Here's the silver lining: Almost everyone commenting on this "The Walking Dead" T-shirt news thinks what happened was a ridiculous, out-of-context overreaction. Can you remember the last time people -- not just TWD fans and Negan actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but regular American humans on both sides of the political aisle -- agreed on anything? So there's that.
Apparently what happened was a guy in Sheffield, England was at a Primark (U.K. department store) with his wife and they saw a "Walking Dead" T-shirt quoting Negan's now infamous lineup quote: "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe," with a picture of Lucille, the barbed-wire-covered baseball bat Negan uses to kill. This guy's mind went immediately to a dark time in history when the "Eeny meeny" rhyme included the n-word instead of the word tiger. ("Pulp Fiction" used the n-word version.) Pair that with a weapon, and he saw something very different from TWD fans.
As he told The Sheffield Star:
"We were shocked when we came face to face with a new T-shirt with a racially explicit graphic and text. It was fantastically offensive and I can only assume that no-one in the process of ordering it knew what they were doing, or were aware of its subliminal messages. The graphic has a large American baseball bat, wrapped round with barbed wire, and covered with blood. This image relates directly to the practice of assaulting black people in America. It is directly threatening of a racist assault, and if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood."
FACE PALM
The guy meant well, but context is everything. And in this context, it's just a direct quote from "The Walking Dead" with direct imagery from the show.
Well, he decided to contact Primark and complained to the point where they felt they should remove the shirt from sale. Here's what Primark said in a statement (via BBC):
"The T-shirt in question is licensed merchandise for the US television series, The Walking Dead, and the quote and image are taken directly from the show. Any offence caused by its design was wholly unintentional and Primark sincerely apologises for this. Primark has removed the product from sale."
Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Negan, and he tweeted out a link to the story, including his own commentary on the state of humanity:
Holy crap people are stupid. 'Walking Dead' Shirt Pulled From Stores After Complaint of Racism https://t.co/cpeIqcxTwJ
— Jeffrey Dean Morgan (@JDMorgan) February 22, 2017
Many fans agreed with JDM. But now several are overreacting on the other side, complaining about oversensitive liberals, even though plenty of liberals watch TWD and had no problem with the T-shirt.
"The Walking Dead" Season 7 airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC.
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