There was a period of like 2 years when I was a kid where chuck Norris jokes were all the rage on the playground and I made an iPhone app that listed them all.
Jokes like “Chuck Norris is able to slam a revolving door.”
Anyway, I “built” this stupid app when I was like 13, copy-pasted like 300 jokes in there and a random one would show every time you tapped the screen.
Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.
For the first time in over a decade he was suddenly relevant in a way. People remembered he existed, and they were playing off his tough guy image.
And what did he do? Try and shut it down and start suing people. Stupid.
It took him a couple of years to come around to it. If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well? Or would he be a much more obscure celebrity by now?
You underestimate how popular Walker, Texas Ranger was. It wasn't pulling ratings like Seinfeld, ER, or Friends, but it was a solid primetime staple for almost a decade.
I never watched it myself, but the 50+ demo loved it.
Maybe for people in the US. Internationally? I haven't watched a single episode of WTR, I don't know anyone who has, but everyone knows who Chuck Norris was.
We used to watch lot's of chuck Norris films back then here in Nigeria, I can't even remember the titles, but all we knew was chuck Norris alone can defeat a whole country's army. We used to think one American soldier can defeat a whole army.
WTR did air here in Sweden in the 90s. From a quick search in the news archives, it was on late at night on tv3 in the late 90s and then it ran on that or/and some other cabel channels in the 00s as well (reruns?).
As a gent born and raised in Texas, and has never seen the show - I am pleasantly surprised to see these comments about how popular WTR was internationally. If I had been asked to bet, I would have lost money on this one.
From my memory from the 90s: Baywatch, X-Files, that speaking car one, Beverly Hills 90210, Ninja Turtles. Some dumb sitcom named Step by Step? edit: oh and ALF
Oh and Married with Children, but it was always very late night and I was not allowed to watch it.
And our teacher always played us ET on VHS. (and that dog playing basketball.)
If you like MwC, look up episodes of Unhappily Ever After on Youtube, it's sort of the second-generation MwC. Same sort of humour but taken even further, I can easily re-watch Unhappily but MwC is sort of a once-you've-seen-it...
I've got the impression that the big US exports are ones that play into big American stereotypes, e.g WTR, Baywatch, Friends. Not even that they see these shows and get programmed with these stereotypes, but that they have these stereotypes (Texas, California, NYC) and shows like this feed their imaginations and give them detail.
Exported media is weird. Like the huge proportion of British/BBC output (usually period, but also often detective in a way redolent of Christie) that is made primarily for export to foreign consumers who think of British upper-class culture as aspirational.
Walker, Texas Ranger and Baywatch were both created by non-network studios as syndicated shows, they weren’t prime time network shows. The budgets for syndicated content is a lot lower than network produced content.
The rights to air these sorts of shows are dirt cheap compared to Friends or Seinfeld, so it makes sense that cheap syndicated garbage like Walker, Texas Ranger and Baywatch were popular internationally, the rights were cheap.
There is US exported media that just randomly becomes popular in a specific demographic. Case in point: Adventures of Ford Fairlane, a flick with Andrew Dice Clay that got a razzie the year it came out. IIRC it got a cult following in Norway because the voice over was done by a popular radio DJ.
It was a syndicated show, the goal is to license it to as many companies as possible. It was never a network TV show like Seinfeld, those syndication rights are way more expensive than created for syndication shows like WTR.
Personally I was at a prime age watching a lot of Conan O'Brien's Late Night show and one of his best skits was the Walker Texas Ranger Lever. They would pick the most ridiculous clips from the show and just run them out of context. IIRC Chuck Norris even showed up on the show one time to give him a "stern talking to".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpIEyn9G6_8
The only time I ever saw Walker,Texas Ranger was when I was living in Italy for a few months in the aughts. It was dubbed in Italian. Apparently it was popular there.
> You might be able to argue he was a bigger star than any of them.
I think that's a hard argument to make.
Candace Bergen's career was just as long. Her first movie role was 1966, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1979, and she was on a popular sitcom from 1988 to 1998 that won her five Emmies and attracted national commentary after criticism from the Vice President.
I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and to me even then Chuck Norris was a B-movie self-parody joke character. He was not an A-list "action star" in the sense that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or even Van Damme were.
The dude was a badass, 6 time undefeated karate world champion (!!!), created his own variant of karate mixed with korean martial arts, was a good friend with Bruce Lee and that scene in Colloseum - probably the coolest thing I saw as a kid growing up behind iron curtain... not many actors can have such a resume on top of their acting career.
Those who cared would/will know him regardless. But obviously those people would be relatively few and far apart.
An immense amount of time, dedication and talent must have went into all those achievements. This requires mastery of body and mind at an exceptional level. Putting aside all jokes and acting roles, the martials arts is where he earned my full respect and that will also stick in my memory about him.
"World champion" is an embellishment, but he was a strong point fighter within North America. His six championships were for a tournament that crowned self-titled "Professional [weight class] Karate Champions", with the "World" embellishment added later. To be fair, people from other countries did occasionally appear at these tournaments, but there weren't Japanese fighters there, and Japan dominates the gold medal count for the WKF World Karate Championship that started in 1970.
That is hands down one of my ATF scenes in any movie. Expendables 2 was IMO just about the most "fun" movie I've ever seen as well. It wasn't great cinema, or a specific classic.. but it was fun. I have similar feelings about Gremlins 2 as well. We need more fun movies, but too many people seem to have not been issued a sense of humor these days.
Found out about his passing from my teenage kids. They knew him as some legendary tough guy based solely on the jokes, but had no idea who he actually was. To be fair, looking at some other comments here about his political and personal leanings, I didn't know who he actually was either.
> Isn't that an obligation when you own a trademark? That you sue people, or else you may lose the trademark?
It's not quite as cut and dry as you suggest. Besides, in which way was a trademark being violated? Last I knew merely talking about and referencing a celebrity by name was not a trademark violation.
Is it trademark, or IP. If someone made a list of Mickey Mouse jokes, Disney's law department will send them a letter too. Chuck Norris is a person/name but also a persona.
His proximity to Bruce Lee earned him more or less permanent kung fu cinema fame. Walker,Texas Ranger and other work he did definitely boosted it, but the memes clinched it.
>> If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well?
You’re assuming the jokes make people dive deeper. In reality I know the jokes and didn’t have a clue who he was and never cared enough to find out. The reality is the probably didn’t make much of a difference to how well he or his work was actually known.
The Ruby gem "Faker" is used for generating fake data for testing, like legit-looking names, emails, phone numbers, lorum ipsum text, etc. About 10 years ago I was working on a messaging app, and wanted some real messages to see in the UI while I was developing it. One of the best engineering decisions I've made in my career was to pick the Chuck Norris Facts generator for the messages, so every time I re-seeded my local db or looked at a review app on staging, I was greeted by two fake people sending a half-dozen Chuck Norris facts to each other.
If you're curious, maybe you can look into Chuck's lawsuit against Penguin's book of Chuck Norris facts. He would eventually "co-author" his own book. The obvious guess here is trademark infringement (over use of Chuck's name/likeness) and/or copyright (if some of these facts were lifted from his book).
For better or worse, in the US you can pretty much sue anyone for anything. A court certainly requires more evidence to declare liability than Apple would to remove an app.
As far as copywriting facts, are you really under the impression that Chuck Norris is the only man who can factually slam a revolving door? :)
> Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.
Seeing the youthful spirit run headfirst into the corprocracy of locked down devices and app stores is depressing. Twenty years ago you would have made a webapp or flash animation, most likely avoided scrutiny and not even been shaken down. Thirty years ago you would have made a QBasic program and floppy/email/dcc it to your friends, completely illegible to the corprocracy. But these days simply trying to publish through the common channels, and you're immediately subject to restrictions made for businesses.
I did something similar when Microsoft gave away Windows Phones for every app published on the app store. I used the Chuck Norris API though. The one I used is sadly no longer available (I think it was called CNDB). But there's a new one: https://api.chucknorris.io
In India, we have Rajni (Rajnikanth) jokes that keep increasing in number and are still pretty popular...
I remember reading 'The Vinci Code' in college which was very popular those days and getting a SMS from a friend almost the same day, "Rajnikanth gave Monalisa that smile!".
Having been near the epicenter, I recall that Vin Diesel jokes (same format) pre-dated Chuck Norris ones. I always found it a shame that the Chuck Norris ones caught on; Vin Diesel is, imo, a better role model.
The Vin Diesel jokes I remember had an absurd quality to them beyond "He's really tough." One I recall fondly was "Vin Diesel writes Donkey Kong Fan Fiction."
I think that comparison is quite unfair to Teddy, and overly flattering to Chuck Norris.
Historian, sheriff, war hero, governor, explorer, and a successful President who reshaped America largely for the better. While Roosevelt was human, he led a life that very few have ever matched.
It is funny because you usually think of Death as something inevitable and people just accept it but then ... some of these guys put up a fight. Mega-LMAO!
I don’t age. I level up.
I’m 86 today! Nothing like some playful action on a sunny day to make you feel young. I’m grateful for another year, good health and the chance to keep doing what I love. Thank you all for being the best fans in the world. Your support through the years has meant more to me than you’ll ever know.
God Bless,
Chuck Norris
I can only assume Chuck has decided to relieve the grim reaper of his duties, leaving us all here to meet our own end not with a scythe but a roundhouse kick.
If you're referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_a_Velvet_Cloak - note that it was written a couple decades after the prior books of the series, for a different publisher, to a different length. Those would be yellow flags with almost any author.
While normally making jokes after a person's death would be socially questionable, in this case Chuck Norris himself loved the Chuck Norris jokes. For me at least, a good sense of humor is maybe the most endearing personality trait. RIP
Fundamentally, I'd argue that very little should ever be unreasonable or out of bounds to make jokes about; what is important is that it's good humour.
> Fundamentally, I'd argue that very little should ever be unreasonable or out of bounds to make jokes about; what is important is that it's good humour.
On a personal level, I couldn't agree more. I do hope that culturally we get to that point at some time :-)
I mean, jokes are made to uplift, intent in joking is important and punching up is preferable to punching down, this being said this didn't apply to chuck Norris that would have already got to the punchline without throwing a single fist.
Jokes aside, this octogenarian was living his golden years enviably. He was summiting peaks last fall, doing 500 lb barbell curls, and still sparring in his birthday video just 10 days ago. We’ve all gotta go sometime, but the way Chuck Norris went out was the way I’d want to go—able to do it all right up until the end. He was a lot of folks’ childhood hero, but that title is freshly renewed in my eyes. I have new inspiration in my fitness endeavors going forward.
He forgot to actually curl it. Like someone else said, the weights are almost certainly not actually 500lbs. Even elite bodybuilders and strongmen in their prime don't come close to curling 500lbs, let alone an old man.
Looking at the video, if it was legitimate, it would be 585lbs (6 45lb plates on each side plus a 45lb bar), which is even less believable.
And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days. — from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10
I had no idea he was in his 80s (older than my parents would be), and that he did Walker, Texas Ranger when he was in his 50s. The final episodes aired when he was 61! That's nuts.
Not a fan of him in real life (based on how he portrayed himself publicly), but I do find his level of physical fitness even more impressive back in the 1990s (and even up until his death), given his age.
From Reddit: "I heard that the opening 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan were loosely based on a game of dodgeball played by Chuck Norris in 2nd grade." ;-)
I remember trade chat (/2) in wow on the Medivh server would often turn into Chuck Norris jokes. There were always about how bad ass Chuck was. How tough and impossibly manly.
One of my favorites.
Chuck Norris jumped into a lake. Chuck Norris didn't get wet. The lake got Chucked.
Trade chat (like /b/) was never great, but one of the first WoW addons I developed was designed to filter out garbage like this, and make idling with your guildies in Ironforge tolerable.
It's funny for a while, in measured amounts, and then it becomes tiresome.
17 years ago we launched the first "Chuck Norris Facts" app for Android (March 2009). It was a big success until end of 2010 when Chuck Norris sent his lawyers after us to get the app removed from the Android market. Chuck Norris won, we took the app down
So I guess Chuck Norris has now keys for the Pearly Gates and is the one who gets to pick the heavenly club members. I'm sure roundhouse kicks are somehow part of the process.
He was a hero in tech and science as well. I recall during my PhD studies, we always create new memes on our field that Chuck can finish things in no time. In loving memory of Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris (and Michael Landon) were golden age role models for young men. Strong but thoughtful, firm but compassionate, and deeply principled but also practical. Yes, these were acting roles but they picked those roles for a reason. Rest in peace, Chuck.
I am not a scholar in general, or of Chuck Norris specifically. I only have the impressions I have from the pop culture I've consumed. Like most people. And for us, Norris represents something wholesome.
For others, those who've read something, or know more, or think they know more, that symbol, that myth, has been ruined. The illusion pierced, the ugly reality revealed. They then look with pity, disdain and contempt at those who still admire the person. Or worse, they make the bad faith argument that to admire him is in fact to embrace those ruinous facts of which most are still ignorant.
Frankly, I think what you're doing is a farce. You're showing the world how smart you are and how dumb everyone else is. Ultimately you're trying to prove how dumb it is to believe in anyone or anything. If you look closely enough you'll find dirt on anyone. There is a contradiction: you claim a moral stance, but your "moral" position degrades the very idea of role models, heroism, and admiration itself. With enough scrutiny, admiration tends to zero.
The reality of the person is irrelevant. What matters is what they mean, what they symbolize, and the kind of archetype they represent. This is of course not true universally; some mythological people are alive, powerful, and dangerous and we cannot afford such kayfabe. But some are harmless and imply no endorsement of their misdeeds. Especially for actors, storytellers, artists, scientists and perhaps a few others we not only CAN afford it, we SHOULD do it, because these role models (or symbols of role models) are what make up the beating heart of a coherent culture.
I choose to admire Chuck Norris, Michael Jackson, George Washington, Ben Franklin, Gahndi, Isaac Asimov, even if some deeds of theirs were wicked. I prefer to go through life admiring symbols of people even knowing that these are constructs. To do otherwise is to recognize the futility of admiration, and I choose not to live that way.
That's a lot of words to say "I prefer to ignore the evil that men do if I find them entertaining enough, and I think it's silly that anyone does otherwise."
The Chuck Norris you admire is a figment of your imagination. He was a product created by capitalism. He never actually fought Bruce Lee. He was never really a Texas Ranger. He was never in the real Delta Force. Putting him on the same cultural level as actual leaders who at least fought for something in the real world is risible. Holding such deep admiration for the things he pretended to do that you feel compelled to insult someone's character and intelligence for judging him as a human being is a far less than admirable moral stance.
The reality of the person is not irrelevant, the reality of the person is all that matters at the end of the day.
Reading this thread has definitely sheared off a few of my brain cells seeing people so collectively deluded about Chuck Norris. As you said he was a totality of capitalism, a product wrapped in human skin. He's only truly notable for the jokes people made (myself included) at the dawn of the early internet. As a person, what he actually accomplished is nothing at best and at worst actively damaging to multiple groups that didn't deserve the heat.
The only good thing out of this mess is that the universe felt cosmically aligned to have his death occur on the same day as Mr. Rogers birthday, someone who genuinely did fight for a better world.
The Internet has a fairly long memory and a lot of research on topics like this, and it does not agree that Hillary ever tried such a thing. Ample evidence that GOP politicians, including Trump, tried to claim she did. And late in the primary season a few of her supporters made some sounds like that. But nobody has ever found any shred of evidence her campaign made any accusations, or started any rumors.
Whatever the reason, it wasn't because his characters were "openly maga and a homophobe and a transphobe," because they weren't. Bruce Lee movies and Texas Ranger didn't address those issues at all.
And in spite of his flaws, it's possible that he had some good qualities as well, or at least aspired to them. So maybe those other qualities were what he looked for in the characters he played.
Doesn't seem like he aspired all that hard, since instead of expressing empathy for people who weren't like him, he continued to be a bigot in nearly every aspect. But sure, if you were a white cis straight guy I'm sure he was perfectly kind.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a Faceboot psychosis villain. It's basically the politics version of "Why is everything so cold?"
I think you forget that Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and put in the policy of “Don’t ask don’t tell” and Obama supported it originally.
Of course they both had a change of heart- was it true change or they saw the direction of the political winds? Who knows?
I don’t know Chuck Norris’s views on LGBT. But if he was a self proclaimed “born again Christian” and a rabid Trump supporter, I can only guess. But I no more expect people who were insulted by what he said (which I personally don’t know) to give him more grace or reverence than I do is a Black man who couldn’t give two shits about a dead racist podcaster.
Other people no more need to “contextualize” homophobia than I feel a need to “contextualize” the racism of a dead podcaster.
DADT was a significant improvement over the status quo of "we ask, you tell, and then you get dishonorably discharged". Considering it evidence of homophobia is revisionism. Did it go far enough? No. Was it a good step towards where we wanted to go? Yes.
> It passed both houses of Congress by large, veto-proof majorities. Support was bipartisan, though about a third of the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate opposed it. Clinton criticized DOMA as "divisive and unnecessary".
Again he still signed it. It’s like Susan Collins who always has “serious misgivings” about things that her fellow Republicans do and then votes the party line anyway trying to stay in her party’s good graces while at the same time not pissing off her liberal constituents
It was gonna be law either way; signing it removed a political weapon from the folks pushing its passage. Arguing this is something Clinton did to gay people is counterfactual.
That’s a really poor excuse to sign on to something that you disagree with. I would not sign a petition for making the “Confederacy Day” law if I lived in Mississippi just because it would become law anyway. You have to stand for something.
Would you think it was okay if Tim Scott signed such a law just so his fellow Republicans couldn’t hold it against him in the primary? Well actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he did…
> I don’t get to praise Chuck Norris because of his anti-racism stances but then dismiss his stances against non straight people.
Sure, but I think it's fair to praise people when they do good things, and criticize them for the bad that they do. That's true fir Chuck Norris, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama... anyone.
Totally agree, though, that it's bullshit to think that having positive views on some issues wipes away the bad.
My charitable interpretation is that it was political winds, but possibly not in the way you're implying.
I do believe that Obama was 100% cool with gay marriage, but believed it was politically foolhardy to admit that publicly and in policy positions, but was able to advocate for his true feelings once the political climate changed. Still not awesome, but understandable from an electoral perspective.
I'm not really sure about Clinton. I would guess he's personally in favor of gay marriage and gays in the military today, but hard to say what his views might have been in the 90s (as I was a teenager at the time who wasn't all that interested in politics).
Also on supposedly-liberal people doing homophobic things: let's also not forget that California voters banned gay marriage statewide in 2008. 2008! And this was a ballot measure where all voters got a say, not something passed by the legislature.
Half the country didn't vote for Trump. Not quite 2/3rds of the voting eligible people in the country voted to begin with, and not even half of those people voted for Trump.
Less than 1/3rd of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Not all people that voted for Trump consider themselves Republicans, much less MAGA, when MAGA is only 50-60% of Republicans.
So in reality less than 1/6th of the US voting-eligible population is MAGA. Not half.
And that was at the election - roughly 20% of Trump voters now openly profess regret in voting for him, though I don't think we have data breaking that down as self-proclaimed MAGA vs. otherwise. I suspect if you were not self-proclaimed MAGA you're more likely to be open to regret, but I'm sure at least some of them were MAGA.
Unless poll after poll is contacting and registering answers from 100% of people in the country, that's only 35-40% of the people who answered the poll, which is a much, much smaller number.
None of that changes the fact that the statement that half the country is MAGA because half the country voted for Trump is untrue.
Significantly less than half the country voted for Trump. This is objective fact.
Significantly less than 100% of Trump voters identify as MAGA. This is objective fact.
Approving of Trump as President is also not the same thing as being MAGA, though the overlap is quite likely reasonably high at this point.
You can make an argument that there are more MAGA people than I estimated, but the argument I was referring to was basing it all off of voters for the 2024 election. If you want to make a different argument, we can look at it on its merits.
I gave an analogy earlier that if you have 10 friends and asked them where they wanted to eat dinner and six said let’s get Italian and the other 4 said “Let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, you still have a shitty friend group.
If 40% of the country still supports everything that’s going on, that tells you a lot about this country. Especially seeing that because of the 2 Senators per state regardless of population, gerrymandering and to a lesser extent the electoral college, they have outsized influence on the government.
Exactly how can you approve of what Trump is doing and not be MAGA?
A surprising amount of people are single issue voters and will vote for and support someone that supports that single issue. They might not care at all about the entire rest of the issues at all as long as their single issue is fine, and a lot of those single issues, like guns, long predate maga or the tea party.
I'm not saying that makes them good people, I'm just saying I don't think it's the same thing as maga.
2 senators per state isn't really the issue, but the cap on the house is. The senate was built to be population independent, and the house was built specifically to be population dependent, where yes if you had more people you had more power. Then they... voted to cap it, because it was going to give too much power to states with more people. Dumb. EV also tied to the house, so uncapping it unfucks a lot of that, too.
The Senate though also decided the cabinet and the Supreme Court. Thats the major issue - especially the Supreme Court.
To your other point, I’ve met some Bush/Romney type Republicans who hold their nose and voted for Trump because the Democrats did go to far on social issues and I say that as a Black guy.
When I was at BigTech in 2020 I thought all of the videos we had to watch on “micro aggressions”, continue announcements on “ally programs”, “Latinx” instead of Latino/Latina (that every single Latino person I spoke to thought was ridiculous), the “how do we feel” meetings about Floyd, and the kind of liberals I met when I flew out to Seattle and other west coast offices (I worked remotely the entire time) were just weird. Not to mention being chastised if you didn’t put your preferred pronouns under your name.
Part of the problem is we changed the senate selections to votes. Originally state legislature picked their senators. That's an amendment that I think is a mistake and should be reverted.
The different chambers are supposed to represent different interests and instead we've made both halves of congress effectively the same thing.
There's deeper rot with the system besides these things - like the apparent lack of safeguards against the executive branch just... ignoring everything, including sometimes even the supreme court... but I don't think the framer's original intentions for the house and senate are fundamentally incorrect.
How would taking away voting power from the people have been better? Especially now that while the state houses can get super majorities via gerrymandering but Senators have to appeal to a much wider base. There is a reason that you have more crazies in the house than the Senate.
You're looking at how things are now with a situation totally fucked from the things being set up to be totally fucked for decades.
The House and Senate fundamentally do not operate in the way the founders intended them to at the moment. Both are elected based on popular votes within their district/state with the expectation that they are representing their constituent voters, all while population capped. There's a fundamental disconnect between how they are selected, how that power balance lies, and what their intended purpose is.
The House is supposed to represent the people. That's the job. Being answerable to their constituents makes sense. The Senate is supposed to represent the States - including as long-lasting entities that will exist before and after the current constituents. The legislature selected them because they were supposed to be more knowledgeable about the issues pertaining to the state, etc. They were to be tasked with doing the necessary thing and not necessarily the popular thing - people can always vote out the state legislature if the senators truly are hated, but having some insulation from the ever changing whims of the general public was a feature.
A lot of the rhetoric is similar to the rhetoric around the electoral college - preventing humans, which can be very dumb en masse, from doing dumb things. That has obviously not been the case, since unfaithful electors just haven't been a thing in quantities that have mattered, but I would argue that when we have found that things didn't work the way the founders intended, the correct option would generally be to make them work the way the founders intended and then only move away from that if we find that it doesn't work. Instead, we've frequently moved away from those things even when they were working.
Gerrymandering is an issue that doesn't have to exist either - it already doesn't in some states, and there's no reason it couldn't be implemented in all of them in this scenario where we're just wholesale changing how the government works.
You’ll have to forgive me as a Black guy whose still living parents grew up in the segregated South and seeing that four of the southern states still consider “Confederacy Memorial Day” a state holiday and two others combine “Confederacy Day” with MLK day for not trusting the good will of the state governments - especially with gerrymandering.
If enough people in any state are bad actors then no solution under democracy is going to resolve the issue without moving away from a system that invests so much power in the states.
But then if enough people in the overall country are bad actors you're back to square one.
I don't have any proposals on how to fix some people just deciding they want to be shitty people. But all of this discussion involves a significant amount of hand waving solutions into place - discussions on getting them implemented, the likelihood of that happening, etc., are all separate and not anything we've talked about from any of the positions.
I am only arguing that state legislatures can gerrymander districts that give them more votes than the population voted for. But it is really hard to gerrymander an entire state and split it up so two Senators can win of their preferred party.
Would GA have two Democratic Senators with a Republican control state government? On the other hand would Susan Collins be a Senator from Maine?
Given the choice of trusting the people of Mississippi to do the right thing and the electorate of the US to do the right thing. The entire US has been more on the side of the angels than the southern states - yes that’s a very low bar.
It's easier (or as easy) to change gerrymandering as it is to change the senate back to it's intended purpose. If you want to argue that an amendment to make gerrymandering unconstitutional should be a prerequisite to returning to state legislatures selecting senators, I'm fine with that - because it's also a much more likely amendment to pass. A big chunk of Americans dislike gerrymandering. Only a tiny fraction of Americans know or care about the different chambers of Congress being intended to serve very different purposes.
Well he was against gay marriage and against the Boy Scouts of America allowing gay kids.
If I have 10 friends and ask them all where they want to eat for dinner and 6 said let’s go to this nice Italian spot and the other 4 said “let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, that still means I have a shitty friend group.
It's more like 3 say "let's get Italian", 3 say "let's get Mexican", 3 say "I'm not hungry", and 1 says "let's kill Ralph, and eat him seasoned with Italian spices". Then the first 3 say "great idea!".
I'm not american but I see technically nothing wrong with MAGA for me. it doesn't mean you must be transphobe or homophobe etc. but what people do under MAGA is another thing. sometimes it feels like for them it means "run america into the ground" or "get rid of all the best about america". GRABA if you like
Being maga is diametrically opposed to supporting your country, as we've seen in particular this time around, but was also clearly visible in 2016-2020.
Rampant abuse of the legal system to target individuals, despite claiming (without evidence) that that was that the Democrats did against them
Total disregard for the constitution
Threats towards the judiciary
A million other things that I can list - but I'm sure you've heard them all and just don't care, so there's probably not much use in me continuing.
The entire point of MAGA is that they see “their country” as one where uppity negroes like Obama should have known his place, it’s DEI whenever a minority has a position of influence and power yet they keep lowering the standards for both ICE and the DOJ and RFK JR with no medical knowledge is the head of HHS.
America won’t be “great” until minorities, non Christians and non straight people know their role.
To believe in "Make America Great Again" you have to believe that America is not great, and this implies you are ashamed of your country. Shame is built in to MAGA.
Those points are fine, but not the root of what makes MAGA shameful. You can go about having that opinion and take actions towards it without being racist, anti-LGBT, generally hateful, and backing an administration that has been proven time and time again to be deceitful in every facet and tuned to the interest of the wealthiest.
You have a very narrow and rose colored view of what maga is. To us living in the US, maga stands for pedophilia, misogyny, racism, fascism, homophobia, transphobia, corroption and much more.
It absolutely has nothing to do with putting america first, it has everything to do with putting trump first. Im afraid you have made the mistake of listening to a politicians words instead of watching his actions. Every word from his mouth is a lie.
I know he's a liar. He is probably mentally ill and definitely not very bright. But I was not talking about Donald Trump. I was talking about the principle of wanting to make one's country "great."
> To us living in the US maga stands for...
This is not true. The GOP won the popular vote, centrists see some advantages in MAGA, and even some Democrats are against MAGA without going to the extreme of painting them all as pedophiles and corrupt.
Just out of curiosity, could you (or anyone else) give a couple of examples of what you would consider "great role models for real men"? Or "good role models for well-adapted men", if you'd rather use less inflammatory language.
I think Cavill has a fair point - I generally support MeToo, think it was very important, but I can understand how being a fairly big name in Hollywood can result in hesitation around pursuing women. Especially now that he's got a lot of power for a whole franchise, with the Warhammer 40k stuff.
Steve Irwin I don't think what he did was a particularly big deal with the kid.
I don't really like celebrities as role models though. They have to have public personas as a matter of course. I would instead try to point to specific behaviors from real people. I also don't think people have to be perfect. But I do think there are some deal breakers that would mean I would never point my kids towards them as a role model. Racism and homophobia are among those things. I think believing that whole classifications of people are lesser is disqualifying.
Oh I think all of those guys have fair points. I was trying to illustrate how you could make a hero or a villain out of anybody if you cherry pick incidents, decisions or opinions.
Just like the parent comment was trying to do with Chuck Norris. (Which was probably way worse than any of these examples)
Ironically, the very concept of a “real man” is founded on the idea that a man should be defined by stereotypes rather than by sex, which puts manosphere enthusiasts and gender enthusiasts in closer epistemological proximity than either would care to admit.
I meant male role models for men (I'm sure you could find one). Not every man aspires to be the mother of 7 and go to the gym. (Because: remember that gyms are classist by design. [1])
But maybe lets talk about how Amy got called out by The Human Rights Campaign and 185 LGBTQ organizations for her "disturbingly anti-LGBTQ past writings, rhetoric and association with extremist groups." [2]
Or how about when The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights described her record as "fundamentally cruel," arguing she frequently sides with corporations over individuals and shows hostility toward established precedents like the Affordable Care Act.
At least Chuck Norris had no real impact on policy with his bigotry.
Why does a role model for a man have to be a man? Besides, she's an exceptionally good role model even for traditionalist views of what makes a man, by virtue of being so accomplished in her career and still making time for family and health. Her record poses the question: what's your excuse? Men who are all-in on hyperfocus should wither before her.
Sure, there are people that hate her. Her own patron, our Dear Leader, probably hates her when she rules against his interests. All the more reason to respect her.
In this context, a "real man" is probably someone who conforms to the traditional role of a male (physically strong, emotionally restrained, a provider and protector of women, children, and weaker men, etc.).
Of course, "real men" can be just the opposite, depending on who you ask. So, it's really a subjective issue.
I don't think every man should be like that, but I also don't think any of those qualities are bad. In fact, I think they're pretty admirable.
Do you have issues with the fact that some men conform to that type?
Being physically strong is a good thing, and regular resistance training is a huge gap for overall health for quite a lot of people today - men and women.
Being able to provide for someone is an admirable quality, man or woman
Same for being able to protect someone.
I don't think being emotionally restrained is a good thing - and I say this as someone who was raised to be emotionally restrained. I've had to specifically work as an adult to be less emotionally restrained. I think there's a very wide gap between being emotionally restrained and letting emotions rule over you.
Imagine having a lot of people you once admired and looked up to as role models, from actors all the way to even your parents, suddenly all within a decade or so take their masks off and reveal that they are actually villains.
I don’t think this is about nit picking some small detail that causes them to fail a quality/belief checklist. It’s not like finding out your hero picks his nose or doesn’t like chocolate ice cream. When someone goes mask-off as MAGA, they are revealing fundamental core beliefs and values that totally flip the kind of person you might have thought they were.
I have friends and family who I never thought had a hateful, cruel, or belligerent bone in their bodies, suddenly start acting like totally different people, in the span of a few years. This isn’t me holding them to some purity checklist!
It's an object lesson on how certain historical things happened. We go, oh no how could those people have all been inhuman monsters? If only we understood what made them like that.
Agreed. Additionally, when someone says something latently bigoted or hateful, it's easy to just let it slide because we all have our failings and societal progress is slow. Whereas maggotry is about openly embracing those failings, taking on additional types of failings from other people, and then socially validating it all as a purported political movement. But the only real thing tying it together is frustration with the world culminating in lashing out, which is why when they get into power there are no actual constructive policies in any political framework [0]. (apart from lining the preachers' pockets of course, and now apparently a holy war)
nit: I wouldn't call it "mask off" though, as if it's been there the whole time. I'd say it's more like there is tiny a kernel of that (and let's be honest, who doesn't have this in some form or another?), combined with a lack of willpower and critical thinking, that causes them into give in to the siren song of easy answers from mass-personalized propaganda.
[0] ancap and religious fundamentalism are the only frameworks I've been able to find that fit the maggot movement, and they're not particularly constructive.
Fred Rogers was the same kind, thoughtful person in everyday life as he was when he acted on his show. You can watch the congressional tapes of him testifying on increased funding to PBS and also testifying on not making VCRs illegal.
That's a little bit of a false dichotomy, though. I agree that it would be rare, even impossible, to find people who match every quality I imagined they had.
But some of those failings are forgivable, others are not.
Getting genuinely confused about pronouns sometimes: forgivable.
Being a loud, public MAGA homophobe transphobe: not forgivable.
I stopped being a Chuck Norris fan when I learned he was a frequent contributor to WorldNetDaily, that he actively campaigned against gay marriage, and that he advocated for the theory that Obama was not born in America and saying shit like 'Electing Obama will plunge America into a thousand years of darkness.'
Him liking Trump was a symptom of his regressive, homophobic, and racist beliefs.
I hear you and it is sad Norris had the views he did.
BUT, I was in karate as a kid in the prime of his sponsorship of tournaments, and he was indeed a role model then. He was a good guy in that field, promoting martial arts and the discipline, fitness and respect that goes along with it. I can vouch that having him promote hard work, training and respect in martial arts at age 10 did not turn me into a Christian nationalist.
I love that both my post truthfully describing Chuck Norris’s abhorrent views and the reply expressing regret that my post was flagged have now both been flagged. Stay classy, HN.
Remember the good ol' days when people just didn't discuss politics or religion out of decency? There was a reason for that, both bring out the worst in people.
Suddenly I'm reminded of the decent (grown) people who yelled in six year-old Ruby Bridges' face when she was merely attending elementary school. So if that was 1960, I'm just wondering when those good ol' days you're referring to where.
That’s not what whataboutism is; it requires the “what about when” to be followed by a change of topic, to distract the other party from the original topic.
The problem is that living life is inherently political. Being able to ignore politics, not having to feel the need to discuss them, is a sign that you are inherently better off than a good chunk of this country.
A lot of people spend most of their waking hours having to deal with or at least keep in mind the fall out from regressive politics. Asking people to not discuss politics is like asking someone living in fear for their safety to not try and improve said safety. You're asking to not have to be bothered by something that annoys you to talk about in exchange for someone not being able to advocate for their life and livelihood.
I agree with the sentiment. My point was more people used to have a common understanding that there was a time and place for political (and religious) discussion - and that those beliefs were deeply personal, shaped largely by experience, and not meant to be held against one another in the broader judgement of their character.
Somewhere along the way we lost that idea, not all cultural changes are for the better.
I see, so from this reply I gather that your parent post was not “just an expression” as you claimed elsewhere, and you just got snippy when someone pushed back against your obviously out-of-touch assertion of fact.
Do you honestly think that falsely calling out an (informal) fallacy counts as “intellectual sparring,” whatever the fuck that is? What is wrong with you?
For a simple political disagreement? Absolutely; I completely agree. But to believe that a certain class of people shouldn’t exist is not a run of the mill political belief, and treating it that way normalizes the behavior and contributes to the problem.
Not sure why you're downvoted. The disagreement was not on tax policy or where to build what. I don't understand why both this and "some people shouldn't exist" are both labeled with the same word "political".
Despite how much they would have you believe it, human rights are not a political issue. Politics are used to expand practiced rights (or abused to reduce them), just like politics are involved with providing you access to water.
Sorry you don’t get to say “Well this person doesn’t think I have the right to exist and be respected as a person. But I’m sure glad he saved a puppy once.”
Oh wow, coincidentally I watched a Chuck Norris film recently with my (90 year old) grandmother, which resulted in me diving down a bunch of Chuck Norris memes for the first time in more than a decade.
Total Gym XLS has a 1-1.25" carriage bar for adding weight. 5gal bucket weights are the correct diameter to leave a gap between the weights and the floor.
The thing about Norris is that this isn't just generic policy stuff. I think pretty much all politics has impact on People and therefor matters, but you can abstract a whole lot away on a lot of policies in economics, etc. I think empathetic and caring human beings can disagree on many things.
But racism and homophobia aren't areas where I think empathetic and caring people can disagree, and I don't think those should be legitimatized by calling them political. He wanted to strip rights from gay people and propped up all sorts of racist rhetoric and birtherism against Obama. That's not political. That's being a shitty person.
My mother told me, "Chuck Norris passed today at 86" and my mind immediately went to, "I would never expect him to pass anyone on the sidewalk at any slower speed."
I even remember the times he was not vintage yet, but the real thing. Maybe even watched his famous fight scene with Bruce Lee on the cheap cinemas back in the day. Good days. RIP .
Not even every important influential person in tech gets the black bar. You think an actor who is mostly known for low-effort internet memes and pretending to be a cowboy on tv deserves it?
>He was a typical pro-gun anti-abortion homophobic and racist MAGA Christian conservative.
Sure, but let's be real: people here are hardly mourning the man himself, so much as a few ideas of him from media they loved, and the cultural impact of Chuck Norris memes from their childhood and such.
He's not around anymore to bolster any hateful messages. Let people have a moment of nostalgia for memories watching him roundhouse kick bad guys with their grandma, or dumb Chuck Norris memes on the playground. That's what people remember.
> He had some pretty awful views that he was pretty loud about, especially later in life. He also cheated on his wife at one point.
In 1961, in his early 20s. You get ~80 years on this planet to make mistakes and have views that some other people will dislike. If these are the worst things we can accuse him of, while acknowledging all his charitable work, I'd say he fared OK compared to many other role models we have.
This is a tough thing. I do believe in moral relativism to a large extent, but I also think there are some things that are really just objectively morally and ethically "right" or "wrong".
Hating on LGBT folks and trying to restrict their rights is one of those things that is wrong no matter how you dice it. People who believe otherwise are wrong, full stop.
So it's not really so much about people thinking someone else's views are awful. It's about whether or not those views truly are awful. And I feel very safe in saying that if someone thinks my support of LGBT folks is pretty awful, they're in the wrong, not me. And I'm in the right to think their hateful views are awful.
(Yes, I realize how arrogant that sounds, but I have to stand by it.)
I think this is something that transcends politics or culture wars or anything like that. Having these sorts of hateful views are actively harmful to humanity's and society's future. That doesn't mean I think we should censor people (rampant censorship is also actively harmful to our future), but it does mean we need to somehow fix people and shift the culture toward one that lets people live how they want in cases like this where doing so doesn't actually hurt anyone else. I have no idea how to accomplish this, though.
There's disagreement then there's being an outspoken supporter of systematically trying to strip rights away from others because of your religious beliefs. It's much deeper than having differing views on fiscal policy.
Liars according to who? Who gets to say what's a lie? This would still be just as pointless of an argument IMO... I think parent commenter is saying that you simply can't play the same game they are because you look identical to them from the outside; you're both saying the same thing.
Left says you're trying to take rights away... Right says you're trying to take rights away.
This does nothing to educate anyone or try to find a mutually agreeable solution... your arguments carry no more weight than theirs do. You both think you're "right" and the other is "wrong".
Those are pretty wild accusations from someone who doesn't know me or my beliefs. I definitely have not been calling for those things, especially not through the lens of religion.
Everything I said here in regards to his beliefs can be easily verified. It's crazy to me to respond "well you're doing the same to them" as a retort. I'm not?
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me. I'm not fine when that disagreement results in campaigning for legally restricting the rights of others. There's a huge difference.
If every racist, homophobe, and transphobe (and others) would stop trying to enshrine their views into law, I'd have much less of a problem with them. I wouldn't want to hang out with them, but I could safely ignore and not care one bit about their views.
Disagree? I think it's safe to say that someone who campaigned to ban same sex marriage is more than just disagreeing. He's trying to ruin millions of lives.
He was an Obama birther conspiracist.
He thought gays shouldn't be allowed to join Boy Scouts.
He was a big supporter of Netanyahu.
This aren't things that are even remotely in the same ballpark as disagreement. If someone is using their celebrity status to cause harm to millions or tens of millions, I think we can say a few unkind words about them when they go.
And Chuck Norris was brought up to believe that gay people are the devil. I was conditioned to not take my parents traditions as gospel. The taboo against speaking ill of the recently deceased is not universal as we saw after Khamenei's death, and it is possible to debate whether we should discuss the failings of the recently deceased dispassionately, as newspaper obituaries usually do, and whether the impact on society of those critiques is net negative or not. There is the famous case of a premature unflattering obituary of Alfred Nobel upon the death of his brother possibly inspiring Nobel to think about his legacy, for example.
All this to say that I don't think it's necessarily problematic for you to mention that he had and shared some pretty awful views.
There are good people whose politics I disagree with. If you are using your celebrity status to cause harm to millions on the international stage, systematically attempting to strip their rights, I think it's fair to say they weren't a good person.
> Does being a good person also mean agreeing with your politics?
Can we stop framing human rights as "politics"? People hating on others because they don't like that they're gay or trans or black or brown... that's just people being fundamentally awful people, and has nothing to do with politics.
The fact that they are then taking their awfulness and engaging politically to enshrine their awful views into law just adds another dimension to it.
I said this in another comment: if these people with awful views would stop trying to make those awful views laws, then I'd have much less of a problem with them; I could at least just ignore them.
> Is there one way to be a good person?
What a useless, one-dimensional take on the problem.
That's the thing: you can be a perfectly pleasant person to interact with, and people can genuinely enjoy interacting with you.
But then you can start actively using your celebrity status to advocate for legally restricting the rights of people you don't like. That's the real problem, and that's why I wouldn't want to look at people like Chuck Norris as role models.
Being polite doesn't make you a good person. It just makes you tolerable, or even pleasant, in personal interactions.
Sure, we can talk about things like your dad's experience. But there's more to it than that.
> Or was it when he said that a Black president would bring "1000 years of darkness"?
I looked this one up. It's true. He's been going out of his way to be a political firebrand and claiming milquetoast Democrats are Satan for decades. It wasn't some offhand comment when cornered on stage. He's pushed white christian nationalism hard for quite some time.
Sad, because it was so unnecessary, divisive, and crazy--a black mark on his legacy.
But it's not true the way GP phrased it. Norris did not say if a black man was elected then there would be 1000 years of darkness, he said it about a specific man who happens to be black. It's silly, but unless you're claiming that black politicians get special exemptions, his race is immaterial to this quote.
That's true. These days it seems the ideal conservative man is more like a caveman eating steak off the bone versus a thoughtful caring Atticus Finch type.
I would welcome collective responsibility only if it means collectively acknowledging the harm that was done, listening to those who were harmed, and committing to repair, not just punishing those in power. Restorative justice asks each of us to examine how we contributed to or normalized the conditions that allowed this harm, and then to take concrete, shared steps to repair relationships, redistribute power, and change the structures that made the reckoning necessary in the first place.
Unlike penal justice, restorative justice is idempotent and we shouldn't fear its application.
So many commenters here are, or choose to be, completely obvlivious to the fact that Chuck Norris was a racist little man who decried Obama becoming president, supported Trump through both campaigns, and openly hated muslims and gay people.
I think the weakly efficient market of mortality is the only fix here. Dead attitudes and mindsets need their advocates to die of natural causes for society to advance IMO. Also known as "blank advances one funeral at a time."
You're probably right, but that's not the usual wording you hear. Of course, when grieving, proper proofreading may not be (nor should it be) at the top of anyone's list.
Very cool thread. Middle school jokes and culture wars. I’m so glad we don’t allow political threads on here and can instead bask in the intellectual might of people talking about TV man the did/didn’t like.
Jokes like “Chuck Norris is able to slam a revolving door.”
Anyway, I “built” this stupid app when I was like 13, copy-pasted like 300 jokes in there and a random one would show every time you tapped the screen.
Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.