Talk:Robert Jebediah Freeman

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Contents 1 Comments 2 Requested move 2.1 Support the move 2.2 Oppose the move 2.3 Discussion

[edit] Comments

Interesting viewpoint on Robert Freeman. However, it seems VERY superficial and perfunctory at best (no offense).

I'm not sure that disciplining of Huey and Riley is because of his own humiliation rather than the fact that he comes from the old school of child discipline which follows the biblical edict of "spare the rod, spoil the child". Indeed, with the lack of discipline many children have today due to school teachers no longer having the authority to envoke physical disciplining, and even parents having to be careful lest their child contact Child Protective Services, a large portion of the youth in this country today have serious problems respecting authority from their elders.

Also, something the show does not go in depth on (as of yet) but is known at large by many in the "African-American" community is the notion that "it takes a whole village to raise a single child". This style of thought seemed to be very prevalent up until the early to mid-1980's. Unfortuneately, Caucasians (at least not any from the U.S.) do not suscribe to the belief in communal raising of a child. The results of this style of thought has spread throughout most communities in the U.S. causing many situations in which the youth of America are highly disrespectful towards teachers in general. (Another discussion would be why so many Caucasion people never had this problem. I would reply that the previous generation had a single parent working since the average Caucasion up until 1970s earned much more than their African American counterparts. This resulted in at least one parent being home to raise the child instead of both parents needing to work. Conversely, African-Americans had many "elders" in the community who could subtley and overtly watch and discipline the youth of the community after school hours.)

Saying Robert Freeman is "selfish" is also a superficial way to view him. Here is a man at least in his 80's raising a 10-yr old and an 8-yr old. He is providing them a home, food, a nice community to live in and I seriously doubt those kids purchased their game systems and clothing on their own. The fact that he allows a prostitute into his home and his kids still did not lack for anything, shows that they are still on his mind always. With the prostitute in their house, he still talked to and treated them the same. He may be a bit terse with them, but many older people are with children. If you pay attention to the series and the comic strip many of the comments made by both Huey and Riley are taken with a grain of salt by him. How seriously would (or even should) the average adult take a 10-yr old Pan-African revolutionary or an 8-yr old thugged out wannabe gangster? They are kids and that's where a large part of the humor comes from. As far as his woman obsession goes, except for the prostitute with whom he fell in love with, the relationships he has outside of his family seems to be few and far between. There are the Dubois', "Uncle Ruckus" and his family from Chicago. I'm not sure about you, but if I had an 80+ year old grandfather who had comments about wanting messages only from cute girls on his answering machine, I'd find it hilarious.

I guess that ultimately, you need to look at shows like this and recognize what aspects are supposed to humorous and what aspects are supposed to thought provoking.

Well, that's my piece for now. Peace, -kuma

Since the article is all original research, how about speculating that the character is loosely based on Bill Cosby? There seems an amazing resemblance, both in appearance and in the stern attitude resembling Cosby's of recent years. Are there any sources for these articles except for original research based on an editor's opinions having read the comic strip or watched the TV cartoon? Inkpaduta 19:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 08:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)