'Walking Dead' star calls protesters of new Negan shirt 'stupid'

A "Walking Dead" novelty shirt was caught the eye of some people in the U.K. and some have gotten the shirt banned. It seems like people will protest anything in today's world. The most recent example was a novelty shirt from the popular zombie show that had the bad guy Negan and a nursery rhyme he quoted before killing someone.

The nursery rhyme was the "eeny meeny miny moe" rhyme. Well, the shirt went on sale in the U.K. and a man saw it and said the shirt was racist and made black people feel fearful for their lives.

The 'Walking Dead' shirt's meaning

The meaning behind this shirt was simple. When Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was preparing to kill someone with his baseball bat, nicknamed Lucille, he would do the "ennie meeny miny moe" nursery rhyme, which is what children all over the world have used for years.

The reasoning is that, when the nursery rhyme ends, that person is it. For kids, that means a person is usually it in a game of tag. In the case of "The Walking Dead," it meant that Negan killed the person.

The 'Walking Dead' nursery rhyme controversy

The fact is that most kids follow the start of the nursery rhyme with the words "catch a tiger by his toe." However, when a man saw the shirt in a discount clothing store in the U.K., he immediately thought of a racist version of the song that replaced "tiger" with a racial slur.

Anyone who watched "The Walking Dead" season premiere this year saw that Negan used the term "tiger." However, because the man who saw the shirt immediately thought of racist connotations, he complained and the store removed the shirt from the sale racks.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan comments on "Walking Dead" shirt

There should be no controversy at all.

The nursery rhyme clearly said, "tiger" so any racism on display had to come from the eyes of the man who saw the shirt and not from anyone responsible for making the shirt. It is clearly the case of someone displaying their own racism onto something that had no intent on being racist at all.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan put it even better when "The Walking Dead" star took to Twitter to answer the controversy.