Is This Walking Dead Shirt Racist? Jeffrey Dean Morgan Doesn't Think So

Say "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe" to any fan of The Walking Dead and watch them squirm uncomfortably. It's the phrase Negan utters before — spoiler alert — heinously murdering Abe and Glenn on the TV show. Up until this week, the UK chain Primark stocked a t-shirt emblazoned with the words and Negan's bat, Lucille, on the front. It's a clear reference to the series, but some shoppers were incensed by the racist undertones. While American kids know the second verse of the rhyme to go, "Catch a tiger by the toe," it was at one point, "Catch a n***** by the toe."

While there wasn't an outcry of racism when the issue of the Walking Dead comic was first published or when the episode aired, taken out of context, the phrase (along with the barbed-wire bat) could easily be misunderstood. Primark has since removed the shirts from its stores, but the controversy has grown so big that Negan himself, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, has commented on it. Tweeting out an article about it, Morgan wrote, "Holy crap people are stupid."

What do you think — is the shirt tone-deaf, or is the scandal unwarranted?