Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals: Episode 59 Stephen Fry and The Goode Family

Episode 59 Stephen Fry and The Goode Family

Atlas Shrugged starring Sociologists and sinful Soybeans….Stephen Fry in BOTH my city of Invercargill, NZ and some "America" outfit, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, The Goode Family - bringing Veganism into mainstream cartoons :-)

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Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals iTunes link

http://itunes.apple.com/nz/podcast/coexisting-with-nonhuman-animals/id334206335

Hello and welcome to another fine episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals

This episode, The Goode Family, King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Atlas Shrugged and Stephen Fry all have something in common, they were subjects of episode 59 of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals! I'm sure Mr Fry will put that on his CV, and about Atlast Shrugged, I've always been a favourite podcaster of the Teabaggers.

Today I'd like to tie some more threads of pop culture together, in an attempt to sew a Vegan T shirt from the scraps.

To finish off a story from last episode, and because my Angry Right Wing friends have short attention spans, I'll let Atlas shrug and go on strike right now. Hey, that ties in with Bill Mahers show Realtime with Bill Maher, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote about the smart, hardworking, inventive, creative and absolutely essential people of America going on strike, and look, Sarah Palin QUIT again! She's a true believer in Objectivism!

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, yet has some inklings of Veganism within, promoted by those nutty Sociologists, a world where those damn socialists with their highways and hospitals and education systems have run amok, blame it all on Sociologists and their Soybeans!

Yes, the Soybean will be the death of us all! Thats what happens when the Vegans try and take over, we'll all end up naked, no clothes, no medicine if we don't set cats on fire and swing them by their flaming tails, its vital medical research you know, we'll be out there trying to steal nuts and bolts from the railway tracks, and its all because of those Vegan sociologists and their soybeans.

Imagine if we could write a Right Wing Novel, all three pages of it, and get all those American dudes with the cardboard signs, "Obama is the socialist nazi" on our side! They'd be GREAT advocates for Veganism! Cant you just imagine them, all gently demanding action from the president through creatively spelled, non violently held little signs?

I'll get to work on the book right away.

Now to step down off my high Vegan Horse Equivalent, lets dumb down the rest of the show, starting with this chap, Mr Stephen Fry.

In all seriousness, these clips are from Stephen Fry in America, its hilarious viewing! The worlds smartest man drives a US legal "English Taxi cab" through every American state, interviewing the locals. It really is Borat/Ali G level material, I felt like they weren't in on the joke. He's so polite, all British and everything, and the rural folk drawl out some kind of message about their local activities, drinking gin, playing the banjo and complimenting strangers on their pretty mouths. I'm quite sure they disagree with Mr Fry politically, but just the patterns of their speech is amazingly different, with him say "oh my word" and "great heavens", "Oscar Wilde described the majesty of…" all the time, to which they reply, "yiiiiip, she's pretty big al'rite"

I hero worship the man, not only because he seems to carry about four iPhones, honestly, that Apple pay HIM to talk about Apple gear, but in the fact he's visited my city of Invercargill - not a TOWN, we're a city of 50,000, for another documentary series, Last Chance to See, about endangered species

Just standard entry to New Zealand protocol Mr Fry, our air locks are a little difficult at first, gotta keep in the artificial gravity down here you know! That building is a stones throw away from where I live,

the Invercargill Quarantine centre for our Department of Killing Non Native Animals, sorry, I meant Department of Conservation, was all about meeting the Kakapo, one of our lovely native birds

We have basically no native mammals in New Zealand, a country of insects and birds really. The country has always been safe and gentle and soft, there was no need for the birds to fly away from danger, because there wasn't any. This contrasts a hell of a lot with our big brother Australia, where every plant is venomous, poisonous, toxic, spits acid, carnivorous, suited for a desert climate AND has thorns on every part of its surface, and forget about what passes for native animals over in that crazy country! There are a MILLION native animals capable of hurting or actually killing you, animals that actively seek out and kill human beings…..we pretty much have ONE little, non native spider, and guess where they came from… AUSTRALIA. Thanks for the hand me downs Big Brother!!!

In Stephen Fry in America, he has a series of wild adventures with the wild folk who live by killing other animals.

Its interesting, he wanted to go out hunting, but didn't want to see a DEER hurt or killed

I'd love to see someone speak eloquently with Stephen Fry about Veganism, about respecting ALL other animals, Chickens, Pigs, Cows, Sheep...

In Alaska, he takes a sort of "Noble Savage" approach to respecting those who "live off the land". Sometimes, he over romanticizes the traditional ways of killing of other animals though, as heard here

Ye old GPS! They probably order Pizza on their iPhones too!

Surely we can move on from all that? Killing other animals seems so awful, so old fashioned, huddled over fires for warmth, killing other NATURAL animals who've EVOLVED for millions of years to live there, its almost like WE are not meant to live there, right? Lets all be Vegan, and avoid all that blood, fat, guts, being attacked by supernatural animals...

Watching the "Dog of Death" episode of The Simpsons, I came across this clip,

This same episode considered "damn" a swear word, but DARN was ok. Evidently, in early 90's animated comedies, making Roosters fight was ok too. Perhaps we see a difference between making Roosters fight and making Dogs fight, the vast, vast majority of us eat killed Chickens each and every day. But we genuinely think its wrong to KICK a dog, much less seriously hurt or kill them.

The Simpsons also has this amazing clip featuring Mr Burns, who seems to admit we steal Honey from hard working animals, this is from The Land of Chocolate episode, or where he sells the Nuclear plant to The Germans

The bees are fighting back huh? Almost like they don't like having their hard created honey taken from them by force!

Mr Burns also teaches us about "recycling", and greenwashing, pretending anything is "good for the planet" in order to make money

I'd like this episode to be about other messages from cartoons, mainly The Goode Family.

It sounds like a dream come true, a mainstream cartoon, written and voiced by Mike Judge, creator of, well, King of the Hill, Office Space, Idiocracy…. and its about… A FAMILY OF VEGANS!!!!!!!!

WOW! It sounded too good to be true. It IS incredible, lets face it.

The show is from 2009, it lasted one season, apparently ending with poor ratings. Its ahead of its time you could say, it might have been hard to find an audience.

The family are all hyper liberal, they like cycling and organic gardening, they take showers outside powered by rainwater, they have animal rights stickers all over their hybrid car, they're always concerned about the rainforest and whats going on elsewhere on the planet… THEY ARE VEGAN!

Its also used as a bad thing though, because we're not yet ready for fairly normal sort of cartoon characters, who, oh yeah, just happen to all be Vegan, they had to be over the top. Like, the father Gerald is whiny and pathetic, not to mention physically weak. He is near useless at anything, he doesn't live in the real world. They have a Vegan Dog, WOW, Che, as Wikipedia describes

"…the Goodes feed him vegan food which he hates. He craves meat and often eats neighborhood animals and pets. As a consequence, "missing" flyers of neighborhood pets blanket street poles."

Many scenes show Che being fed some green slop that resembles radioactive waste. They say "oh, but Che is a GOOD dog, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, do you boy? Here Che, have your healthy, nutritious Vegan food…", which he looks and and whines, with a main human character saying something like, "ohh, poor Che, he feels he shouldn't eat while so many on the other side of the world are starving, what a considerate dog you are Che!", while the dog looks out the window, at the neighbors having a Non Vegan BBQ, and his tongue drops out, his eyes roll back, he goes nuts, trying desperately to get outside and eat the dead flesh.

There really is a strong message of "Vegans are whiny, unrealistic and force their Veganism, a weird cult diet, on everyone else, including pets, who arent meant to be Vegan you know, they didn't evolve for that, they were intelligently designed by Jesus to be referred to as IT's, to serve their masters, US!"

The Goode Family are also shown trying to fit in with the latest trends, and to flaunt how "caring" they are. They try and keep up with the Joneses, out Organically Green their friends, they go to a version of Whole Foods, called "One Earth", where a giant billboard, The Big Board keeps track of whats In and whats Out, with things like "farm raised catfish" constantly flickering between a good thing and a bad thing, the entire store is not Vegan.

Here are the very first speaking lines from the first episode of The Goode Family, our introduction to the show

They wanted to adopt a starving African child, out of the goodness of their hearts of course, lets hear how that turned out

The joke is that the rest of the family are thin, obviously pathetic, while Ubunutu is a massive brute, picked for the American Football team, who dreams of using heavy machinery, forklifts etc, WHILE still caring about the world. I guess its a GOOD thing, it shows that the biological Goode Family are not "pathetically weak" because of VEGANISM, but because thats their genes, while Ubuntu, who is a full member of the family, and JUST AS CARING turns out to be huge.

More clips from the first episode

The Grandad is the sort of Sarah Palin character, he drives a huge vehicle, is politically incorrect, and Non Vegan. He says all those "but if God didn't mean for us to eat animals, why'd Jesus make them out of the meats?" type comments, which are meant to be hilarious remember, as Vegans we have to "ha. ha. ha. that is a very good one, you are so clever, how did you think of that by yourself, boy, you sure have me beat!" etc. Of course their god made pigs and cows and sheep out of meat for us to eat, but cats and dogs? WOAH THERE, they're NOT made out of meat for us to eat, no sir, no way!

While the Gerald, the Vegan father is presumably unmanly for caring too much

Reusable bags are a big deal at the One Earth store

When Helen, the Goode Family mother is banned from One Earth, she has to go to Save Big, the Wal Mart (or Mega lo Mart from King of the Hill) equivalent, it drives her nuts

<4 just as good half price twice as big>

The Vegan adult male is shown as useless while cleaning his little bicycle

And this clip, with the idea of "Vegan Stew" being used as a joke

<6 firm rhetoric>

This clip ends with a Hank Hill esque noise, showing how Mike Judge voices both characters

<7 eco cruise>

Thats how well known Sea Shepherd have become in pop culture, those people who go out there and beat up/annoy hard working people.

I'd like to show a comparison in how violent groups have been portrayed in both King of the Hill, and now The Goode Family, I think its very bad for Vegans if this "they're all either whiny and pathetic or dropout thugs who beat hardworking people up" duality is how we're thought of by the Non Vegan majority.

Here are an environmental group in King of The Hill first, listen to the voice of the main character Hank Hill

And now for The Goode Family, pay attention to the main character Geralds voice, Mike Judge, creator does both Hank and Gerald

So much of The Goode Family showed itself in the earlier show King of the Hill. We can see the prototype characters back then, whiny, pathetic, weak, unmasculine little nerds, with a few mentions of Vegetarians throughout. The last aired episode of King of the Hill was about judging dead cows, although a couple episodes trickled out after that one.

Heres a clip from the main "last episode" of King of the Hill,

Perhaps it says something that we've moved on from Vegetarians being well known "weirdo liberals" in pop culture, to having VEGANS known by the majority of people, its progress! Certainly, its why I get out of bed in the morning, so more people will know about Vegans, can make fun of us instead!

The pilot episode of King of the Hill featured "the twig boy", the little Government worker, pale, pathetic, whiny who tried to control the hardworking average Texan guy, Hank Hill. About disciplining Hanks son Bobby, the twig boy character got all upset at any kind of violence, as we see here, as Hank lays down the law in return

Its really interesting to see how far we've come, from whiny pathetic people being "normal", Animal Eating, wearing, exploiting people who just whine a little in King of the Hills first episode in January 1997, to Vegetarians being mentioned more and more throughout the show which ended in 2009, with the all Vegan Goode family, including the unwilling Dog starting around 2009 too, just before King of the Hill finished.

It goes to show Veganism IS becoming mainstream, when a television show, no matter how relatively unknown, with apparently "low ratings" could be pitched, and make it to air for a season starring a Vegan family. Yes, we were also shown as being whiny, pretentious, not really caring, shallow about our actions, not living in the real world, "preachy" I guess…

We're getting out there, we've got our foot in the door, and while at first it really really hurts having a door slammed against your foot, ow, ow ow, eventually your foot becomes numb, or it breaks off. One or the other. In either sense, whether we keep our foot or not, the pain goes away!

Lets get out there and really PROVE how Vegans are strong, healthy, caring and MAINSTREAM!

Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.

You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at coexisting with nonhuman animals . co .nz

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