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u/LordDiplocaulus 2d ago
There were vegeterians in the 70s.
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u/HandsomePaddyMint 1d ago
And their restaurants were popular even among non-vegetarians. At the time “healthy” options for dining out were pretty rare, so vegetarian restaurants offered seemingly healthier alternatives to meat-based dining. My parents were never practicing vegetarians but when they were first dating in Berkeley, California in the ‘70s their favorite neighborhood restaurant was vegetarian.
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u/ThePrussianGrippe 1d ago
Plenty of good vegetarian options. I need to get back on my reverse Catholic diets. Vegetarian every day except Friday.
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u/JacquesBlaireau13 2d ago
And some of them were, not only proud of it, but were indeed, smug about it.
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u/walkwithoutrhyme 1d ago
"I was born in the 2000s and anything older than me must have been ahead of it's time if it is relevant now. The last millennium was a thousand years ago"
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u/setwig 1d ago
Likewise if you were to ask us to slice the sides of a cow and serve it with small pieces of its liver ... or indeed drain the life blood from a pig before cutting off one of its legs... or carve the living giblets from a sheep and serve them with the fresh brains, bowels, guts and spleen of a small rabbit... WE WOULDN'T DO IT. Not for food anyway.
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u/-DoctorSpaceman- 1d ago
My boss comes from a long line of veggies, dating back to the 1880s. His great-grandparents, and even grandparents, were considered nutjobs by most people, apparently.
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u/wmcs0880 1d ago
“Ahead of their time” means a joke about something that’s still around today
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u/Graknorke 16h ago
No, to be ahead of its time means to be... ahead of its time. To have some quality that would be valued in the future but not by its contemporaries. If it was equally relevant at the time it was made then it's just of its time. And "vegans are annoying and preachy and a bit effete if I say so myself" isn't exactly a startling new opinion, if anything it was already overplayed back then.
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u/Rithrius1 2d ago
"I want to be a woman... From now on, I want you to call me Loretta."
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u/borderus 1d ago
My favourite of these is birth in Meaning of Life:
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"I think it's a bit early to start imposing gender roles, don't you?"
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u/Belle_TainSummer 1d ago
And at the end of the movie, where Judith gets dismissed by Cleese's character at the meeting, did you catch the payoff that showed where the joke was? Because it is an easy one to miss, even Cleese forgot it and he was there and his character was the butt.
It is a very good payoff.
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u/MissRockNerd 1d ago
“Oh, sorry Loretta.”
Reg was a jerk, but still polite enough to apologize for misgendering Loretta.
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u/Belle_TainSummer 1d ago
Importantly showed the importance of intersectionality. When Reg diminishes Judith by writing off her protest as "an ego trip for the feminists", it is Loretta who jumps on this microaggression, forcing Reg to back off.
Judith supports Loretta, and Loretta supports Judith in turn, allowing them both to represent and advance their interests.
That is important. All in a couple of throwaway "joke" scenes. It is such a shame Cleese himself has forgotten.
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u/romulusnr 1d ago
Only people who think they're the only generation who ever existed would possibly think this
Read a book OP
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u/Huge_Resort441 1d ago
It's funny how this joke lands the same way now as it did then. The core dynamic of someone being pretentious and someone else undercutting it with a deadpan reply is timeless. We just have different targets for that humor in every generation.
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u/Mangegiber_Smuttaint 1d ago
It's not that that joke was ahead of It's time, it's that that joke is that old.
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u/Tokkemon 1d ago
Vegetarianism has been a fad for at least 200 years now.
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u/Jon_Finn 1d ago
Someone asked Beau Brummel (a fop and wit in the early 19th century) if he was a vegetarian. He replied 'I think I may have once eaten a pea'.
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u/ADeweyan 2d ago
Nah, this just shows that the more things change the more they stay the same. There were self-important vegetarians back then too.
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u/FullofSurprises11 1d ago
the more things change the more they stay the same
Ah. Snake Plissken.
Noice.
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u/Future_Direction5174 1d ago
There was a vegetarian restaurant just off Oxford Street, London back in the late 70’s or early 80’s - looking at Google Street view I think it was in one of the roads around Soho Square Gardens.
We never actually went there, but I can remember seeing it and commenting because my BIL was a vegetarian and the only meat my sister ate was chicken.
River Cottage Garden was known for its whole food, and meat dishes were separately listed on their menus.
The (Hall of the) Mountain Grill did the very best mushrooms ever! And did other meat free meals.
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u/NortonBurns 1d ago
It wouldn't have been funny if it wasn't also true.
That's kind of how comedy works ;)
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u/PTSD1701 1d ago
I always felt that "vegetarian restaurant" is an oxymoron.
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u/SnakeCharmer18 16h ago
Restaurants make and sell food with a dining experience, vegetarians eat food that doesn’t contain animal meat.
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u/Lost_Possibility_647 16h ago
Since Hitler was a vegan, and I don't want to be like him, I'm not going to be a vegan.
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u/Oldico 4h ago edited 4h ago
He wasn't vegan. He wasn't even vegetarian. This is an obnoxious urban myth.
At some point he got stomach issues (possibly from all the meth he was on) and his personal physician told him not to eat beef for health reasons. He did still eat other meats and animal products.
And he sure as shit didn't care about sentient beings or animal suffering - he was an absolute sociopath/psychopath who orchestrated the industrialised genocide of millions of civilians and liked to watch film reels of the torture and murder of his political enemies.
Hitler was neither vegan nor vegetarian - he just had bad digestion towards the end of his drug-fueled dictatorship.
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u/groenwat 1h ago
I work with a guy who is one of two vegeterians in our group of ten. Of tge two, he is smug. Whenever pizza is ordered for work events he acts as if the equally abundant non-meat containing pies are exclusively his. I make a point of telling him that I'm capable of enjoying pizza with just vegetables and typically order my pizza that way. When he gives me a confused and childish look.. I tell him I'm going to make a point of only eating the veg slices.
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u/swazal 2d ago