e-mails from people old enough to actually still use e-mail. "OH! They won't let my son play dodgeball! That's the PC thugs at work again." No! It's a strapped for cash school system worrying about greedy, litigious parents. "WAAAA! I can't give my kid a peanut butter sandwich because the PC thugs won't let me." Some kid has a serious allergy. Get over it. It's just an angry buzzword that's lost all meaning, and I swear it's a conspiracy spread by actual racists. The kind that say "How come we don't have blackface gags and make fun of the Chinese in cartoons like the good old days?" on Youtube. THAT'S what true PC is. Not purposely offending people to make a cheap joke. And not even in the ironic Family Guy way.

It's just another way of saying "let's make the next generation look like buffoons so we can hate what we want to hate." Which brings me to the whole "the next generation is promiscuous and stupid." If moral media panics actually did rip apart the fabric of America, we would have been in a post apocalyptic Blade Runner-esque world the second Elvis swiveled his hips. Heck, wasn't jazz supposed to destroy our culture in the 20's?

 

[CensoredAlso]

That's certainly enough time to assess his statement in the context given. The guy isn't just crude, he's sexist and his encouraging guys to zero-in on underage girls is kinda rapey.

Obviously what he said was stupid. I just don't think anyone is remotely going to listen to him.

And hey, his son married when he was 19 and she was 18. That's sort of progress, I guess? Lol

 

[D'Snowth]

I've seen relationships before where the guy was 18, and the girl was only 14, which is a little too young to even be in a serious relationship to begin with.