lawrenson wrote:

The wargamers in the UK now sometimes bring wifes along. There was a huge fuss at Salute (big wargames show) last year as they had Nazi re-enactors who had wifes and kids in little SS uniforms.

Wow.  If that had happened in the US, it would have made national news...  Every convention I have ever been to or worked has a specific clause in the rules prohibiting Nazi costumes or memorabilia being sold or worn.

Mike B.

lawrenson wrote:Well, I didnt see it on the news, but about 2 months later there was a TV program about WWII re-enactors, where the presenter tried his damnedest to show them as fascists, and (I thought) failed miserably.
A surprisingly high number were in the waffen ss corps tho - possibly because they had the smartest uniform...

There was an awful big fuss on the wargames circuit here tho, and the organisers of Salute sent out letters of apology to all the exhibitors.

Personally, it didnt bother me a lot. It might not be great to remember these things all the time, but we shouldnt just pretend they never happened.

Cheers,
malc

prb affects others more, who maybe were a little closer to them things than maybe you or i were....or something like that....

i just think its bad form

lawrenson wrote:Her grannie wouldnt have any Japanese items - including electrical - in the house because she knew a Burma railway survivor.

I'd respond to that, but won't because you're British & I know a colonialism survivor.

JohnGaunt wrote:
Didn't Dragonsfoot have a nice flamewar about this a year or two ago?  Ah, well.  Now back to the wargames discussion . . .

It would be easier to list the things Dragonsfoot hasn't had a flamewar over!

It's The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad.

I'm working him.

aia wrote:found this:

DUNGEONS-AND-DRAGONS-USEFUL-INFO-ON-DISC_W0QQitemZ180250106698

...who's gonna manage it?  

4 Gigs of data on playing as an Ant PC?  That's got to be official product.

g026r wrote:
I found Iron Dream to be a great but uncomfortable book.

On the one hand it's this fun, pulpy space opera.  On the other hand, the heroes are all Nazis.  (Which, of course, was the point of the book and its commentary on science fiction.)

Took me forever to find a copy though.  In the end I had to order one from a seller in England.

The Iron Dream is that rare entertainment that is actually MORE controversial in later years....if anyone attempted that book now, they would be destroyed (if they even got it published).  Kind of like the TV show "All in the Family"....a classic that was edgy in the 70s and would be IMPOSSIBLE to broadcast now in our PC world....

Mike B.

serleran wrote:
Not to be argumentative, but Nickelodeon (yeah, that's right, the children's network) ran a week-long marathon of All in the Family. Of course, they did put a "warning" before it. At least they gave it a shot... not like Wal-Mart.

I'm not talking about reruns...which have the slightly sanitized aspect of being "30 years old"...I'm talking about an actual remake or even a debut of a show similar to All in the Family.  There is not 1 in 1 million chance in hell a show like this could be greenlighted in our overly sensitive PC society nowadays. Consider:

The main character is an unapologetic racist and misogynist, and is never really punished for such behavior throughtout the show.  True, he is ridiculed, but each episode ends with him still secure in his beliefs.  Although his uneducated viewpoint is played for laughs, it's made clear that this is an "everyman" and not some aberration.

His wife, who he calls "dingbat", is a loving but incredibly unintelligent woman, and not noticibly smoking hot.  The trend nowadays is to give the fat, ignorant husband of sitcoms a smoking hot (or at least attractive) woman that is (of course!) much more intelligent than him, so she can wink her eye at the audience when her husband says something over the top.

His daughter and son in law are freewheeling liberal lefties, yet everything they say and do, when sometimes much more intelligent compared to the main character's stubborn prejudice, isn't given profound social relevance. Instead, often their over the top liberalism is also made fun of as much as the main character's strident conservatism.  

I could go on and on, but so many standard TV tropisms are broken in this show, if you were to pitch this today, they would toss you out of the office so hard your ass would bounce.  The closest show to it nowadays is South Park, which is possibly the most politically incorrect show of all time, and was supposedly inspired by Parker and Stone's love of All in the Family.  However, since it's a cartoon, the episodes don't have the same impact that a "real" show of this type would have (although it's inspired lots of controversy over the years).

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:
I'm not talking about reruns...which have the slightly sanitized aspect of being "30 years old"...I'm talking about an actual remake or even a debut of a show similar to All in the Family.  There is not 1 in 1 million chance in hell a show like this could be greenlighted in our overly sensitive PC society nowadays. Consider:

The main character is an unapologetic racist and misogynist, and is never really punished for such behavior throughtout the show.  True, he is ridiculed, but each episode ends with him still secure in his beliefs.  Although his uneducated viewpoint is played for laughs, it's made clear that this is an "everyman" and not some aberration.

His wife, who he calls "dingbat", is a loving but incredibly unintelligent woman, and not noticibly smoking hot.  The trend nowadays is to give the fat, ignorant husband of sitcoms a smoking hot (or at least attractive) woman that is (of course!) much more intelligent than him, so she can wink her eye at the audience when her husband says something over the top.

His daughter and son in law are freewheeling liberal lefties, yet everything they say and do, when sometimes much more intelligent compared to the main character's stubborn prejudice, isn't given profound social relevance. Instead, often their over the top liberalism is also made fun of as much as the main character's strident conservatism.  

I could go on and on, but so many standard TV tropisms are broken in this show, if you were to pitch this today, they would toss you out of the office so hard your ass would bounce.  The closest show to it nowadays is South Park, which is possibly the most politically incorrect show of all time, and was supposedly inspired by Parker and Stone's love of All in the Family.  However, since it's a cartoon, the episodes don't have the same impact that a "real" show of this type would have (although it's inspired lots of controversy over the years).

Mike B.

On a side note what was the English show that All in the Family was based on? (Was it Rising Damp?)

I always thought All in the family was heavy left-wing propaganda  myself, but that's just me.

Another show that wouldn't work in the USA would be 'House of Cards" three British TV movies, I think that was the title. It's done from the villains point of view with cool asides to the audience. The first two are excellent and the third seems to have been made to PC the series because the villain was way to succesful. Can't have the bad guy win.