In a rather spectacular lesson on the importance of picking one’s battles, Squidbillies star Stuart D. Baker has been fired from the show following deprecatory comments aimed at country legend Dolly Parton and her support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Baker had been voicing the main character Early Cuyler on the Adult Swim cartoon since its debut in 2005.
In mid-August, Baker made several deliberately offensive, slur-encrusted posts on Facebook after apparently just discovering that famous humanitarian Dolly Parton was a humanitarian. Among comments insulting her appearance, he added “remember, sl*t, Rednecks made you a Millionaire!” After noticing that consequences have actions as his fans began unfollowing him and Facebook began removing the offending posts, he doubled down with gems like “HAVE FUN forsaking your own race, culture and heritage,” and “I’m sorry to hear that all of you Liberals careers are going down the sh*tter,” shortly before being fired from the show.
After a weekend of fans biting back at Baker and defending Parton, Squidbillies‘ creators Jim Fortier and Dave Willis announced his termination on August 16th via the show’s official Twitter account. “The views he expressed do not reflect our own personal values or the values of the show that we and many others have worked hard to produce over the past 15 years,” the post said, “for those reasons, production of Squidbillies will continue without Mr. Baker, effective immediately.” No further comments have been made concerning Early’s fate on the show, so it’s currently unknown whether the character will be recast or simply removed altogether.
The humor of Squidbillies, a show featuring a family of talking squids living in Georgia, revolves around being a parody of some less-than-charitable southern stereotypes, with Baker’s former character centered as the family’s abusive, alcoholic patriarch. With the show openly playing those qualities for laughs, many fans were surprised to see him lash out the way he did. Even among the most conservative voices in entertainment, it’s pretty widely accepted that support of the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights issues is quickly becoming the more mainstream viewpoint, so it’s difficult to discern what Baker expected would be the result of his very public outburst.
Dolly Parton hit the news earlier in August with her outspoken support of the Black Lives Matter movement, saying, “of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” While those familiar with her humanitarian work were likely not surprised by this, it was still nice to hear it out loud. There’s a new civil rights movement in 2020, and it seems to be showing people’s true selves, with some using the criticism to better themselves, and others… not doing that.
Of course, there are people complaining that Baker’s termination, along with other similar situations, are violations of free speech. In response to that, it’s very much worth mentioning that freedom of speech only protects people from being arrested by the government for what they say. Being fired from a cartoon squid show is absolutely not that.
Source: Variety, Rolling Stone, @brutalcountry/Twitter
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