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If there's a female character in a big furry suit on Barney or Sesame Street, she has long eyelashes and flits and flutters about like some nightmarish caricature from Jerry Falwell's wet dream.

From the interview:

Throughout cartoon history, there aren't any--repeat, ANY--primary animal cartoon characters that are females. If one was female, she was primarily a girlfriend to the main character. Minnie Mouse. Look at kids' TV. If there's a female character in a big furry suit on Barney or Sesame Street, she has long eyelashes and flits and flutters about like some nightmarish caricature from Jerry Falwell's wet dream.

Two words: Dot Warner.

Please somebody tell me that Americans don't *really* need it pointing out that that Germany, Switzerland and Austria are in Europe?

I always assumed it was a caricature...

Take for instance Sweden. What a bunch arrogant xenophobic, elitist motherfuckers. They practically spit on America. Well, that's kind of funny behavior from a country whose sole contribution to WWII was storing the teeth for the nazis after they were ripped from the jews mouths. Heh, but that probably doesn't come up in the heady discussion about the barbarisms of the US.

And don't even get me started on the disgusting halitosis ridden, dental abuse area known as britain.

You can take your neurotic illusions of the utopian motherland and shove 'em up your wimpy euro-asses.

You wanna bitch about America, state your origin and we'll prove that you suck too.

Fucking losers.

Yugoslavia is itself a neo-colonial construct -- back then the fashion was to collect all the wogs who talk the same wog-speak (I use this racist term because my parents are from that part of the world, and the term describes the caricature of the foreign other in what passes for polite discourse these days), package them into one country, select the leader of one group of wogs, not necessarily the majority faction, and make that man King of the whole lot. It is ironic that the current fashion is to encourage Yugoslavia to break up into as many pieces as possible, down to that independence war within Macedonia, itself a pretty small piece.

The result of ham-handed (British) intervention of this sort are evident in the Middle East -- many of the Middle Eastern countries were assembled in just that manner -- Iraq, Jordan, and Israel come to mind.

Western intervention is often neither enlightened nor helpful.

Your post seems to have been moderated down as well. This seems to happen very often with posts discussing moderation. It's so common, it's almost caricatural: apparently some moderators can't stand it if you question their moderation skills. If anybody from the Slashdot crew is reading this, may I propose the following safeguard against such moderation abuses:

• If a post has moderator (case insensitive) in the title, and...
• ... a moderator has already moderated any direct or indirect parent of said post...
• ... then the same moderator cannot moderate this post.

As an addition, we could remove Offtopic from the moderation menu for any "moderators" post. Although discussion about moderation is not, strictly speaking, on topic, I think these meta-discussions are still justified. You would still be able to moderate them down as Flamebait or Troll, just not as Offtopic (as long of course, as you didn't mod a parent).

but he is a caricature of a lot of negative male characteristics. and maybe you guys don?t like to be reminded of those.

Uhh, what the hell?! Maybe its because he is so darn stupid and has a really annoying voice that grates against the inside of your skull? Just like Luke, and C3P0.

all the arguments I hear go along the lines of:

"I saw episode IV-VI when I was a kid, and they were great! and now I went to see episode I, and I was shocked to find that it was made for kids!"

well... have you ever considered the fact that the first three were, too? and that you like them now because you saw them when you were kids?

I saw episode one on the premier night here in Sweden. never in my life have I witnessed such excitement. the one boo! I heard was when we saw that they had translated (!) the magical three paragraphs to Swedish!

then it was all cheers, every time a reference to the old movies were made, or a familiar character was presented.

most of my male friends thought it was great, with the exception of Jar-Jar. and I see the same consensus here. I have yet to find a single gyu that likes him, or even stands to watch him. and I would like to offer another view of that.

me and some of my female friends have discussed this phenomena. we all think he's cute. the one bone we have with him is that he's the only one in all the movies that succeeds not by doing his best, but by being chronically clumsy and equally lucky.

but he is a caricature of a lot of negative male characteristics. and maybe you guys don't like to be reminded of those.

it's the only way we could explain the extreme, one-sided hate we have witnessed. and maybe there is some truth in it...

now, flame all you like... I have mail filters, and I know how to use them.

Tim Meadows -- good one. I forgot about him. I don't know the others but I will take your word for it.

I might add, that you only requested A black comedian...

yeah, beacause this all started when I posted how disappointing it was that all black comedians seems to have the same shtick. I wasn't posting about Lituanian comedians or Asian comedians. Read the thread.

I will now amend my original statement: It is lamentable that all the POPULAR black comedians are shrill-voiced clownish caricatures, and I am surprised that more black people aren't offended by how they are portrayed in the media.

Tim Medows.
Tracy Morgan (Unless dressing up like Oprah Winfrey is too hip-hop and edgy for you).
Wayne Brady.
I might add, that you only requested A black comedian, and did not qualify the remark further. But in reality, would it even matter? You seem to insist on things existing in such appallingly simple terms. As if Chris Tucker is only one way, or anyone else for that matter. I can virtually guarantee that viewed in a similarly harsh light everyone, you and I included, would appear little more than a caricature.

At one point, Tucker punches Chan and says, "sorry, you guys all look alike." Hey, why not let Jackie Chan make some watermelon-eating jokes while we're at it?

Yeah, I think that was the point. Tucker's using a joke that's usually directed at black people. It's irony

On a semi-related topic, why aren't black people (can I say that? or do I have to say African-American?) furious that they keep being represented as these shrill-voiced, jive-talkin' caricatures?

It's not a "jive-talkin' characture", it's Chris Tucker. That's what he does. I don't think blacks are usually represented that way. If you want a black actor acting seriously as an intelligent person, go see a movie with Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman. Chris Tucker acts the way he does because he's a clown - that's his schtick.

Plenty of stupid racist stereotypes in Rush Hour 2 as well, from the previews anyway.

At one point, Tucker punches Chan and says, "sorry, you guys all look alike." Hey, why not let Jackie Chan make some watermelon-eating jokes while we're at it? Jebus. Pathetic.

On a semi-related topic, why aren't black people (can I say that? or do I have to say African-American?) furious that they keep being represented as these shrill-voiced, jive-talkin' caricatures? I would think it's insulting, but I'm just a European-American.

Where's that troll Tyrone Fine when you need him? :)

Another aspect of anime that deserves attention is that the style of caricature exemplifies important aspects of human culture. There's a fair amount of psychology behind those large eyes. Anime characters are an exaggerated demonstration of what many people find attractive about other people.

Hey, that Karicature one is pretty good... did you think of that? Where did it come from?

Bill Shatner is such a bad actor that he has become a caricature of himself...this particular Trekkie can't even watch classic Trek without cracking up. But in the 60's, he was chosen for energy and sex-appeal...his delivery was laughable, but he still got the babe on every episode...and managed to become a revered popular icon in the process.

Wrong. Most "trendy" French businessmen believe it has become a sign of archaism to keep on speaking French when doing business. The last "chic" is to speak English in a reunion, without any reasonable reason, surrounded exclusively by native French speakers. More specifically, english is in some sense the "right-wing" language, that is, the language of Anglo-Saxon style capitalism, and French is the "left-wing" language, ie the language of continental social-democracy. I'm caricaturing a bit, but not that much.

When a French company goes "global" (Alcatel, Vivendi, etc...), English becomes the official language used by the executives to produce documents.

Well, I seem to remember a couple of FPSes that got some bad press for just the reason you mentioned. I haven't any of these, but I saw some stories here and there. The first was Kingpin--I think--where you run around in the inner city blowing away drug dealers who, according to the short piece I read, were invariably black. Then there's another game called Nam. You're running around killing black pajamaed VCs. I mainly heard this game sucked. And, Red Neck Rampage pretty much turned the entire rural South of the US into a caricature. I'm not concerned with Castle Wolfenstein because the target is the uniform rather than a caricature. Even so this is something to look out for. And, hey, if you're offended, don't buy it, talk to your friends and community about it too. Freedom of Speech works both ways.

Yes, I know, "it's just a game", but I can't think of another game anywhere where you run around and kill an identifiable group of people, no matter how evil they are deemed to be. Can you imagine a game where you're a US GI trying to escape from a Japanese POW camp with Rising Suns everywhere, killing caricatures of (probably bespectacled) Japanese soldiers and invading Japanese labs where experiments are being conducted on Filipinos and Chinese and American servicemen ? What about if a game were released where you are a Palestinian in an Israeli prison and you walk through Star-of-David-festooned hallways trying to kill Israeli stormtroopers while trying to halt their nuclear weapons research program ? How well accepted would those games be ? What kind of uproar would we expect then ?

You should here the way Hollywood butchers the northern New England accent. I live in New Hampshire, and contrary to the Steven King movies, I have never said "ayuh" or "You cahn't get theyah from heerah" (spelled as it sounds, I can't say phonetically because I don't know the proper symbols.) In addition, I'd like to know why New Englanders in movies always, without fail, wear plaid. I don't have even one plaid shirt! True, I have a plaid pajama shirt, but that doesn't count, damnit!

Hollywood feels perfectly free to caricature any accent.

"(although I don't condone the specific actions of Stalin, who, as we all know, wasn't a Communist so much as a Totalitarian political leech)."

No , you not gonna get out of this one that easy...
Stalin was a product of Communism and therefore can easily be included into legacy of this social system.
He and his tyranny was not what original Communism was about but all utopian systems end up being terrible caricatures of itself and great breeding ground for lunatics and mass murderers.