Show Notes for the Cracked Podcast Episode, “Ways America Was Shockingly Evil Very Recently”
Listen to this episode on Earwolf.
The Cheat Sheet
- Our society likes to believe that our stupidest behaviors are behind us. They’re not. (2:55)
- Jerry Seinfeld keeps complaining about political correctness (“this creepy PC thing”). (7:02)
- In the 1980s, some people in the Reagan administration considered the AIDS crisis in America a laughing matter. (10:20)
- US presidents are changing their tune on the question of marriage equality yet not on the question of God. (16:18)
- In terms of making fun of other people, we’re no less ignorant nowadays than we were decades ago when we more overtly stereotyped certain groups of people. We’ve just found different groups to hate. (37:37)
- Ads from the 1970s that sexualized young girls and new mothers prove that it was a decade when nobody listened to women. (41:02)
- Jokes have been weaponized into wish fulfillment. (1:07:45)
- And so much more…
About this Episode
In episode 105 of the Cracked Podcast, host Jack O’Brien and Cracked editors Soren Bowie and Alex Schmidt talk about movies, advertisements, and nuggets of pop-culture that were once considered funny, but are now inexcusably insensitive.
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More About this Episode
Time Works Wonders
O’Brien opens the show with how much we’ve culturally changed in recent decades. It wasn’t that long ago, he says, that basketball star Allen Iverson was getting flack from having tattoos and cornrows — now look at the NBA. These days, when we watch retro TV shows like “Mad Men,” it seems so obvious how backward we all were — smoking in offices? Really? When was that ever okay?
And smoking in restaurants in bars? Why did so many of us endure years of inhaling second hand smoke? We always knew it was gross, but why’d it take us so long to insist that smokers light up outside? But that’s just how it was back then. As O’Brien points out, even in the classic movie Ghostbusters there are several scenes in which Bill Murray’s character smokes a cigarette — something that you wouldn’t see so nonchalantly slipped into today’s movies. So what happened? Why have we changed?
O’Brien uses smoking as an example to explore how so many cultural norms have done a 180. In the same way that we knew for decades that second hand smoking was dangerous before we started to see a big shift in smoking in public, in bars, and even on commercial flights, O’Brien argues that a similar thing is happening with some of today’s beliefs. He explores how for decades we knew that racism and sexism, to bring up to just two topics, were unambiguously wrong, yet they were abundantly present in culture. Nowadays though, you simply can’t get away with a cringeworthy commented broadly directed at a race or a gender like you could back then — and that’s progress.
O’Brien rips into Jerry Seinfeld and about how Seinfeld laments that people don’t laugh as much when he makes fun of a gay man. O’Brien’s view is that even though we used to think it was okay to laugh at a lot of jokes like that, some of them were — with hindsight — shockingly homophobic, transphobic, sexist, or just “all around sexually creepy as fuck.”
We’re Slowly Getting There
It’s great how far we’ve come. But …
Alex Schmidt talks about how 2012 was the first U.S. presidential election where a candidate — Barack Obama — supported marriage equality. Then Soren Bowie jumps in, saying, “If a presidential candidate is ever asked the question do you believe in God, they have no choice but to say yes because of the huge constituency that you’ll lose if you don’t” (16:35). Bowie’s right. Politicians love to tell people what they want to hear, which is often aligned with whatever is culturally acceptable at the time. As an example, the guys bring how Hillary Clinton said in 2004 that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
Old Movies Just Don’t Stand Up
The Cracked guys explore a litany of Hollywood movies — especially those made by straight white males for an audience that was largely straight, white, and male — that were funny to millions of people, but are now downright shocking. Here’s a quick list of some of the guys’ observations.
American Beauty — If you really look at the movie, O’Brien says, the bit about the older man wanting to have sex with a teenage girl is portrayed as okay. Mmm, awkward.
American Pie — The Jason Biggs character hears that getting to “third base” is like fucking a pie. So what does he do? He fucks a pie right there in the kitchen. Later he tries to have sex with a girl while secretly filming her and broadcasting it to friends, and later this girl is deported from the U.S. yet still fancies him. Mmm, strange.
Wedding Crashers — Vince Vaughn’s character gets raped, and then at the end of the movie, we’re supposed to be excited that he’s formed a long-term relationship with his rapist. Mmm, complicated.
Some Old Commercials are as Sexist, Bigoted, and Racist AF
The Cracked editors round out the last part of the episode by analyzing some old ads and tearing them some new assholes. They catalog commercials far and wide. There’s the creepy 1975 commercial that sexualizes babies. There are the American Apparel ads (say no more). There’s the racist ad featuring baseball player David Ortiz and football player Brian Urlacher winning a badminton championships by lodging a shuttlecock into an opponent’s leg. And then there’s the Salesgenie’s ads with insultingly stereotypical Asian accents.
Thanks to Our Sponsors!
This episode is brought to you by:
- Squarepace.
- Harry’s (use promo code “cracked” for a $5 discount).
- Stamps.com (use promo code “cracked” for a free trial).
- Howl.fm (use promo code “cracked” for a free trial of Howl Premium).
Thanks Soren and Alex!
If you enjoyed our guests, send Soren Bowie a quick shout out on his Twitter.
Also say hi to Alex Schmidt on his Twitter or Tumblr.
Other People Mentioned in this Episode
- Basketball players Rajon Rondo and Kobe Bryant.
- Comedians Jerry Amy Schumer, Roseanne Barr, and Dave Chappelle.
- Ronald Reagan’s former press secretary, Larry Speakes.
- Writer Dave Eggers.
- Actors Brooke Shields, Burt Reynolds, and Natalie Portman.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis.
- Director Woody Allen and his daughter/wife Soon-Yi Previn.
- Singer Janet Jackson.
- NBA analyst Ric Bucher.
- Badminton players Howard Bach and Khan Malaythong.
- Quarterbacks Peyton Manning and John Elway.
Cool Stuff and Selected Links from this Episode
- Jack O’Brien on Cracked.com.
- Soren Bowie on Cracked.com.
- Alex Schmidt on Cracked.com.
- Post Malone’s Twitter and SoundCloud.
- Can’t believe that reporters and acting press secretary Larry Speakes laughed about the AIDS crisis in America during a White House press briefing? Read the transcripts in the BuzzFeed article, “13 Times The Reagan White House Press Briefing Erupted With Laughter Over AIDS.” Then read Richard Lawson’s Vanity Fair article, “The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling.”
- If you haven’t heard of the 1993 Seinfeld episode that became known as the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” episode, then watch this clip.
- For more on gamergate and the hullabaloo surrounding attacks on video game developer Zoe Quinn and writer Anita Sarkeesian, check out this article and this guide.
- At 40:10, the guys talk about tribalism and being kind. For more on President Obama’s take on this topic — and identity politics that divide societies into “us” and “them” — read this analysis.
- Anthony Kiedis with a mustache.
- Kobe Bryant fined $100,000 for gay slur.
- The raciest (NSFW) and most controversial (NSFW) ads by American Apparel.
- Salesgenie’s Super Bowl ads are super offensive to Chinese and Indians. Or is this really about white guilt?
- Dave Chappelle skits about a gay DMV, gay butchers, gay landscapers, and a gay chapter of the KKK.
- The bit during Hannibal Buress’s stand-up routine when he calls Bill Cosby a rapist.
You’ll Also Like
- If you enjoyed the discussion about court cases (Lawrence v. Texas struck down a sodomy law in Texas; Bowers v. Hardwick overturned the constitutionality of a sodomy law in Georgia) then check out this episode by Professor Blastoff.
- If you liked the bits about marriage equality, and you also enjoy improvisation comedy, check out the Improv4humans episode, “It’s Your Choice To Suck A Dick.”
- If you want more of O’Brien’s insights into films, check out the Cracked episode, “20 Movies That Would Be Better With One Simple Change.”
- If you were as perplexed as O’Brien, Bowie, and Schmidt were that some movies and TV ads actually got made, we’ve got the podcast for you: “How Did This Get Made?”
- Liked laughing at the NBA? Keep laughing: “Casey Feigh, Dave Theune: NBA on NPR.”
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Lee Bob Black is a writer and editor.
(Explanation: A while ago, I was vying for a job as a freelance writer for Earwolf Podcast Network, which produces the Cracked Podcast. These show notes were part of my attempt at landing that gig. I also wrote some show notes for an episode of Kevin Pollack’s Chat Show. LBB.)
