There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to dislike Family Guy. The writing is tired, the animation is uninspiring, the racial stereotypes are lazy, it’s not American Dad!. Anyway, it’s not as if we need to disparage the show any further by, say, claiming it was the inspiration for a tragedy that left three dead and dozens injured. One of the more batsh*t insane theories about what happened at the Boston Marathon on Monday is that Family Guy predicted the bombings, kind of like how The Simpsons knew 9/11 was going to happen. Says Gawker:
It all started when some heartless troll saw fit to combine two disparate parts from a single episode of Family Guy to make it appear as through Peter is using a cellphone to remotely detonate two explosive devices, thereby securing his victory in the Boston Marathon…In actuality, the two scenes occur many minutes apart from each other and belong to two unrelated gags. (Via)
The clips were taken from a recent episode, “Turban Cowboy” (now gone from Hulu), in which Peter befriends a Muslim, only to become an unknowing pawn in a terrorist plan to blow up the Quahog Bridge. See? That’s already miserable enough; there’s no reason to get wackos like Alex Jones involved. Oh yeah, Alex Jones is involved.
Alex Jones presented the doctored clip to his readers as proof that the media knew in advance about the government’s plans to bomb the Boston Marathon in order to generate a convenient excuse “to take our civil liberties and promote homeland security.” (Via)
Seth MacFarlane — who’s storing this controversy in the back of his mind for a killer “…it’s like the time I set off a bomb” fart joke a few years down the line — is none too pleased with the doctored footage.
So, to recap: Alex Jones is awful and everyone should watch American Dad! No terrorism predictions there. Only delightful Keith Sweat songs.