Oprah, Frank, chickens and baboons

[JoAnne Schmitz]

I was thinking about the Oprah Winfrey/Frank Perdue story I had heard long ago
(quoting my own post from November 2001):

>The story goes that Frank Perdue, big-time Eastern Shore (Maryland) chicken
>producer, was a guest on the show. She asks him, "does it bother you that you
>look like a chicken?" (He kind of does, to my eye, and I believe some of his
>commercials have played on that similarity.)
>
>He replies, "No, does it bother you that you look like a baboon?"
>
>She looks shocked, they immediately cut to a commercial, and when they return,
>Perdue is no longer there.

I did a little looking around. Wonder of wonders, I found some references to
it:

From: Krud (au...@nospam.home.com)
Subject: Re: BC3K: Derek's "Notification" to Bill Huffman and other stuff
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Date: 1999/05/08

Fiend wrote in message <3733443A...@fiendbear.com>...
>
>It was Howard Cosell way back during his stint on Monday Night Football. He
>called a black player "a little monkey".

Howard Cosell was an idiot not a racist. That reminds me of when Frank
Perdue (the chicken farmer) said that Oprah Winfey looked like a baboon.
It was in response to her asking him *on the air* if anyone ever told him he
looked like a chicken (which he sort of does). She said his remark was
racial but her's wasn't. She looks as much like a baboon as he looks like
a chicken, in my opinion.

-Krud

And apparently she's aware of the story:

From: Vogue Rogue (acut...@ix.netcom.com)
Subject: Fwd: Oprah debunks urban myths about her show
Newsgroups: alt.tv.talkshows.daytime
xDate: 1997/08/07

> From a recent magazine interview with Oprah Winfrey:
>
> Q: Do you remember your interview with Frank Perdue?
>
> A: That is not true, that Frank Perdue called me a baboon or something.
> That's one of those urban myths. I did say to him, You know, you
> kinda look like your chickens. And then the urban myth became that
> he told me, "Well, you look like a gorilla." That is not true. It's
> also not true that Liz Claiborne came on the show and said anything
> about black women's behinds, nor is it true that Tommy Hilfiger
> came on the show and said if he'd known black people were going to
> buy his clothes, he wouldn't have made them -- all urban myths!

The magazine isn't named in this article or the thread.

JoAnne "his son Jim now runs the business and isn't as chickeny-looking" Schmitz

[David Winsemius]

JoAnne Schmitz took fingers to keyboard:

>
> I was thinking about the Oprah Winfrey/Frank Perdue story I had heard long ago
> (quoting my own post from November 2001):
>
> >The story goes that Frank Perdue, big-time Eastern Shore (Maryland) chicken
> >producer, was a guest on the show. She asks him, "does it bother you that you
> >look like a chicken?" (He kind of does, to my eye, and I believe some of his
> >commercials have played on that similarity.)
> >
> >He replies, "No, does it bother you that you look like a baboon?"
> >
> >She looks shocked, they immediately cut to a commercial, and when they return,
> >Perdue is no longer there.
>
> I did a little looking around. Wonder of wonders, I found some references to
> it:
> >

> And apparently she's aware of the story:
>
> From: Vogue Rogue (acut...@ix.netcom.com)
> Subject: Fwd: Oprah debunks urban myths about her show
> Newsgroups: alt.tv.talkshows.daytime
> xDate: 1997/08/07
>
> > From a recent magazine interview with Oprah Winfrey:
> >
> > Q: Do you remember your interview with Frank Perdue?
> >
> > A: That is not true, that Frank Perdue called me a baboon or something.
> > That's one of those urban myths. I did say to him, You know, you
> > kinda look like your chickens. And then the urban myth became that
> > he told me, "Well, you look like a gorilla." That is not true. It's
> > also not true that Liz Claiborne came on the show and said anything
> > about black women's behinds, nor is it true that Tommy Hilfiger
> > came on the show and said if he'd known black people were going to
> > buy his clothes, he wouldn't have made them -- all urban myths!
>
> The magazine isn't named in this article or the thread.
>

Searching in the steps of giants produces a series of variant stories about
Frnak's Romance prowess embedded within widely dispersed lists of
advertising blunders. These lists have been pummeled in AFU for years, but I
have yet to come across a debunking (or a convincing support) of this
particular one:
---
At http://djharter.www3.50megs.com/Digests/H9706190.htm and
http://www.wcug.wwu.edu/~kevin/Jokes.html and
http://www.gringoes.com/subcategoria.asp?ID_categoria=3&ID_subcategoria=18
we find:
"Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender
chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of
Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a
caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."
---
At users.aol.com/HdlFaq/take_a_break.pdf and
http://djharter.www3.50megs.com/Digests/H9706190.htm (and many others):
"Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a ten-der
chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man
to make a chicken affectionate."
---
Slightly different at http://www.relojournal.com/sept96/tadpole.htm
"And, as America's favorite chicken magnate, Frank Perdue, was fond of
saying, 'It takes
a tough man to make a tender chicken.' In Spanish, however, his words
took on a
whole new meaning: 'It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a
chicken
affectionate.'
(Which is very similar to an afu posting from 1993 by raig Becker where a
list of such mistranslations is attribute to the "American Demographics"
magazine.)
---
An afuster purporting to be Kim Steinberg typed:
"It takes a virile man to make a chicken pregnant"
-- Frank Perdue
kim "insert sheep joke here" scheinberg

--
More AFU-lure from ywu (REMO...@mich.com):
"When Coca Cola tried to market to China in 1979, for instance, it
discovered that Mao's simplification of Chinese characters had turned
the literal meaning of Coca-Cola into "Bite the wax tadpole." Coca Cola
solved this problem by using four Mandarin characters that mean "Can
Happy, Mouth Happy." Many people remember what happened when Frank
Perdue's ad slogan "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" - was
rendered into Spanish for TV broadcasts to the US Latino Population.
The garbled and offensive result was "It takes a sexually excited man to
make a chicken affectionate."

The cite is from Richard Barnet, _Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations
and the new world order_ (New york, Simon & Schuster, p 170-71 and
Czinkota, Ronkainan and Tarrant, The Global Marketing Imperitive, P249.

(This citation is a bit different in that it places the scene of the crime
in the TV sets of the US Latino community rather than Mexician billboards.
It does give a cite, but remember, it is a marketing text.)
---
And it can be found here. http://frequentflier.com/ff022198.htm
“It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” So says
Frank Perdue, storied purveyor of chickens. Or so he
says in his English-language ads. On Spanish-language
billboards in Mexico, Perdue and a chicken were
pictured with the headline: “It takes a hard man to arouse
a chicken.” Guess that means Perdue sells randy
chickens?

---
No luck in finding the picture or any specific (hard) dates.

David "cannot believe I am wasting all this time" W.

[robertmg...@gmail.com]

I saw saw it live - and at one time it was online and it's been removed. She told him he looked like a chicken; he followed up by saying she looked like a monkey

[t.let...@gmail.com]

He did and she does ,so what.She should shut her mouth or be what she is a racist. I will continue this until she speaks about her problem. Stop stick and stones but names will never hurt us .

[Mark Shaw]

Could I get some bleu cheese dressing for this word salad?

--
Mark Shaw moc TOD liamg TA wahsnm
========================================================================
"All of my mistakes are giving me ideas." - Natalie Lileks

[Drew Lawson]

In article <006f7ccb-22ae-401c...@googlegroups.com>

Please get to the ER.
I believe you've had a stroke.


--