@avclub-90c88bf435e7bdafcb26109a12313c7d:disqus I personally don't think putting your own self-interest before a strangers makes you an asshole so much as it makes you a human being, but even if we agree that it does, I think @avclub-734ffb84cfa214922893511fae356b45:disqus is no more or less of an asshole for…

@avclub-90c88bf435e7bdafcb26109a12313c7d:disqus Every second you spend watching TV or sitting on this website talking about TV shows is time that could be spent solving these problems that you are supposedly so concerned about. It's fine to care about stuff, but nobody commenting here is any position to call anyone…

How many resources did your computer consume while you sat on your ass typing this way-too-long adolescent screed? Someone with close to 10,000 comments on a pop culture website is probably not spending their time in a manner that warrants moral superiority regarding our "idiot, wasteful" lifestyles. Do the planet and…

My grandfather owned a video rental store throughout most of the eighties, and one of the perks for me was that at night I could borrow whatever movies I wanted if they weren't checked out, as long as I brought them back before the store opened. For some reason Willow and ET stood out as the two movies that were so…

@avclub-0f2aab038be93ff407d92af691001e73:disqus : I'm not Catholic, but seriously…Rick Santorum? @avclub-1a162ff877247cce48f940e7a047afc0:disqus said outside of the clergy and you brought up Santorum and the Vatican as examples. Fuck both of them, but they have absolutely nothing to do with lay people's opinions. If…

I just spent a year in MA. "Universal Health Care" just meant tax penalties for people who can afford but choose not to purchase health care or small businesses who choose not to offer it. My girlfriend was a nurse working full-time but technically per diem so she was not offered insurance through work and ineligible…

I am unable to accurately quote a single line from the Big Lebowski and I fucking despise the Eagles.

That Rancid album holds up pretty well, but I wouldn't really call it hardcore or say that it's notable for being more intelligent than average, especially with what was going in punk and hardcore in the early nineties.

@avclub-f9612d06549ffe449e39e34fae8e2549:disqus Eh, it's not exactly the truth, but it isn't that far from it either.

That might be true but I'm not suggesting because liberals are off about something that you should become a right-wing racist. You can criticize one side without endorsing the entire platform of the opposition.

@avclub-29501df08e5d9ae59e432e4f188d3735:disqus : I do banquets/catering, and I can assure you that "Just Like Heaven" is beginning to take its place as a wedding staple.

You're probably about to get flamed because you opened this post by attacking "liberals", which is how a lot of folks identify themselves here and I imagine that initial offense will become a steep hurdle in anyone reading the rest of what you said as not being hostile…but I think you said some stuff which is good…

@avclub-f9612d06549ffe449e39e34fae8e2549:disqus If that dialogue was opened up it would still be totally excluding the many, many people who do feel that his work represents them and don't hate it.

I work with lots of Tyler Perry fans, it would be a trivial task for me to round up 5-6 guys willing to say that being gay is evil and you deserve AIDS for sucking dick. And these folks aren't even church goers or even possessing much in the way of a political agenda…those viewpoints are just totally uncontraversial…

@avclub-62812d8eb06386505986efff8b5e43ac:disqus I'm trying to think of a good analogy for how I feel as someone who goes to church having to defend Christianity from the crazy bullshit in these films….the best I can come up with is if I constantly demanded that white people who enjoy some form of rock music defend the…

I do think that there is a population for which these movies are relatable, but it's definitely more cultural than racial. It kind of works out there's a lot of overlap between being black and being a part of that culture, but it really isn't an absolute thing at all. I know a lot of Puerto Ricans and even whites who…

It's definitely comically exagerrated, but for a certain population (I'd say it's a little more specific than just black, since obviously not all black people can relate to the movies and some of the people who do are not black) these movies are relatable in a way that most films coming out of Hollywood aren't. And I…

I think there's an argument to be made that if you judge movies according to how well they succeed at what they're attempting, Tyler Perry's films are "good" films.

It's my experience that these movies are also legitimately popular with black men. The world is relatable and everything else gets overlooked.

This doesn't even actually resemble what most Christians believe, the idea that God is giving people AIDS was popularized by televangelists with a political agenda in the 1980s. More liberal denominations might says this is ridciulous because a loving God doesn't give people AIDS to punish them, and even more…