“To my loyal butler ‘You There’, for his decades of service, I leave a pittance, to be paid in 20 equal installments of 1/20th of a pittance each.”

Kind of related is peppercorn leases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)

Depends how old they are. For young kids maybe, for adult children I think the will would speak for itself.

South Park has been sued many times. A famous case vs Tom Cruise, in which their defense was that they make fun of everyone, so it's not libel.

> It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell

tl;dr:

> Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

I am in no way a public figure, and will likely never be one, but if the South Park writers decided to go after me my strategy would be to hunker down and just hope the episode isn’t good.

They certainly went easy on his demonic looks.

Not everything is post-scarcity, mostly food and clothes. Land, fuel, weapons, art, fame, and labor are still limited resources in the Star Trek world. Also, not everywhere is post-scarcity, as we see many "poor" or restricted societies. The post-scarcity bit is mostly about a social safety net for individuals in the Federation.

The Ferengi don't exist as part of the Federation. Their culture isn't built on egalitarianism, so not everyone gets access.

Ferengi is not part of the Federation AFAIK

I tried to Google his joke, but couldn't find it quickly enough. It might have been part of a longer special.

No?

In the case of the Ferengi, "ugly greedy people with big noses," specifically greedy for an in-universe gold analogue, short, always cheating people; the analogues with common anti-semitic stereotypes are certainly there.

Then again Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark and is Jewish himself, has said that people in different countries see different stereotypes in the Ferengi - such as the Chinese or the Irish - so it probably depends on one's own own cultural indoctrination.

I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.

> Armin Shimerman addressed the issue when asked at a question-and-answer session at a Star Trek convention. He stated that:

> In America, people ask "Do the Ferengi represent Jews?" In England, they ask "Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?" In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese ... The Ferengi represent the outcast ... it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[30]

No, it's cultural-other pareidolia

... Depends on where we are looking at in the real-world episode production timeframe.

TNG did still resort to 'caricatures as a default', If we are to be a tiny bit bold and look closer at DS9 and how, if you look at a lot of the other stuff outside 'Far Beyond The Stars'.

What you find is that DS9 is very much about people facing pressure from their culture or background and over time learning there's a better way to do things. So many major and minor characters change over the course and part of it is seeing how hard it is and what it takes for each of them to change. I do think they 'over-used' the Ferengi for this but I get they were trying to target a general level of audience.

IMO it really was a hopeful attempt to recognize cultural versus racial problems. You can't just do a single speech and never visit the hat planet again; you are next to one of the hat planets and instead get a deeper look into their world.

.....

DS9 did over-emphasize the Ferengi change arcs, and while the end fits with other 'themes' (i.e. Bell Riots) it like most other hat changes didn't have huge implications till after what we the viewer would see.

But also I kinda get that whole thing. At the end of the day the Ferengi (whether originally intended or not) became something meant to symbolize extreme laissez-faire capitalism with perhaps a pinch of twisted reversal of other cultures/religions[1] because yeah I'm gonna blame that bit on whoever was in charge or TNG at the time (Was it Rick Berman?)

[0] - To be clear I mean for the sake of this topic; those episodes themselves with the original ending to DS9 frankly capture a lot of the 'hope' that was trying to be conveyed in the face of all the strife...

[1] - The most easy way to lampshade 'required clothing' is to instead do 'required non-clothing'

Given that DS9 showrunner and co-creator Michael Piller was in fact Jewish, I highly doubt that the Ferengi are some sort of stealth Nazi propaganda. They're either a mockery of the "happy merchant" stereotype beloved of anti-Semites, or (more likely) just a critique of greed and capitalism itself.

What's funny is that Leonard Nimoy (Jewish) based his portrayal of Spock on the idea that the Vulcans were the space Jews. This idea kind of comes to a head in the 2009 movie, in which a guy named after a Roman emperor destroys Vulcan, causing a Vulcan diaspora...

No they did not give him 412 million dollars. They appealed the judgement and will fight it out for years. The man is 72 years old. Of that 412, most of it is punitive damages which will be fought over. Interest would acrue and if the clinic loses, they could be on the hook to pay $500 million+ but that's really very unrealistic.

Sounds very small-penis.

Yes, only men with small penises are allowed to court.

Where's @Cindy when you need her?

Yes, I see you have produced a very small (re)tort, but arguably have used it well.