History was made last night, and I hope you weren’t watching. Yesterday, at exactly 8:30 p.m. EST, ABC premiered “Work It,” arguably the most offensive show of all-time. It’s about two dudes who dress up like ladies because women be stealing all our jobs. IT’S A MANCESSION, PEOPLE. The show’s homophobic, sexist, a little racist, and definitely awful. Like, “Homeboys in Outer Space”-level awful.
“Work It” joins a unique group of shows that can only be defined as “offensive,” both critically and culturally. I’m not talking about series like “South Park” and “All In the Family,” which many totally clueless writers have mislabeled as “the most offensive shows ever”; I’m referring to shows so lacking in decency and taste, they make the “Partial Terms of Endearment” episode of “Family Guy” seem like “The Joy of Painting” by comparison.
Here we go.
“Heil Honey, I’m Home!” is about Eva Braun and Mr. Hitler, or as his friends call him, Adolph, living next door to —and failing to get along with— the Goldensteins, Arny and Rosa. Oy vey! The U.K. originated “Heil” was presented as a “found footage” series, with an episode-opening crawl explaining that in the 1950s, the show was lost and only recently unearthed. This was, of course, a plot device, used only to get the satirical “Leave It to Beaver” WITH NAZIS show on the air — and it did, for a single episode. Honestly, it’s not very funny, not because it’s overly offensive, but because it feels like a five-minute sketch – about Hitler waiting for Neville Chamberlin to drop by – dragged out to 30 minutes. It’s the “SNL” of Hitler-starring sitcoms.
Knowing the line between acceptable and inappropriate is tricky. “Hogan’s Heroes” was set in a German POW camp during World War II, yet it ran for six seasons and 168 episodes. But someone at UPN should have just said NO to “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” not only because of its terrible name (the “P” isn’t silent), but also because it was about the HILARITY that is Civil War-era racism. Chi McBride plays Pfeiffer, who serves (slaves) as Abraham Lincoln’s butler, and though he’s usually treated as an equal by the president (who’s portrayed as a closeted homosexual — a lot of sausage gags), nearly every joke went over the aforementioned line, from unfunny yet acceptable, to simply offensive:
In the opening scene of the pilot, Kilbourne, Lincoln’s chief of staff in the program, walks into the kitchen to find Pfeiffer sitting with his legs stretched out among the breakfast dishes. “The slaves haven’t been emancipated yet,” Kilbourne barks. “Get your feet off the table, Pfeiffer.”
In the original opening sequence, two British horsemen munch on snacks while watching a double hanging in what is identified onscreen as “Merry Olde England.” The racial identity of the hanged men is concealed by bags tied over their heads. Chuckling at the sight, one of the horsemen asks, “Why is it that warm chestnuts never taste so good as when you’re watching a man take his last gasp and then urinating it back?” In the next scene, according to people who observed that first tape, a black British nobleman named Pfeiffer finds himself kidnapped by his enemies and thrown into the bottom of a slave ship crossing the Atlantic to America. (Metro Active)
My favorite fun facts about “The Morton Downey, Jr. Show,” hosted by ZIP IT himself:
-He was sued for $40 million after bringing a stripper onto the show and calling her a “slut,” a “pig,” a “hooker,” and a “tramp,” claiming that she had venereal diseases, and banging his pelvis against hers.
-At one point, he was arraigned on criminal charges for allegedly attacking a gay guest on his show, in a never-aired segment
To put things into perspective, Downey was so offensive that when he was fired from his pre-talk show radio program (for telling a ethnic joke aimed at an Asian city council member), he was replaced by Rush Limbaugh, who felt tame by comparison. He was Springer before Springer, but he meant what he said.
When I did a Google Search for “Most Offensive TV Show,” one of the first websites that came up in the search was for Stormfront, a message board for the white nationalist community. They’re a charming bunch. After reducing TV down to a “bunch of kikes, coons, perverts, and race mixers,” the commenters included the following shows as being particularly offensive:
Star Trek (and all the spin-offs; Voyager and DS9 were the worst, TOS and Enterprise weren’t as bad); nothing beats Star Trek. I intend on writing an essay or two about this venomous series one day.
I think Sesame Street could be added to the list. It was created for urban, non-white children.
King of the Hill- The portrayal of making a redneck uptight and always having it out with his Laotian neighbor Khan. The show makes Khan look intelligent and Hank Hill look like a mean-spiritedjerk.
Don’t forget The Boondocks! That cartoon has got to be THE most blatantly anti-White show with the most obnoxious characters ever aired. I believe it even edges out anything that jew, Norman Lear ever put out.
“I tried to be honest with all of you, not just some of you. Yes, I am from Mexico, I am a model, and I’m 21. But Tom, I really love spending time with you and kissing you. You see, I love men, and I love being a woman…But you see, Tom…I am not a woman. I was born as a man.”
That was the speech delivered by Miriam, the pre-op transsexual seen above, who was the object of affection for six male contestants on the 2003 U.K. reality show “There’s Something About Miriam.” For the three weeks and five episodes prior to her announcement, when the guys met and got to “know” Miriam, lifeguard Tom & Co. weren’t aware of her self-identification. When they did find out, they got pissed; they sued for “defamation, personal injury, and conspiracy to commit sexual assault (apparently because several of them had kissed and hugged Miriam),” according to Reality TV World, and won an undisclosed sum of money.
The truly offensive part, however, came after Miriam was finished speaking, when the contestants who didn’t win began laughing at Tom because BRAH, YOU’RE TOTALLY GAYYY NOW. Their lawsuit essentially claimed that their lives were ruined because everyone thinks they’re homosexuals now, what with all the kissing and hugging of a transgender person; what they didn’t mention were the scenes of the show featuring the guys literally whipping their di*ks out to see who had the biggest penis. NO HOMO. The moral of the terrible show: if a transgender person wants to “come out,” they should expect to be laughed at and for their friends to feel deceived. “There’s Something About Miriam” was aired in the U.S. on Fox Reality Channel.
