Strange use of "baby daddy"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:12 PM +0000 2/18/11, Charles C Doyle wrote:
>Is the association of Darth Vader with the African American identity
>of the actor James Earl Jones an intended aspect of the comedy here?
>
>--CD

I thought we were all assuming that (although perhaps that hadn't
been mentioned in the earlier discussion); at least I was.  And the
allusion is about as "funny" as similar "jokes" characterizing Obama
told by his political enemies.  (I've seen a bunch of those excerpted
on The Daily Show, but I'm sure they're all over the web.)

LH

>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of
>Randy Alexander [strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM]
>Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 10:21 AM
>
>On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  It's only clear with the foreknowledge of the original--which is also
>>  the only reason this is at all funny. Taken in isolation, it is neither
>>  funny nor clear. And if it /were/ clear in isolation, the interpretation
>>  would /not/ have been "I am your father."
>
>
>Right.  It seems to me that the writers simply thought it would be funny to
>have Darth Vader say "baby daddy" and didn't think much beyond that.  I'm
>sure a huge amount of the audience either doesn't quite know what one is (I
>didn't know until "baby mama" was discussed here), or aren't the kind of
>people who would think through the fact that it doesn't mean what it should
>in that context.  Hopefully the other parts of the parodies (I have the
>Robot Chicken parodies, but haven't watched them yet) are funnier.
>
>--
>Randy Alexander
>Xiamen, China
>
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