Apparently, the well-known kids rhyme “Eeny meeny miny moe…” is offensive and racist. At least that’s what department store chains in the U.K. are calling an official Walking Dead t-shirt featuring the children’s rhyme in conjunction with a barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat the notorious character Negan used to kill his victims.
For those of us wondering what they could be talking about, at some point there were several variations of this kiddy rhyme that switched out the word “tiger” for the not-so-pleasant n-word in the phrase “catch a tiger by the toe.”
Evidently, a shopper spotted the seemingly distasteful t-shirt and complained, “This image relates directly to the practice of assaulting black people in America … It is directly threatening of a racist assault, and if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood.”
The customer also pointed out that the store and show was most likely “accidental” and didn’t realize what the shirt was suggesting.
Or maybe because, like 90 percent of the population, they didn’t identify the children’s lyric to a racially substituted one. I think it’s safe to say the U.K. has its own unique set of snowflakes.
Primark –— the retailer which carried the t-shirt – issued the following seeing as how seemingly everything is offensive:
The T-shirt in question is licensed merchandise for the U.S. television series, The Walking Dead, and the quote and image are taken directly from the show. Any offense caused by its design was wholly unintentional and Primark sincerely apologizes for this.
The timing of this “controversy” is interesting to note since the finale, which aired this particular scene, aired last April. Since then, Dave Chapelle took to SNL and mocked the infamous baseball bat scene and even long before that, Justin Bieber featured the kid lyric in one of his songs. Where was the “fauxrage” then?
Jeffrey Dean Morgan responded via Twitter: “Holy c--p people are stupid…” I’m sure many couldn’t agree with him more.
