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Episode "Blood" Now they use toilet plungers.[solved]

posted 7 years ago by opuim_eater
2 replies | jump to latest

Adam Schiff has such lines:

Back then they had lynch mobs and bullwhips.
Now they use toilet plungers.
Progress.

Can you elucidate what "Now they use toilet plungers" means.
What is the use of this plungers...regarding the episode I miss the punchline.
The guy was from Afro-american ethnic background but he lived his life as a white man.
Thanks!

Incidentally I found the meaning.
https://books.google.bg/books?id=TSHVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=Back+then+they+had+lynch..Now+they+use+toilet+plungers.&source=bl&ots=84iOmLz8_0&sig=PGnGL4TvB44-QpvtWx4cjCIsukU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiImsGNgO7RAhVJbRQKHbhYBA8Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=Back%20then%20they%20had%20lynch..Now%20they%20use%20toilet%20plungers.&f=false

[–] scrabbler1 7 years ago

The imdb page for the episode refers to the Abner Louima police brutality incident which occurred just a few months before the episode first aired in late 1997. Louima might have been sodomized with a broomstick handle instead of a toilet plunger although initial reports may have mentioned a toilet plunger. A picture of him in the Wikipedia page shows him looking pretty dark, so I can't see how he lived as a white man.

[–] Xeliou66 7 years ago

Abner Louima didn't live as a white man, he was 100 percent black. He's talking about Steven Burdett in that episode who lived as a white guy and was some corporate big shot but he was half black. That characters background was loosely based on the writer Anatole Broyard, who was also half black but lived as a white guy. Not sure how Louima/Schiff's line played into that episode, but the episode was centered around racism and how it is easier to live as a white guy than a black guy.