Eat my bunghole, bitch.

Awwww. There you go again with sweet words of nothing

Go fuck yourself, yoda.

oh we got a keyboard warrior. you sound so useful

Shut the fuck up you bitch.

Someones butt hurt.
Its ok. im sure itll get better soon.

Suck my dyck.

Homer, Wiggam, Burns, Cletus don’t exactly do white people any favours.
If westerners living in India or China complained about the way an American/British/Aussie character was being stereotyped in one of their comedy shows, would it make headlines and studio chiefs there would drop the character to please a small minority of upset foreigners. I doubt it.

But it’s true for everyone, including whites. People take the worst aspects of characters and mock people all the time, irrespective of color.

I did stop watching.

And you missed my point that Apu’s humor is simply based on his race and ethnicity. I’ll concede on Tony the Mafia Boss being a racial stereotype, but with every other character you mention, you interchange the race/skin color and the the caricatures still work: Wiggum, Ralph Wiggum, the Comic Book Guy, could be black, white, hispanic, etc. and the jokes would still work. That’s not the case with Apu…at least not in the early seasons I watched.

I have no problem admitting I am wrong – and like I said, you are correct in that the show does have a lot of offensive stereotypes of professions, etc. and it should be seen as a satire. But when you are born in this country by parents who are foreign and as a child you hear people make fun of them almost everytime you go out in public, using the Apu voice saying “thank you, come again;” when you are holding your parents hand in the mall and hear people shout at them “go back to your country,” or “shouldn’t you be manning the 7-11;” when random kids in your school make fun of the Gods you worship, because their only knowledge about Indian religions is from a cartoon; and when I introduce myself to people from work, and they constantly say how impressed they are that I don’t have an accent, even though I just told them I was born and raised in this country, the additive effect is that all these little things accumulate to become one big issue. You can and try to let go & ignore all these little things day after day (lest you get called a “butthurt” or a “fucking puss[y]”) but dealing with unsolicited offensive comments becomes your whole life and the frustration boils over to the point where people do make a big deal over a simple TV show.

Ultimately, I genuinely don’t care about The Simpsons anymore. I stopped watching a couple decades ago. I just take more issue with people simply dismissing other people’s concerns with complete insensitivity and vitriol, instead of trying to truly understand why it might offend them. The issue doesn’t have to be a cartoon – it can be a professional sports team name/logo/etc, proposed law, etc.. You don’t have to agree with why people are opposed to it – but to just dismiss it without attempting to understand why it might be offensive to them and brush it off with name calling and bullying, is what is truly hurtful.

But I don’t expect to make any sort of impact on anyone in the comments section of an internet article, and expect more of the same hateful replies after I hit “post.” I actually never comment because of that instant negativity & hate that gets spewed out without people attempting to be decent for once and just think and listen for a bit. If you disagree still, fine. But doing so with civility is all I would hope for.

And if you are white and haven’t thought to look at things from the perspective of a minority, please do so. Little things day after day, and year after year, over a lifetime, can truly have a negative impact on their self worth and image. Death by a thousand paper cuts I guess.

This is exactly why Apu shouldn’t be changed. The show isn’t a realistic portrayal of anything.

So what you’re saying is they should get rid of 90% of their characters? Wiggum is a fat, lazy cop. Thats discrimination since not all cops are fat and lazy. Tony the mafia boss? Not all Italians are in the mafia. Ralf? Hes clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone who has even the slightest learning disability. Add Homer to that too. He’s one of the most retarded characters from any tv show in the history of tv shows.
If one character on a show offends you so much because of a stereotype, on a show where every single character is a stereotype, then maybe you should just stop watching.

The least you can do when people say they are offended is try to stop for a minute , put yourself in the mindset of someone who is a minority and try to understand their perspective a bit more instead of instantly writing them off as meek and unable to withstand criticism.

Yes, at the end of the day it’s a cartoon. But it’s a cartoon that has had a huge impact on American culture…and a negative impact on those of Indian descent who are born & raised in this country and would like to be considered just American too.