Ah, Christmas: A time for American families to gather ’round the electronic hearth, turn on a football game, and listen to a host make a wholly inappropriate joke about her breasts while referencing a film nearly a quarter-century old.
For most of the fans who tuned in to “Thursday Night Football,” streamed on Amazon Prime, the vulgarity was arguably more memorable than the matchup that began the Christmas weekend.
The Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints 30-22 in a game that sounds closer than it actually was; the score was 30-7 with 7:00 left in the fourth quarter and a Saints rally in the final few minutes fell short. The rest was a predictable snoozer.
The crew on Amazon’s postgame show gave each other gifts, this being the final Thursday game before Santa came down the chimney. Charissa Thompson was given a farmer’s almanac and a dairy pail — which, she explained, would help her in her postseason pursuits.
“For those of you guys that don’t know, I’ll be spending the offseason at the ranch,” she told the audience.
Co-host and former NFL journeyman QB Ryan Fitzpatrick noted that the pail was for milking cows, just in case you didn’t get the joke. To which Thompson replied, “I’ve got nipples. Can you milk me, Greg?”
What did Charissa Thompson just say?
“I’ve got nipples can you milk me Greg?”
Richard Shermans face is hilarious.#nfl #foryou #trending #sports #football #foryoupage #charissa pic.twitter.com/X4cQF8rfYd— SportsHub952 (@SportsHub952) December 22, 2023
In addition to looking askance at your television, you may have been wondering who Greg was, since none of the Amazon crew bears that given name. You apparently have a short memory or had something better to do in the year 2000 than watch the movie “Meet the Parents.”
I’ve seen the movie once — on VHS, which tells you just how old the Ben Stiller/Robert De Niro comedy vehicle is — and the joke itself wasn’t exactly memorable. It comes from a scene in which Stiller’s character, Greg, invents an elaborate backstory about growing up on a farm and talks about how he milked cats.
“You can milk anything with nipples,” Greg says. This leads to De Niro’s character delivering the wholly forgettable line:
The joke, naturally, is that De Niro is a man and therefore, it would be a fool’s chore to attempt to milk him. Har har.
Of course, this being 2023, we’re supposed to pretend that anyone can theoretically lactate — but these were simpler times and everyone got the message that this was a man and men can’t be milked.
While Thompson has not had a child, she’s a — well, a she, which makes the subtext of this joke a bit more uncomfortable for everyone on set. In particular, former Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman didn’t exactly seem down with it:
“Can you milk me Greg” pic.twitter.com/OALYvPuYJv
— Deshaun Watson’s burner (@DWatsons_Burner) December 24, 2023
He wasn’t the only one, either:
Woa there Charissa. HR gone be hitting her line Tuesday morning
— Stimmy Flippa (@PoloDolo30) December 24, 2023
“Meet the Parents,” to the best of my recollection, barely merited a PG-13 rating. In fact, USA Today reported in 2004 that the filmmakers had a tiff with the Motion Picture Association of America over whether the surname of Stiller’s character — Focker — put it into R-rated territory.
So at least you know going in that you’re going to get a few inappropriate jokes about septic tanks and sex. But you don’t expect that on “Thursday Night Football.”
Amazon Prime may be a subscription service, but sports remains one of the few corners of the entertainment landscape where parents don’t have to explain raunchy stuff to the kids. This isn’t asking a lot, particularly considering the political indoctrination conservative sports fans have to endure.
(The NFL, for instance, has done its part in the great post-George Floyd reckoning by putting “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us” in the back of end zones — along with basically sainting Colin Kaepernick for his America-hating antics while he was still an employable quarterback.)
Was this joke inappropriate for a Christmastime broadcast?
Alas, no. We get treated to Charissa Thompson making half-lewd jokes from a movie from roughly 25 years ago that nobody really remembers. All in the name of celebrating Christmas — you know, the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
As you may have heard, his birth was one of the high points of a holy book with helpful verses like, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place,” and “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”
Instead of messaging like that, however, we get: “I’ve got nipples. Can you milk me, Greg?”
Keep up the fine work, American pop culture. We’ll outdo Babylon in no time.
