Ladybugs_all_the_way_down

Fair enough on all of your points--especially on how outmoded his act seems now. I dont think the man is blameless at all and of course you can criticize the dead...but, while played for laughs, I felt the commentary which seemed to imply that R-Danger the man not Chester the character was essentially a bit of kiddy fiddler wannbe went little further past the unfounded accusation line than I was comfortable with while missing the point that there is some real societal level culpability here. Maybe that is being unfair to the gang (whom I enjoy very much), but it seemed a bit much.

While I agree that there is *a lot* of things that are very wrong with this movie, and while much of it truly is “problematic”, I was a little struck by how eager it seemed that everybody in the episode was willing to project an unseemly, dare I say pedophilla-friendly nature onto Rodney Dangerfield the person. Don’t get me wrong, this is a bad movie with some jokes that it is generous to say are ill-advised and which is brazenly misogynistic in parts. However, Rodney didn’t write the movie, didn’t direct it, didn’t sign the checks, or release it. I think it is a little unfair to paint the guy with such a broad brush--especially when he is gone and, as far as I can tell, there isn’t some sort of known history of problematic behavior with kids. Dangerfield was a giant; one that many comics and arguable many of the HDTGM guests arguable owe a debt of gratitude The disgust that was expressed during this show--disgust that was legitimate--is misplaced. It should have been aimed right at a culture in which, just 25 years ago, this movie could have been made by a major studio, marked to kids, and become a beloved movie to many all without nary a peep about it. If you read contemporary reviews of the film it gets panned, some characterize the jokes as bad (and acknowledge the homophobic and pedophilia subject matter), but nobody is screaming that it is terrible or harmful. The fact is that the world that could make this film and have it just be a stupid movie instead of a damaging one was not that long ago. It was our parents, the entertainment companies of the time, and sometimes even ourselves that allowed this sort of thing to happen. Dangerfield made a bad movie and told some bad jokes, and maybe kept too many spatulas--that does not make him a pedophile and the piling on in that manner left a bad taste in my mouth.