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Regarding Reeve guessing some of poking fun at him was edge lord, but some might have been about how he was not always a great person & some pushback on being expected to treat him as a saint.

As nytimes recently noted: “Reeve had Matthew and his sister, Alexandra, with Gae Exton, a British modeling agent he met while filming “Superman” in London. They never married, and Reeve wasn’t always a reliable parent. The day after Matthew was born, he left to go skiing in France. Eventually he moved back to the United States, to singlehood and stardom. “He abandoned Gae, and he abandoned his two kids at a certain point,” Ettedgui said. (Reeve continued to see his children on school breaks.)”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/movies/superman-christopher-reeve-robin-williams.html

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Oh, I missed that article. Thank you. I can see that driving some criticism — the South Park episode apparently was in reaction to some interview he gave — and then maybe it just spread to late night shows and standups.

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I recall another Reeve joke in a list along the lines of "why are our toes going numb?"

"Bsiter," I assume, is a parody of "blogger."

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Great, great memory! Indeed, Reeve is mentioned in a 2001 infographic: https://theonion.com/why-arent-we-able-to-feel-anything-in-our-toes-1819586988/

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Oh goody - I vividly remembered the "Old Bastard, Dirty Bastard, Dirty Old Bastard, Old Dirty Bastard" headline but could never remember who the non-Reagan, non-Arafat, non-ODB one was. (In googling Meyer I also learned that apparently Kitten Natividad died a few years ago - RIP!)

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I'm sad to say that I needed an AI-powered reverse image tool to identify Russ Meyer! Even Google reverse image search couldn't figure out who he was. And I only have the vaguest cultural awareness of him or Kitten Natividad. But regardless, he's a great pick for the "Dirty Old Bastard" spot.

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Just wild speculation here, but I wonder if some of the Reeve-bashing wasn't subconsciously inspired by those erstwhile '90s-'00s jokes about *Keanu* Reeves' wooden acting.

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This is intriguing! Reeve's acting feels fairly stiff to me, too. Probably just a coincidence? But it's interesting that two of the greatest "I'm the best at a very narrow type of acting" movie stars have such similar surnames.

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