An Oddly Apologetic Message From Eric

Jun 27, 2009

An Oddly Apologetic Message From Eric

Categories: Blogs

Written By: Eric Jensen

Far be it from me to ever feel bad about anything I say or do. As a general rule, I’m a bitter, thoughtless man with no regards for the emotions and sensitivities of any other living soul. And of all the people I don’t care about, the sort of people I don’t care about the most are people who have become fake celebrities because they have shows about their lives for some reason.

All that said, I’d sort of like to clarify a remark I made in an earlier post. This is what I said:

“Futurama is emphatically not a show about a soul-devouring harridan, her emasculated husband and their brood of unexceptional children.”

In case that comment was too subtle for you, I was referring to the family on TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8. First of all, the part about Jon being Kate’s husband is in the process of being rendered legally untrue, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I stand by all this remark, I just want to clear part of it up. I don’t feel bad about saying “a soul-devouring harridan [and] her emasculated husband.” Jon and Kate are adults and these are the personas they’ve projected on the TV show they willingly entered into. Obviously I don’t know anything about what they’re really like. But this is what these adults present to the world, so it’s completely fair.

It’s the phrase “brood of unexceptional children” that I worry people will misunderstand. I’m not bagging on those kids in any way. Even if a kid actually were stupid, I wouldn’t make fun of him for it (probably). And it’s not like these eight kids asked to be on TV in front of the whole world; making fun of children based on the incomplete picture you get from a TV show they never asked to star in would be a dick move, even for me. So the word “unexceptional” is in NO WAY meant as a dig at these kids. Rather, it’s a dig at the concept of shows like this in general.

They’re no more nor less deserving of having their own show than any other kids, that’s all I was saying. They’re kids like any other: very special to their own parents, indistinguishable from every other kid in the world to people who aren’t their parents. That’s all I was saying.

In conclusion, picking on kids isn’t particularly cool.

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Mark Says:
June 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

See, this is odd.

Not only are you not the apologizing type, but I had no idea that it was a reference to the Jon and Kate nonsense. I thought it was a much more awesome reference to *every single other comedy show which has ever existed,* almost all of which are, undeniably, “about a soul-devouring harridan, her emasculated husband and their brood of unexceptional children.”

Family Guy, The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, every bad sitcom ever… that’s a perfect description of all of them. Sure, a lot of times it’s hilarious, and it makes for a good dynamic, but a lot of times it is all very, very much the same.

That’s why Futurama is so excellent, and why you were always right. It is emphatically not a show about that.