ABC taking heat for Caveman show

[DangerAardvark]

I always thought the Cavemen were gay.

 

[sdifox]

Does this mean they have to pay the ad agency that came up with the concept for the ad or is it in fact the ad company doing the show?

 

[PottedMeat]

Good. I hate those stupid cavemen anyway and I'm happy ABC is taking heat for it for legitimate reasons or not. I hope ABC finds any reason to pull the plug on airing the pilot. After the show is a forgotten nightmare, a hit squad murders the ad-wizards that came up with the idea in the most horrible way possible. Thats would be a most favorable ending.

 

[kranky]

As long as no one dares to publicly ridicule even the most insipid accusations of "Racist!" being thrown out there, it's going to continue. For whatever reason, in the current environment such a charge is automatically treated seriously without questioning.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: Safeway

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

A Jewish friend of mine can get you a great deal on a high quality diamond while a black friend of mine raps to a piece of Mozart played on the piano by my Korean friend. :beer:

:thumbsup: Amazing how many people choose to live with sticks up their asses.

You sure are playing a lot of different tunes here. I agree that people shouldn't be offended by such things. But you said no one would be offended, which is not true. It's not just black people who are offended by positive racial stereotypes. People of all races have sticks stuck up inappropriate orifaces.

 

[sandorski]

If all the stereotypes are mirrors of just one type of Racial stereotype, there might be a point to the criticism. However, just by the description given it's hard to say whether that occurs or not. Many Races, Cultures, Personality types have stereotypes in the various examples given. For eg: certainly African Americans are stereotypically considered good dancers, but so are South Americans, their dancing is just stereotypically in different genres of dance.

Wait and see. The premise sounds promising.

 

[Safeway]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: Safeway

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

A Jewish friend of mine can get you a great deal on a high quality diamond while a black friend of mine raps to a piece of Mozart played on the piano by my Korean friend. :beer:

:thumbsup: Amazing how many people choose to live with sticks up their asses.

You sure are playing a lot of different tunes here. I agree that people shouldn't be offended by such things. But you said no one would be offended, which is not true. It's not just black people who are offended by positive racial stereotypes. People of all races have sticks stuck up inappropriate orifaces.

Maybe it's because all the black stereotypes are negative? Abuse of government welfare, abuse of food stamps, misplaced priorities, affirmative action, expendable black card pullage, ... while the Jewish community is happy that they are great with their money and the Asian community boasts their musical talent and intelligence.

 

[DangerAardvark]

I was watching Singing Bee the other night and the host Joey Fatone (fat NSync member) was "randomly" picking contestants from the audience. The results? 3 white people, 2 black people and 1 Asian.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

The offense comes from the idea that those are the only things they're good at.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: Bumrush99
Another example of the PC crown flexing their collective muscle.. This show will NEVER see the light of day...

Crazy Crazy Politically Correct Madness at work..

For those not registered or too lazy to click the link

'Cavemen' series gets a new criticism: It's racist
BY GLENN GARVIN
The producers of ABC's new sitcom Cavemen, based on a series of popular advertisements for the insurance company Geico, were ready to defend themselves against charges of rampant commercialism. But the charge that their show about put-upon Cro-Magnons in the modern world has racist undertones took them by surprise.

''I actually didn't know we would catch so much hell,'' Cavemen writer Joe Lawson ruefully told a room full of highly critical critics at a gathering of North American television writers here Wednesday. ``That's a pleasant surprise.''

Cavemen, which features shaggy Cro-Magnons trying to make their way through a hostile Homo Sapiens world, won't even air until October but is already drenched in its second wave of controversy.

The first came in May when ABC announced it was converting a handful of 30-second insurance commercials into a half-hour series. The Cavemen producers had to endure a seemingly endless round of cracks like the one on Saturday Night Live's satirical Weekend Update newscast, which announced NBC would counter with a new drama called 1-800-Mattress.

But as the show's pilot episode began circulating in Hollywood, so did a new round of criticism: that Cavemen trafficked in the very racial caricatures it was supposed to be lampooning. By depicting the Cro-Magnons as good dancers, great athletes and grand sexual partners, the show's detractors argued, Cavemen was using black stereotypes for cheap racist laughs. ''We finally get to laugh at all the stereotypes in the world directed at cavemen, without feeling guilty,'' wrote one Hollywood blogger. ABC's decision to reshoot the pilot didn't exactly help.

Wednesday's panel discussion here was the first time Cavemen producers have discussed the show in public, and they said people are reading too much into what they called a ''fish out of water'' story.

''Unfortunately, in our society, if you pick an offensive stereotype of any kind, it's going to bump into some ethnic group,'' said Mike Schiff, one of the executive producers. ``Is the show about race relations? No. Is that a background to the show? Yes, of course.''

Lawson, who wrote the original Geico commercials as well as the pilot, said that if the Cro-Magnons are an allegorical stand-in for anybody, it's not black people but outsiders.

''As human beings, we all have that need to fit in,'' he said. ``It's really a show about acclimation more than anything, and that's something that everybody deals with, doesn't matter if you're a minority or not.''

Not everybody -- in fact, almost nobody -- in the room was buying it, partly because some of the Cavemen story lines the producers offered as evidence the show isn't about race (for instance, one of the cavemen concealing the fact that he's dating a Homo Sapiens woman, for fear his Cro Magnon friends won't like it) sounded like race was exactly what they were about.

The cavemen are ''known for their athletic prowess, their sexual prowess, their dancing,'' complained one critic, to which director Josh Gordon deadpanned: ``They're Jewish.''

So many questions were about hot-button racial topics that the producers actually seemed relieved when anybody circled back to the subject of commercialism. When one critic sarcastically asked if the gecko lizard who stars in another group of Geico commercials would be making a guest appearance on Cavemen, Gordon replied that it ``depends on how ratings are.''

And he was sympathetic to the charge of another critic that Cavemen suffered ''a failure in anthropological verisimilitude'' by making its Cro-Magnons look more like Neanderthals and suggested that the show fire all its technical advisors.

''If we had technical advisors,'' Gordon conceded, ``we would probably fire them.''

Ohhh Noes the racist liberal TV executives are making fun of black people again!!! Run for the hills!!! Even if this is loosely based at poking fun of race relations in the country, does that automatically make it bad?

Archie Bunker and the Jeffersons fTW!

 

[jonessoda]

The funny thing is most anthropologists agree that, based on the range in which we've actually found remains of them, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon Men were probably white to olive-skinned, depending on actual location. Not black at all.

But hey, who wants to let something like that get in the way of being a professional victim?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: AnyMal
So... to say that black men are good at sports/dancing/sex is racist? wow

Some of the more extreme racists think/say that black people are less evolved than white people... that they are closer to monkeys than to (white) humans.

I was in Sports Authority many years ago, when I was much younger and more naive. They had a very large poster of Allen Iverson hanging up. He was hunched over with his hands down near the ground and he was dribbling a ball between his two hands. One hand was curled in a bit. Imagine the horror on my parents' faces when I pointed at the poster and said loudly enough for people around us to hear us "he looks like a monkey." They told me that's not a polite thing to say, but I protested "he really does look like a monkey!" What I meant was, he was posed like a monkey, but I don't suppose that would have made it much better.

 

[rbV5]

"When I see a solar eclipse, I think 'Oh no! Is the moon eating the sun?' I don't know. Because I'm a caveman-- that's the way I think."

-Cirroc the caveman

 

[Cogman]

I'm going to have to say the person that called racism is the racist one. Personally, race would be far from my mind if I where watching the Intelligent Athletic all around superior cavemen being insulted because of intelligence would be funny. Furthermore I would see it being an anti racist message anyways as the whole Gecko commercials seem to gear toward the cavemen being superior (I guess thats reverse-racism)

Competitive company: "Crap, it looks like that show might be good compared to our 1000 reality TV shows, what do we do? I know, Racism, that's it, they are raciest so now nobody will want to watch their show, brilliant!"

 

[DougK62]

This show sounded really lame when it was announced, but now I hope it does well just to rub it in the noses of these PC weirdos.

 

[Ns1]

Originally posted by: Geocentricity

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

Actually, no, we don't find that offensive. We find it hilarious that you morons think we're good at math because its not the race but how hard you're beat by parents to excel in academia.

hahahahah

 

[moshquerade]

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
I always thought the Cavemen were gay.

Nah, one of 'em got back with Tina at a party one night.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Originally posted by: moshquerade

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
I always thought the Cavemen were gay.

Nah, one of 'em got back with Tina at a party one night.

Oh yeah. Plus in our watered down piss-hole of a Television industry it's impossible for a character to be more than one minority at a time.

 

[MagicConch]

The commercials are 29 seconds too long already imo, I can't imagine how lame the show itself will be.

 

[puffff]

Originally posted by: Geocentricity

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

Actually, no, we don't find that offensive. We find it hilarious that you morons think we're good at math because its not the race but how hard you're beat by parents to excel in academia.

:thumbsup:

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Geocentricity

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

Actually, no, we don't find that offensive. We find it hilarious that you morons think we're good at math because its not the race but how hard you're beat by parents to excel in academia.

While I'm sure that you're trying to take the moral high ground in this argument and sound "PC", research conducted on this very subject does not agree with your belief.

They've studied the SAT scores of adopted kids and found that the scores correlates more closely with the student than their parents. In other words, adopted Asian kids generally did as well in math as other Asian kids, even when their adopted family is not Asian.

Likewise, adopted black kids scored similarly to other black kids, even if their adopted family was not black.

The scores also correlate more closely with race than how well off the students' families are. Poor Asians still score better in the Math section of the SAT than wealthy blacks.

I know it comes as a shock to some people to learn that not all races are born with the same abilities, but that's just the simple fact of the world that we live in. One thing that surprises me is that while people generally accept the fact that traits are inherited in living things like animals, when you try to apply the same concept to people there is backlash against the idea since it seems cruel to the person who has inherited the genes. People don't like to hear that some problems are inherited and that there isn't much the person can do to influence the outcome.

 

[Bumrush99]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Geocentricity

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

Actually, no, we don't find that offensive. We find it hilarious that you morons think we're good at math because its not the race but how hard you're beat by parents to excel in academia.

While I'm sure that you're trying to take the moral high ground in this argument and sound "PC", research conducted on this very subject does not agree with your belief.

They've studied the SAT scores of adopted kids and found that the scores correlates more closely with the student than their parents. In other words, adopted Asian kids generally did as well in math as other Asian kids, even when their adopted family is not Asian.

Likewise, adopted black kids scored similarly to other black kids, even if their adopted family was not black.

The scores also correlate more closely with race than how well off the students' families are. Poor Asians still score better in the Math section of the SAT than wealthy blacks.

I know it comes as a shock to some people to learn that not all races are born with the same abilities, but that's just the simple fact of the world that we live in. One thing that surprises me is that while people generally accept the fact that traits are inherited in living things like animals, when you try to apply the same concept to people there is backlash against the idea since it seems cruel to the person who has inherited the genes. People don't like to hear that some problems are inherited and that there isn't much the person can do to influence the outcome.

Wasn't there a huge outcry about 10 years ago when some academics wrote The Bell Curve basically detailing what you just described? I can't say I agree or disagree with their findings since I never took the time to read the book, but I distinctly remember these well respected individuals taking a lot of heat for even proposing that different races have different skills.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Geocentricity

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: AnyMal

Originally posted by: torpid
I don't know whether it is racist or not but it definitely seems to be playing off of racial stereotypes based on the description. That doesn't mean it's racist - it would depend on the result.

It seems that positive stereotypes can be deemed racist by the PC crowd only when it applies to blacks. For example, noone is offended when its said that jews are good with money, chinese are good at math, etc...

You are joking, right? Many or most people find both of those examples offensive.

Actually, no, we don't find that offensive. We find it hilarious that you morons think we're good at math because its not the race but how hard you're beat by parents to excel in academia.

While I'm sure that you're trying to take the moral high ground in this argument and sound "PC", research conducted on this very subject does not agree with your belief.

They've studied the SAT scores of adopted kids and found that the scores correlates more closely with the student than their parents. In other words, adopted Asian kids generally did as well in math as other Asian kids, even when their adopted family is not Asian.

Likewise, adopted black kids scored similarly to other black kids, even if their adopted family was not black.

The scores also correlate more closely with race than how well off the students' families are. Poor Asians still score better in the Math section of the SAT than wealthy blacks.

I know it comes as a shock to some people to learn that not all races are born with the same abilities, but that's just the simple fact of the world that we live in. One thing that surprises me is that while people generally accept the fact that traits are inherited in living things like animals, when you try to apply the same concept to people there is backlash against the idea since it seems cruel to the person who has inherited the genes. People don't like to hear that some problems are inherited and that there isn't much the person can do to influence the outcome.

Seems interesting. Have any links to these studies or maybe a name for me to search for?

 

[yowolabi]

Originally posted by: Safeway
Is it just me, or is the black community assuming that the ignorant cavemen character depicted is referring to them? Does that mean that blacks see themselves as a lesser evolved sub-human? No, it most definitely does not, says the black community. Then why would these fucked up, stupid fucking expendable piece of shit black card fucking affirmative action bullshit fucking ass objections ever be verbalized?

Where in the world did you get the idea that this was coming from the black community? The article says they were addressing a "room full of highly critical critics at a gathering of North American television writers here Wednesday." Looking at the percentage of black writers in hollywood, you can safely assume that most of the people there were white if anything.

When you can answer why such nonsense as what you just posted ever saw the light of day, you can begin to understand why the imaginary words voiced by imaginary people that you're arguing against were verbalized.

You're exactly what you accuse these people of being.