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‘Last Man Standing’ Cancelled Just Months After Star Tim Allen Offended With ‘Nazi Germany’ Comment

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 11:21 PST, May 12, 2017

In March, Last Man Standing star Tim Allen compared being a conservative in Hollywood to living in Nazi Germany. Allen made the comment during an exchange on Jimmy Kimmel Live, while describing his experience in attending the Trump inauguration.

“You gotta be real careful around here. You get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody else believes. This is like ’30s Germany.”

Reactions to Tim Allen’s comments were swift and largely brutal. Many fans and critics of the admittedly conservative star took to social media to attack his comparison, likening his words to trivializing the experiences of millions of Jews during WWII. As USA Today reports, the Anne Frank Center even demanded a public apology from the Last Man Standing star. Tim Allen never responded to media requests to comment on the apology demand, which was issued by Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect director Steven Goldstein.

“No one in Hollywood today is subjecting you or anyone else to what the Nazis imposed on Jews in the 1930s. the world’s most evil program of dehumanization, imprisonment and mass brutality, implemented by an entire national government, as the prelude for the genocide of nearly an entire people. Sorry, Tim, that’s just not the same as getting turned down for a movie role. It’s time for you to leave your bubble to apologize to the Jewish people and, to be sure, the other peoples also targeted by the Nazis.”

Goldstein also took to Twitter to share a lengthy diatribe against Tim Allen, once again imploring the Last Man Standing star to apologize for his offensive comparison, as well as to join the Anne Frank Center’s fight against antisemitism.

Allen’s comments were made back in late March, and it appeared that the fallout had died down. The actor and comedian had made little secret of being a political conservative and ardent Trump supporter, and while the reaction to his comparison of his life to those existing in Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly negative, it looked like Tim Allen had weathered the storm and come out no worse for wear.

This week, however, Tim Allen unexpectedly got the ax when his highly rated show Last Man Standing was cancelled seemingly out of nowhere. As Fox News reports, the ABC network abruptly pulled the plug on Last Man Standing after six seasons, despite the fact that the sitcom was ABC’s second-highest rated comedy of the season and third-highest watched scripted series overall, not to mention the highest-rated show in its time-slot. So far, ABC hasn’t said why Tim Allen and his show got the boot (beyond that it posed a scheduling conflict of some kind), but many think that the reason has a lot to do with his conservative views — and perhaps the conservative views portrayed on the show itself.

Quite a few fans of the show, many disappointed that they won’t be seeing a Season 7 of Last Man Standing, took to social media to share their theories as to why the popular Friday night show was cancelled.

On the show, Tim Allen plays socially and politically conservative family man Max Baxter. Over the six seasons of Last Man Standing, Allen and his TV alter ego spent a good deal of time poking fun at liberals and liberal politics, reports NewsMax. Frequently, Tim Allen’s character could be heard bashing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Some fans think that it could be the fallout of the unexpected Trump victory in November that did him in.

Others think that Tim Allen lost his lucrative TV gig (he was said to earn $235,000 per episode) specifically because of his conversation with Jimmy Kimmel comparing his life in Hollywood to the horrors suffered by those who lived through (and died during) WWII Germany.

At least one social media user pointed out that the cancellation of Last Man Standing kind of proved Allen’s point, even if the 63-year-old actor could arguably have worded his complaint a little more tactfully.

By ending the run of Last Man Standing, ABC is also taking off the air one of the few sitcoms that is targeted to a more conservative audience and features a decidedly conservative point of view. In contrast, ABC’s highest-rated sitcom Modern Family has taken considerable heat for its liberal story lines, which famously include a gay couple and all manner of blended families.

Back in December, ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey inferred at a London media summit that he would be doing precisely the opposite, and even admitted that ABC’s programming often leaves conservative viewers (many Donald Trump voters) hanging.

“With our dramas, we have a lot of shows that feature very well-to-do, well-educated people, who are driving very nice cars and living in extremely nice places…But in recent history we haven’t paid enough attention to some of the true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans in our dramas.”

At this point, it is unclear if Last Man Standing may be replaced with a blue collar drama or some other offering that may appease disappointed Tim Allen fans and/or conservative viewers in general.

Tim Allen has yet to comment on the cancellation of Last Man Standing. Why do you think the series was cancelled? Was it truly a scheduling problem, or could it have been retribution for Tim Allen’s conservative views, controversial Nazi comparison, and Trump support? Let us know in the comments section below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiXQVSPoDHY

[Featured Image by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images]

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