Rant
Pulling Ashton Kutcher's 'Racist' Ad Proves We're Completely Humorless
It doesn't exactly come naturally to me to defend Ashton Kutcher, considering that I generally find him to be a distasteful guy. But I'm going to now. Today, Kutcher's ad for Popchips was pulled for being "racist." In the ad, Kutcher plays a variety of characters, including an Indian-accented man named Raj. Within hours, people on Twitter were calling Kutcher "racist" and saying that he was doing "brown face."
What this particular incident says to me is that it's clear that we, as a country, have officially become the constipated old man at the table who sits around kvetching about anything and everything and has absolutely ZERO sense of humor! No one wants to be around him. Everyone dislikes him. Yay.
I'm not saying that Kutcher's ad was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. In fact, I thought it was kind of boring, though it did highlight Kutcher's until-now unrecognized ability to nail various accents. But for the cry of "racism" to go up already! Well, of course it did. That's just the kind of cranky, humorless country we've become.
Remember a time when Peter Sellers, one of the greatest comedians ever, would play character after character in the Pink Panther movies? In fact, the main character, Inspector Clouseau, was Sellers doing a French accent. Frog face! Frooooggg face!!!!!
And remember how Eddie Murphy played a bunch of different characters in Norbit, including a guy named Mr. Wong, who had an Asian accent? Asian faaaaace!!!!!! OMG. Murphy used to play Gumby on Saturday Night Live too. Clay faaaace!!!!!
Congratulations, everyone. At the rate this country is going we will soon be totally out of funny people. Squawking, overly-sensitive types prone to see racism everywhere will have no one to complain about except cartoons and maybe stuffed animals.
Is this ad racist, funny, or just a freaking ad where Kutcher plays some characters and everyone needs to get a grip?
Image via YouTube
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Fondue
People just need to pull the stick out of their ass and stop being offended over every little thing. I'm guessing the people that are offended aren't even Indian.
Stacey.
Its only racist when its a white person pretending to be a different race. No one complained when the Wayans brothers made White Chicks. People need to stop pulling the racism card, it's played too often. There are many different races around the world, there is nothing wrong with emulating one, besides maybe being disrespectful, but thats not the same as being racist.
Brittany
jaxmadre
Racism is dependent on the motivation behind the actions or comments. If it's done to degrade another race, then it's racism. This ad's motivation was not to degrade Indians.
People suck. Life's going to be so freakin boring eventually when no one's allowed to do anything because someone could interpret it as something offensive.
smallfryes
I too am sick of people pulling the race card, especially in something as harmless as this. It didn't offend me...
Although watching the dog lick the Popchip made me never want to eat the chips, so fail to the marketing department...
But it was funny enough to bring the chips to my attention so in the future I might buy them once the trauma of the whole dog thing passes, so win for the marketing department on their machiavellian maneuver. :)
Also, does anybody else see Mike Myers in Ashton's Indian?
CrystalMP
fraoch
I like him still & liked the ad, it's cute :-)
I don't expect ads to be award winning master pieces, just attention getting. A catchy tune, a funny line, a famous person doing the ad...it all works for me.
lovemykids16
Really, there are too many people with way too much free time on their hands. Lighten up America, not everything is about race. SO SICK OF IT! And I completely agree with Stacey, it would seem that white people are the only ones capable of being racist.
MaiasMommy619
Jerzymom
I had no problem with it. I just saw him acting out different characters. He is an actor.