Negan is not happy.
“Walking Dead” seemed to find itself in a big pile of shirt after news broke that one of its products was being pulled from international retailer Primark for being “racist” and “offensive.”
The shirt in question shows a picture of Negan’s signature barbed wire baseball bat and reads, ”Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe,” which Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character says while picking out his victim in the Season 6 finale.
In “The Walking Dead,” the phrase is followed by “catch a tiger by his toe,” but some historical versions of the rhyme did include a racial slur, replacing “tiger” with the N-word.
That’s why the controversy erupted. Primark reportedly received a complaint, and the shirt was pulled.
Now, Morgan is responding to the debacle, and he’s about as blunt as Negan.
“Holy crap people are stupid,” the actor wrote on Twitter.
Morgan’s sentiment was echoed online.
“He’s not wrong,” said one Redditor, while another added, “If a shirt that says ‘Eeny meeny miny moe’ genuinely outrages you, you have bigger problems in life.”
Many Twitter users seemed to agree.
As we previously reported, the line isn’t meant to be a racist comment on the show. In an ironic twist, Negan actually says the rhyme in the comics so he won’t be perceived as racist. He wants his victim to be chosen at random.
Still, as one Twitter user pointed out while criticizing the shirt design, the product didn’t even display “Walking Dead” on the front. It just had the graphic imagery and the rhyme.
If Negan truly wanted to eliminate the possibility of appearing racist, he probably shouldn’t have used the line in the first place, but the “outrage” and confusion over it appears to come down to context.
As Entertainment Weekly points out, the Season 6 finale, in which the line was uttered, aired in April 2016. This discussion is happening almost a full year later.
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