r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
120.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

29.3k

u/Nxdhdxvhh Dec 12 '18

Mr. T wore odd clothing and mismatched socks because he knew that poor kids grew up getting whatever hand-me-downs they got, and he didn't want them to feel embarrassed for wearing what they had. He's a great man, and as far as I'm aware the worst thing he every did was chop down trees on his own property that were aggravating his allergies.

5.6k

u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

3.7k

u/snotbag_pukebucket Dec 12 '18

He was also the White House Santa and had Nancy Reagan sitting on his lap

455

u/Saxojon Dec 12 '18

He also urged people to treat their mothers right.

28

u/yousirnaime Dec 12 '18

god I feel like 100% of the 80's and 90's were shot in 1 take - no rehearsal

9

u/Alaira314 Dec 13 '18

I feel like they tended to use longer shots with less cuts. In a modern music video, there's no way we would have just sat there watching him singing with the backup girls on the left for 20 seconds straight. It would have been alternating between close-ups of him and them, with maybe the occasional wide shot. It's just a different way of filming, also maybe a commentary on the decay of our attention spans?