There was a period of like 2 years when I was a kid where chuck Norris jokes were all the rage on the playground and I made an iPhone app that listed them all.
Jokes like “Chuck Norris is able to slam a revolving door.”
Anyway, I “built” this stupid app when I was like 13, copy-pasted like 300 jokes in there and a random one would show every time you tapped the screen.
Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.
For the first time in over a decade he was suddenly relevant in a way. People remembered he existed, and they were playing off his tough guy image.
And what did he do? Try and shut it down and start suing people. Stupid.
It took him a couple of years to come around to it. If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well? Or would he be a much more obscure celebrity by now?
You underestimate how popular Walker, Texas Ranger was. It wasn't pulling ratings like Seinfeld, ER, or Friends, but it was a solid primetime staple for almost a decade.
I never watched it myself, but the 50+ demo loved it.
Maybe for people in the US. Internationally? I haven't watched a single episode of WTR, I don't know anyone who has, but everyone knows who Chuck Norris was.
As a gent born and raised in Texas, and has never seen the show - I am pleasantly surprised to see these comments about how popular WTR was internationally. If I had been asked to bet, I would have lost money on this one.
The only time I ever saw Walker,Texas Ranger was when I was living in Italy for a few months in the aughts. It was dubbed in Italian. Apparently it was popular there.
The dude was a badass, 6 time undefeated karate world champion (!!!), created his own variant of karate mixed with korean martial arts, was a good friend with Bruce Lee and that scene in Colloseum - probably the coolest thing I saw as a kid growing up behind iron curtain... not many actors can have such a resume on top of their acting career.
Those who cared would/will know him regardless. But obviously those people would be relatively few and far apart.
An immense amount of time, dedication and talent must have went into all those achievements. This requires mastery of body and mind at an exceptional level. Putting aside all jokes and acting roles, the martials arts is where he earned my full respect and that will also stick in my memory about him.
That is hands down one of my ATF scenes in any movie. Expendables 2 was IMO just about the most "fun" movie I've ever seen as well. It wasn't great cinema, or a specific classic.. but it was fun. I have similar feelings about Gremlins 2 as well. We need more fun movies, but too many people seem to have not been issued a sense of humor these days.
Found out about his passing from my teenage kids. They knew him as some legendary tough guy based solely on the jokes, but had no idea who he actually was. To be fair, looking at some other comments here about his political and personal leanings, I didn't know who he actually was either.
> Isn't that an obligation when you own a trademark? That you sue people, or else you may lose the trademark?
It's not quite as cut and dry as you suggest. Besides, in which way was a trademark being violated? Last I knew merely talking about and referencing a celebrity by name was not a trademark violation.
His proximity to Bruce Lee earned him more or less permanent kung fu cinema fame. Walker,Texas Ranger and other work he did definitely boosted it, but the memes clinched it.
>> If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well?
You’re assuming the jokes make people dive deeper. In reality I know the jokes and didn’t have a clue who he was and never cared enough to find out. The reality is the probably didn’t make much of a difference to how well he or his work was actually known.
The Ruby gem "Faker" is used for generating fake data for testing, like legit-looking names, emails, phone numbers, lorum ipsum text, etc. About 10 years ago I was working on a messaging app, and wanted some real messages to see in the UI while I was developing it. One of the best engineering decisions I've made in my career was to pick the Chuck Norris Facts generator for the messages, so every time I re-seeded my local db or looked at a review app on staging, I was greeted by two fake people sending a half-dozen Chuck Norris facts to each other.
If you're curious, maybe you can look into Chuck's lawsuit against Penguin's book of Chuck Norris facts. He would eventually "co-author" his own book. The obvious guess here is trademark infringement (over use of Chuck's name/likeness) and/or copyright (if some of these facts were lifted from his book).
For better or worse, in the US you can pretty much sue anyone for anything. A court certainly requires more evidence to declare liability than Apple would to remove an app.
As far as copywriting facts, are you really under the impression that Chuck Norris is the only man who can factually slam a revolving door? :)
I did something similar when Microsoft gave away Windows Phones for every app published on the app store. I used the Chuck Norris API though. The one I used is sadly no longer available (I think it was called CNDB). But there's a new one: https://api.chucknorris.io
In India, we have Rajni (Rajnikanth) jokes that keep increasing in number and are still pretty popular...
I remember reading 'The Vinci Code' in college which was very popular those days and getting a SMS from a friend almost the same day, "Rajnikanth gave Monalisa that smile!".
> Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.
Seeing the youthful spirit run headfirst into the corprocracy of locked down devices and app stores is depressing. Twenty years ago you would have made a webapp or flash animation, most likely avoided scrutiny, and not even been shaken down. Thirty years ago you would have made a QBasic program and floppy/email/dcc it to your friends, completely illegible to the corprocracy. But these days simply trying to publish through the common channels, and you're immediately subject to restrictions made for businesses.
Having been near the epicenter, I recall that Vin Diesel jokes (same format) pre-dated Chuck Norris ones. I always found it a shame that the Chuck Norris ones caught on; Vin Diesel is, imo, a better role model.
The Vin Diesel jokes I remember had an absurd quality to them beyond "He's really tough." One I recall fondly was "Vin Diesel writes Donkey Kong Fan Fiction."
I think that comparison is quite unfair to Teddy, and overly flattering to Chuck Norris.
Historian, sheriff, war hero, governor, explorer, and a successful President who reshaped America largely for the better. While Roosevelt was human, he led a life that very few have ever matched.
It is funny because you usually think of Death as something inevitable and people just accept it but then ... some of these guys put up a fight. Mega-LMAO!
I don’t age. I level up.
I’m 86 today! Nothing like some playful action on a sunny day to make you feel young. I’m grateful for another year, good health and the chance to keep doing what I love. Thank you all for being the best fans in the world. Your support through the years has meant more to me than you’ll ever know.
God Bless,
Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris (and Michael Landon) were golden age role models for young men. Strong but thoughtful, firm but compassionate, and deeply principled but also practical. Yes, these were acting roles but they picked those roles for a reason. Rest in peace, Chuck.
You say "openly MAGA" as if it were a crime or something to be ashamed of. Also, consider that only about 40% of Americans support trans youth care, for example [1]. So, a majority of people in your country hold the same opinion he had.
I guess that makes him a good role model, at least for the majority.
Well he was against gay marriage and against the Boy Scouts of America allowing gay kids.
If I have 10 friends and ask them all where they want to eat for dinner and 6 said let’s go to this nice Italian spot and the other 4 said “let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, that still means I have a shitty friend group.
You are talking to deaf ears on this forum.
Chuck was a great role model for real men, and I don't give a flying duck about what the majority on this forum thinks about that.
Just out of curiosity, could you (or anyone else) give a couple of examples of what you would consider "great role models for real men"? Or "good role models for well-adapted men", if you'd rather use less inflammatory language.
Ironically, the very concept of a “real man” is founded on the idea that a man should be defined by stereotypes rather than by sex, which puts manosphere enthusiasts and gender enthusiasts in closer epistemological proximity than either would care to admit.
Being maga is diametrically opposed to supporting your country, as we've seen in particular this time around, but was also clearly visible in 2016-2020.
Rampant abuse of the legal system to target individuals, despite claiming (without evidence) that that was that the Democrats did against them
Total disregard for the constitution
Threats towards the judiciary
A million other things that I can list - but I'm sure you've heard them all and just don't care, so there's probably not much use in me continuing.
The entire point of MAGA is that they see “their country” as one where uppity negroes like Obama should have known his place, it’s DEI whenever a minority has a position of influence and power yet they keep lowering the standards for both ICE and the DOJ and RFK JR with no medical knowledge is the head of HHS.
America won’t be “great” until minorities, non Christians and non straight people know their role.
To believe in "Make America Great Again" you have to believe that America is not great, and this implies you are ashamed of your country. Shame is built in to MAGA.
I'm not American, but I don't see anything shameful about the fact that some people want to put their country of origin before the interests of other countries. I know I'd rather my politicians take care of my country first.
That isn't inherently against compassionate care for the rest of humanity. It just means that a government's primary responsibility is to its own citizens and, given that resources are finite, I would prefer my elected officials to secure more of them for our region when possible.
Whether Trump's approach is flawed is certainly up for debate (he's definitely insane and a tyrant), but efforts to "Make America Great Again" are not inherently bad.
(I'm actually from one of the countries targeted by ICE, btw. I'll just be respectful enough not to go to your country uninvited.)
You have a very narrow and rose colored view of what maga is. To us living in the US, maga stands for pedophilia, misogyny, racism, fascism, homophobia, transphobia, corroption and much more.
It absolutely has nothing to do with putting america first, it has everything to do with putting trump first. Im afraid you have made the mistake of listening to a politicians words instead of watching his actions. Every word from his mouth is a lie.
I'm not american but I see technically nothing wrong with MAGA for me. it doesn't mean you must be transphobe or homophobe etc. but what people do under MAGA is another thing. sometimes it feels like for them it means "run america into the ground" or "get rid of all the best about america". GRABA if you like
Whatever the reason, it wasn't because his characters were "openly maga and a homophobe and a transphobe," because they weren't. Bruce Lee movies and Texas Ranger didn't address those issues at all.
And in spite of his flaws, it's possible that he had some good qualities as well, or at least aspired to them. So maybe those other qualities were what he looked for in the characters he played.
Doesn't seem like he aspired all that hard, since instead of expressing empathy for people who weren't like him, he continued to be a bigot in nearly every aspect. But sure, if you were a white cis straight guy I'm sure he was perfectly kind.
Half the country didn't vote for Trump. Not quite 2/3rds of the voting eligible people in the country voted to begin with, and not even half of those people voted for Trump.
Less than 1/3rd of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Not all people that voted for Trump consider themselves Republicans, much less MAGA, when MAGA is only 50-60% of Republicans.
So in reality less than 1/6th of the US voting-eligible population is MAGA. Not half.
And that was at the election - roughly 20% of Trump voters now openly profess regret in voting for him, though I don't think we have data breaking that down as self-proclaimed MAGA vs. otherwise. I suspect if you were not self-proclaimed MAGA you're more likely to be open to regret, but I'm sure at least some of them were MAGA.
This is so much copium. Because of the electoral college, if you lived in California, NY, Missippi etc it doesn’t matter who you voted for for President, you knew where all of electoral votes were going.
Poll after poll shows 35-40% of the country supports Trump.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a Faceboot psychosis villain. It's basically the political version of "Why is everything so cold?"
I think you forget that Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and put in the policy of “Don’t ask don’t tell” and Obama supported it originally.
Of course they both had a change of heart- was it true change or they saw the direction of the political winds? Who knows?
I don’t know Chuck Norris’s views on LGBT. But if he was a self proclaimed “born again Christian” and a rabid Trump supporter, I can only guess. But I no more expect people who were insulted by what he said (which I personally don’t know) to give him more grace or reverence than I do is a Black man who couldn’t give two shits about a dead racist podcaster.
Other people no more need to “contextualize” homophobia than I feel a need to “contextualize” the racism of a dead podcaster.
DADT was a significant improvement over the status quo of "we ask, you tell, and then you get dishonorably discharged". Considering it evidence of homophobia is revisionism. Did it go far enough? No. Was it a good step towards where we wanted to go? Yes.
> It passed both houses of Congress by large, veto-proof majorities. Support was bipartisan, though about a third of the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate opposed it. Clinton criticized DOMA as "divisive and unnecessary".
Again he still signed it. It’s like Susan Collins who always has “serious misgivings” about things that her fellow Republicans do and then votes the party line anyway trying to stay in her party’s good graces while at the same time not pissing off her liberal constituents
It was gonna be law either way; signing it removed a political weapon from the folks pushing its passage. Arguing this is something Clinton did to gay people is counterfactual.
That’s a really poor excuse to sign on to something that you disagree with. I would not sign a petition for making the “Confederacy Day” law if I lived in Mississippi just because it would become law anyway. You have to stand for something.
Would you think it was okay if Tim Scott signed such a law just so his fellow Republicans couldn’t hold it against him in the primary? Well actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he did…
Imagine having a lot of people you once admired and looked up to as role models, from actors all the way to even your parents, suddenly all within a decade or so take their masks off and reveal that they are actually villains.
I don’t think this is about nit picking some small detail that causes them to fail a quality/belief checklist. It’s not like finding out your hero picks his nose or doesn’t like chocolate ice cream. When someone goes mask-off as MAGA, they are revealing fundamental core beliefs and values that totally flip the kind of person you might have thought they were.
I have friends and family who I never thought had a hateful, cruel, or belligerent bone in their bodies, suddenly start acting like totally different people, in the span of a few years. This isn’t me holding them to some purity checklist!
Agreed. Additionally, when someone says something latently bigoted or hateful, it's easy to just let it slide because we all have our failings and societal progress is slow. Whereas maggotry is about openly embracing those failings, taking on additional types of failings from other people, and then socially validating it all as a purported political movement. But the only real thing tying it together is frustration with the world culminating in lashing out, which is why when they get into power there are no actual constructive policies in any political framework [0]. (apart from lining the preachers' pockets of course, and now apparently a holy war)
nit: I wouldn't call it "mask off" though, as if it's been there the whole time. I'd say it's more like there is tiny a kernel of that (and let's be honest, who doesn't have this in some form or another?), combined with a lack of willpower and critical thinking, that causes them into give in to the siren song of easy answers from mass-personalized propaganda.
[0] ancap and religious fundamentalism are the only frameworks I've been able to find that fit the maggot movement, and they're not particularly constructive.
Fred Rogers was the same kind, thoughtful person in everyday life as he was when he acted on his show. You can watch the congressional tapes of him testifying on increased funding to PBS and also testifying on not making VCRs illegal.
I stopped being a Chuck Norris fan when I learned he was a frequent contributor to WorldNetDaily, that he actively campaigned against gay marriage, and that he advocated for the theory that Obama was not born in America and saying shit like 'Electing Obama will plunge America into a thousand years of darkness.'
Him liking Trump was a symptom of his regressive, homophobic, and racist beliefs.
Remember the good ol' days when people just didn't discuss politics or religion out of decency? There was a reason for that, both bring out the worst in people.
The problem is that living life is inherently political. Being able to ignore politics, not having to feel the need to discuss them, is a sign that you are inherently better off than a good chunk of this country.
A lot of people spend most of their waking hours having to deal with or at least keep in mind the fall out from regressive politics. Asking people to not discuss politics is like asking someone living in fear for their safety to not try and improve said safety. You're asking to not have to be bothered by something that annoys you to talk about in exchange for someone not being able to advocate for their life and livelihood.
I agree with the sentiment. My point was more people used to have a common understanding that there was a time and place for political (and religious) discussion - and that those beliefs were deeply personal, shaped largely by experience, and not meant to be held against one another in the broader judgement of their character.
Somewhere along the way we lost that idea, not all cultural changes are for the better.
Suddenly I'm reminded of the decent (grown) people who yelled in six year-old Ruby Bridges' face when she was merely attending elementary school. So if that was 1960, I'm just wondering when those good ol' days you're referring to where.
Despite how much they would have you believe it, human rights are not a political issue. Politics are used to expand practiced rights (or abused to reduce them), just like politics are involved with providing you access to water.
For a simple political disagreement? Absolutely; I completely agree. But to believe that a certain class of people shouldn’t exist is not a run of the mill political belief, and treating it that way normalizes the behavior and contributes to the problem.
Sorry you don’t get to say “Well this person doesn’t think I have the right to exist and be respected as a person. But I’m sure glad he saved a puppy once.”
While normally making jokes after a person's death would be socially questionable, in this case Chuck Norris himself loved the Chuck Norris jokes. For me at least, a good sense of humor is maybe the most endearing personality trait. RIP
Fundamentally, I'd argue that very little should ever be unreasonable or out of bounds to make jokes about; what is important is that it's good humour.
> Fundamentally, I'd argue that very little should ever be unreasonable or out of bounds to make jokes about; what is important is that it's good humour.
On a personal level, I couldn't agree more. I do hope that culturally we get to that point at some time :-)
I can only assume Chuck has decided to relieve the grim reaper of his duties, leaving us all here to meet our own end not with a scythe but a roundhouse kick.
If you're referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_a_Velvet_Cloak - note that it was written a couple decades after the prior books of the series, for a different publisher, to a different length. Those would be yellow flags with almost any author.
I remember trade chat (/2) in wow on the Medivh server would often turn into Chuck Norris jokes. There were always about how bad ass Chuck was. How tough and impossibly manly.
One of my favorites.
Chuck Norris jumped into a lake. Chuck Norris didn't get wet. The lake got Chucked.
Trade chat (like /b/) was never great, but one of the first WoW addons I developed was designed to filter out garbage like this, and make idling with your guildies in Ironforge tolerable.
It's funny for a while, in measured amounts, and then it becomes tiresome.
From Reddit: "I heard that the opening 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan were loosely based on a game of dodgeball played by Chuck Norris in 2nd grade." ;-)
So I guess Chuck Norris has now keys for the Pearly Gates and is the one who gets to pick the heavenly club members. I'm sure roundhouse kicks are somehow part of the process.
He was a hero in tech and science as well. I recall during my PhD studies, we always create new memes on our field that Chuck can finish things in no time. In loving memory of Chuck Norris.
> He had some pretty awful views that he was pretty loud about, especially later in life. He also cheated on his wife at one point.
In 1961, in his early 20s. You get ~80 years on this planet to make mistakes and have views that some other people will dislike. If these are the worst things we can accuse him of, while acknowledging all his charitable work, I'd say he fared OK compared to many other role models we have.
There's disagreement then there's being an outspoken supporter of systematically trying to strip rights away from others because of your religious beliefs. It's much deeper than having differing views on fiscal policy.
Disagree? I think it's safe to say that someone who campaigned to ban same sex marriage is more than just disagreeing. He's trying to ruin millions of lives.
He was an Obama birther conspiracist.
He thought gays shouldn't be allowed to join Boy Scouts.
He was a big supporter of Netanyahu.
This aren't things that are even remotely in the same ballpark as disagreement. If someone is using their celebrity status to cause harm to millions or tens of millions, I think we can say a few unkind words about them when they go.
There are good people whose politics I disagree with. If you are using your celebrity status to cause harm to millions on the international stage, systematically attempting to strip their rights, I think it's fair to say they weren't a good person.
Was it the part where he wanted public schools to force the Bible on everyone's children, regardless of their family's faith?
Or was it the part where he attacked the Boy Scouts for lifting their ban on gay members, because he broadly hates the LGBTQ+ community?
Or, likewise, when he staunchly supported Prop 8, because he felt that the government should enforce strict "traditional family values", and deny consenting adults he doesn't like to marry each other?
Or was it when he said that a Black president would bring "1000 years of darkness"?
Or was it when he said that Muslims were going to destroy America with Sharia law, merely for existing?
Or was it the part where he supported aggressive ICE action against anyone perceived to be foreign?
Just trying to understand how someone this despicable deserves the compliment you gave him. The only good version of Chuck Norris I know about is the pretend version from memes.
> Or was it when he said that a Black president would bring "1000 years of darkness"?
I looked this one up. It's true. He's been going out of his way to be a political firebrand and claiming milquetoast Democrats are Satan for decades. It wasn't some offhand comment when cornered on stage. He's pushed white christian nationalism hard for quite some time.
Sad, because it was so unnecessary, divisive, and crazy--a black mark on his legacy.
But it's not true the way GP phrased it. Norris did not say if a black man was elected then there would be 1000 years of darkness, he said it about a specific man who happens to be black. It's silly, but unless you're claiming that black politicians get special exemptions, his race is immaterial to this quote.
Oh wow, coincidentally I watched a Chuck Norris film recently with my (90 year old) grandmother, which resulted in me diving down a bunch of Chuck Norris memes for the first time in more than a decade.
Not even every important influential person in tech gets the black bar. You think an actor who is mostly known for low-effort internet memes and pretending to be a cowboy on tv deserves it?
>He was a typical pro-gun anti-abortion homophobic and racist MAGA Christian conservative.
Sure, but let's be real: people here are hardly mourning the man himself, so much as a few ideas of him from media they loved, and the cultural impact of Chuck Norris memes from their childhood and such.
He's not around anymore to bolster any hateful messages. Let people have a moment of nostalgia for memories watching him roundhouse kick bad guys with their grandma, or dumb Chuck Norris memes on the playground. That's what people remember.
The thing about Norris is that this isn't just generic policy stuff. I think pretty much all politics has impact on People and therefor matters, but you can abstract a whole lot away on a lot of policies in economics, etc. I think empathetic and caring human beings can disagree on many things.
But racism and homophobia aren't areas where I think empathetic and caring people can disagree, and I don't think those should be legitimatized by calling them political. He wanted to strip rights from gay people and propped up all sorts of racist rhetoric and birtherism against Obama. That's not political. That's being a shitty person.
That's true. These days it seems the ideal conservative man is more like a caveman eating steak off the bone versus a thoughtful caring Atticus Finch type.
Total Gym XLS has a 1-1.25" carriage bar for adding weight. 5gal bucket weights are the correct diameter to leave a gap between the weights and the floor.
You're probably right, but that's not the usual wording you hear. Of course, when grieving, proper proofreading may not be (nor should it be) at the top of anyone's list.
> Curbing violent crime is still more about what we do than it is about what government does. The answer is still more about nature’s law within us than it is about man’s law outside of us.
— Chuck Norris, 2012
What a load of horseshit. Government is "what we do." It's not imposed by alien pod-persons.
Very cool thread. Middle school jokes and culture wars. I’m so glad we don’t allow political threads on here and can instead bask in the intellectual might of people talking about TV man the did/didn’t like.
Jokes like “Chuck Norris is able to slam a revolving door.”
Anyway, I “built” this stupid app when I was like 13, copy-pasted like 300 jokes in there and a random one would show every time you tapped the screen.
Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.
For the first time in over a decade he was suddenly relevant in a way. People remembered he existed, and they were playing off his tough guy image.
And what did he do? Try and shut it down and start suing people. Stupid.
It took him a couple of years to come around to it. If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well? Or would he be a much more obscure celebrity by now?
His round kick, Walker Texas Ranger and his fight with Bruce Lee. In Africa, to this day, some TV channels still play his stuff.
You underestimate how popular Walker, Texas Ranger was. It wasn't pulling ratings like Seinfeld, ER, or Friends, but it was a solid primetime staple for almost a decade.
I never watched it myself, but the 50+ demo loved it.
"Friday night is action night with Walker Texas Ranger"
Would the people who grew up in the early 2000s, or especially 2010s, know much of anything about him?
I mean how much do younger people know about Scott Baio or the Corys or Candice Bergen these days?
His career lasted far longer. He had big movie appearances for 30 years, none of those people accomplished that.
Norris' first movie role was in 1968, first big credited appearance was 1972, Walker Texas Ranger finished in 2001.
Those who cared would/will know him regardless. But obviously those people would be relatively few and far apart.
Isn't that an obligation when you own a trademark? That you sue people, or else you may lose the trademark?
It's not quite as cut and dry as you suggest. Besides, in which way was a trademark being violated? Last I knew merely talking about and referencing a celebrity by name was not a trademark violation.
You’re assuming the jokes make people dive deeper. In reality I know the jokes and didn’t have a clue who he was and never cared enough to find out. The reality is the probably didn’t make much of a difference to how well he or his work was actually known.
Not that they actually know about him past the tough guy persona of the jokes.
https://github.com/faker-ruby/faker/blob/main/lib/locales/en...
I'm curious on what grounds they blocked the app.
The app probably used his pictures or his name, which are easy candidates for copyright or trademark-claims.
Facts and copyright is an interesting one, because I'm surprised a fact can be copyrighted, unless it's the wording specifically.
As far as copywriting facts, are you really under the impression that Chuck Norris is the only man who can factually slam a revolving door? :)
Seeing my dad, who grew up on these actors' action flicks, laugh himself to tears when Chuck Norris appears is one of my favourite memories.
I remember reading 'The Vinci Code' in college which was very popular those days and getting a SMS from a friend almost the same day, "Rajnikanth gave Monalisa that smile!".
Seeing the youthful spirit run headfirst into the corprocracy of locked down devices and app stores is depressing. Twenty years ago you would have made a webapp or flash animation, most likely avoided scrutiny, and not even been shaken down. Thirty years ago you would have made a QBasic program and floppy/email/dcc it to your friends, completely illegible to the corprocracy. But these days simply trying to publish through the common channels, and you're immediately subject to restrictions made for businesses.
I bet Vin wouldn't have blocked your app.
This was like 2005-2006
Most of the original funny Chuck Norris facts were from the original Vin Diesel ones.
I will have to steal this one for my upcoming valedictorian speech.
The crowd is going to love it.
https://markloveshistory.com/2018/01/06/death-had-to-take-ro...
Historian, sheriff, war hero, governor, explorer, and a successful President who reshaped America largely for the better. While Roosevelt was human, he led a life that very few have ever matched.
That said, the line does fit them both.
It is funny because you usually think of Death as something inevitable and people just accept it but then ... some of these guys put up a fight. Mega-LMAO!
I guess that makes him a good role model, at least for the majority.
[1] https://19thnews.org/2025/04/americans-politicians-trans-iss...
maga is absolutely something to be ashamed of
If I have 10 friends and ask them all where they want to eat for dinner and 6 said let’s go to this nice Italian spot and the other 4 said “let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, that still means I have a shitty friend group.
Witness the abrupt reversal in public opinion on foreign wars in the last month.
The homophobia? The racism? The infidelity? The conspiracy theories?
Or just because he was a martial artist and actor that had a bunch of low effort memes?
> Could you give a couple of examples of what you would consider > "good role models for well-adapted men" ?
I'm actually curious.
Can you explain why it's not something to be ashamed of?
Rampant abuse of the legal system to target individuals, despite claiming (without evidence) that that was that the Democrats did against them
Total disregard for the constitution
Threats towards the judiciary
A million other things that I can list - but I'm sure you've heard them all and just don't care, so there's probably not much use in me continuing.
America won’t be “great” until minorities, non Christians and non straight people know their role.
That isn't inherently against compassionate care for the rest of humanity. It just means that a government's primary responsibility is to its own citizens and, given that resources are finite, I would prefer my elected officials to secure more of them for our region when possible.
Whether Trump's approach is flawed is certainly up for debate (he's definitely insane and a tyrant), but efforts to "Make America Great Again" are not inherently bad.
(I'm actually from one of the countries targeted by ICE, btw. I'll just be respectful enough not to go to your country uninvited.)
It absolutely has nothing to do with putting america first, it has everything to do with putting trump first. Im afraid you have made the mistake of listening to a politicians words instead of watching his actions. Every word from his mouth is a lie.
I'm not MAGA but it still doesn't stand for those things to me, or a massive percentage of the rest of the country.
He was a vocal proponent of the birther conspiracy theory about Obama
And in spite of his flaws, it's possible that he had some good qualities as well, or at least aspired to them. So maybe those other qualities were what he looked for in the characters he played.
Like others have said, take this level of conversation back to reddit.
Less than 1/3rd of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Not all people that voted for Trump consider themselves Republicans, much less MAGA, when MAGA is only 50-60% of Republicans.
So in reality less than 1/6th of the US voting-eligible population is MAGA. Not half.
And that was at the election - roughly 20% of Trump voters now openly profess regret in voting for him, though I don't think we have data breaking that down as self-proclaimed MAGA vs. otherwise. I suspect if you were not self-proclaimed MAGA you're more likely to be open to regret, but I'm sure at least some of them were MAGA.
Poll after poll shows 35-40% of the country supports Trump.
Of course they both had a change of heart- was it true change or they saw the direction of the political winds? Who knows?
I don’t know Chuck Norris’s views on LGBT. But if he was a self proclaimed “born again Christian” and a rabid Trump supporter, I can only guess. But I no more expect people who were insulted by what he said (which I personally don’t know) to give him more grace or reverence than I do is a Black man who couldn’t give two shits about a dead racist podcaster.
Other people no more need to “contextualize” homophobia than I feel a need to “contextualize” the racism of a dead podcaster.
DADT was a significant improvement over the status quo of "we ask, you tell, and then you get dishonorably discharged". Considering it evidence of homophobia is revisionism. Did it go far enough? No. Was it a good step towards where we wanted to go? Yes.
Sure doesn't seem like a Clinton issue?
It was gonna be law either way; signing it removed a political weapon from the folks pushing its passage. Arguing this is something Clinton did to gay people is counterfactual.
Would you think it was okay if Tim Scott signed such a law just so his fellow Republicans couldn’t hold it against him in the primary? Well actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he did…
It's a pragmatic excuse.
Not signing changes nothing; clear statements that it's bad law; avoid giving the assholes pushing it more likelihood of winning the next election.
Am I suppose to be okay if he signed a law overturning “Brown vs Board of Education” because it would become law anyway?
Was the fact that he signed off on executing a mentally retarded man because it would show he was “tough on crime” just him being “pragmatic”?
https://jacobin.com/2016/11/bill-clinton-rickey-rector-death...
Getting back on topic, I don’t get to praise Chuck Norris because of his anti-racism stances but then dismiss his stances against non straight people.
I'd reckon you'd be hard pressed to find a single person that matches every quality/belief you imagined them to have.
I have friends and family who I never thought had a hateful, cruel, or belligerent bone in their bodies, suddenly start acting like totally different people, in the span of a few years. This isn’t me holding them to some purity checklist!
Some of them taught me how to behave!? Did they just not believe any of those things?
MAGA is a horrifying movement.
nit: I wouldn't call it "mask off" though, as if it's been there the whole time. I'd say it's more like there is tiny a kernel of that (and let's be honest, who doesn't have this in some form or another?), combined with a lack of willpower and critical thinking, that causes them into give in to the siren song of easy answers from mass-personalized propaganda.
[0] ancap and religious fundamentalism are the only frameworks I've been able to find that fit the maggot movement, and they're not particularly constructive.
Him liking Trump was a symptom of his regressive, homophobic, and racist beliefs.
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan were in a completely different league.
A lot of people spend most of their waking hours having to deal with or at least keep in mind the fall out from regressive politics. Asking people to not discuss politics is like asking someone living in fear for their safety to not try and improve said safety. You're asking to not have to be bothered by something that annoys you to talk about in exchange for someone not being able to advocate for their life and livelihood.
Somewhere along the way we lost that idea, not all cultural changes are for the better.
Case in point: https://theonion.com/hijackers-surprised-to-find-selves-in-h...
And, as you say, in Chuck Norris' case, it's virtually obligatory.
On a personal level, I couldn't agree more. I do hope that culturally we get to that point at some time :-)
It's been a long time since I read it, but didn't the current Death decide to retire and pass the role on?
https://stackoverflow.com/q/8318911
https://htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2024/20/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42468318)
RIP dude, we’d continue the jokes, may your soul laughs as hard as we do.
Chuck Norris once bet 42 is a prime. He won.
One of my favorites.
Chuck Norris jumped into a lake. Chuck Norris didn't get wet. The lake got Chucked.
It's funny for a while, in measured amounts, and then it becomes tiresome.
Why do I feel like an era has ended...
Rest in peace.
However, so as not to speak (purely) ill of the dead, I will say that he was an accomplished martial artist with a prolific film career.
In 1961, in his early 20s. You get ~80 years on this planet to make mistakes and have views that some other people will dislike. If these are the worst things we can accuse him of, while acknowledging all his charitable work, I'd say he fared OK compared to many other role models we have.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/01/13/chuck-norris-homophob...
Turns out he was a MAGA Christian homophobe. That’s … disappointing. But I guess I was naive to expect something different.
Chuck Norris doesn't get deplatformed. Platforms get restructured around him.
Just because they hate me, though, doesn't mean I can't disagree with their position.
We know the answers to these questions for Norris.
He was an Obama birther conspiracist.
He thought gays shouldn't be allowed to join Boy Scouts.
He was a big supporter of Netanyahu.
This aren't things that are even remotely in the same ballpark as disagreement. If someone is using their celebrity status to cause harm to millions or tens of millions, I think we can say a few unkind words about them when they go.
How about "Don't be a bad person when you're alive"?
I struggle with that rule sometimes.
Is there one way to be a good person?
Does being a good person also mean agreeing with your politics?
My dad had some antiquated views himself too. People can have/be both, I suppose.
Was it the part where he wanted public schools to force the Bible on everyone's children, regardless of their family's faith?
Or was it the part where he attacked the Boy Scouts for lifting their ban on gay members, because he broadly hates the LGBTQ+ community?
Or, likewise, when he staunchly supported Prop 8, because he felt that the government should enforce strict "traditional family values", and deny consenting adults he doesn't like to marry each other?
Or was it when he said that a Black president would bring "1000 years of darkness"?
Or was it when he said that Muslims were going to destroy America with Sharia law, merely for existing?
Or was it the part where he supported aggressive ICE action against anyone perceived to be foreign?
Just trying to understand how someone this despicable deserves the compliment you gave him. The only good version of Chuck Norris I know about is the pretend version from memes.
I looked this one up. It's true. He's been going out of his way to be a political firebrand and claiming milquetoast Democrats are Satan for decades. It wasn't some offhand comment when cornered on stage. He's pushed white christian nationalism hard for quite some time.
Sad, because it was so unnecessary, divisive, and crazy--a black mark on his legacy.
RIP
Also, the grim reaper hasn't yet gathered the courage to tell him.
Films like Missing in Action ,or delta force where the motorbike fires a rocket were just great at the time
I get he had some funny views later in life - but the films were a laugh at the time
He was a typical pro-gun anti-abortion homophobic and racist MAGA Christian conservative.
There are lots of tedious memes about him.
There, I summed up literally everything worth knowing about him, and none of it is worthy of discussion here.
Sure, but let's be real: people here are hardly mourning the man himself, so much as a few ideas of him from media they loved, and the cultural impact of Chuck Norris memes from their childhood and such.
He's not around anymore to bolster any hateful messages. Let people have a moment of nostalgia for memories watching him roundhouse kick bad guys with their grandma, or dumb Chuck Norris memes on the playground. That's what people remember.
The thing about Norris is that this isn't just generic policy stuff. I think pretty much all politics has impact on People and therefor matters, but you can abstract a whole lot away on a lot of policies in economics, etc. I think empathetic and caring human beings can disagree on many things.
But racism and homophobia aren't areas where I think empathetic and caring people can disagree, and I don't think those should be legitimatized by calling them political. He wanted to strip rights from gay people and propped up all sorts of racist rhetoric and birtherism against Obama. That's not political. That's being a shitty person.
I enjoyed reading the comments here. RIP.
― Chuck Norris
He made it that far in life, that even if you might disagree with him on all and everything, you would still like him.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/18/val-kilmer-resu...
RIP both...
The section on his Wikipedia page is helpfully succinct if you want to understand the basis of my not joining in the japes and jokes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris#Political_views
Chuck Norris facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris_facts
Death finally worked up the nerve.
> #1: "Chuck Norris was bitten by a cobra, and after five days of excruciating pain ... the cobra died."
Which are similar in plot and character arc to
"Man of Tai Chi"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_Tai_Chi
Which Chuck Norris films are also similar?
> Forest Warrior, A Force of One, The Octagon, Forced Vengeance, Sidekicks,
Which "hacker films" are also similar?
Yes, but now I’m like, super suspicious.
(Ok, ok, technically it was Gandalf the Gray and White, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight)
What a load of horseshit. Government is "what we do." It's not imposed by alien pod-persons.
And he opposed marriage equality. What a scumbag.
On the other hand, when eventually the reckoning for this administration comes, would you welcome the idea of collective responsibility?