I’ll bet I’m like a lot of you who learned at an early age about opera, world history and even how to avoid obvious ACME booby traps by watching the cartoon antics of Elmer Fudd and his arch nemesis, that wily wabbit, Bugs Bunny. Did Bugs and Mr. Fudd resort to violence in these cartoons? You bet: there were anvils falling on unsuspecting heads, bank safes that flattened the cartoon character into a pancake and yes, guns.
Yet somehow we all learned that you don’t drop a safe on someone you don’t like, you don’t set booby traps for your enemies, and you certainly don’t hunt down human beings with a loaded gun. Guns were
for hunting rabbits, at least that was my childhood “take away.”
As with all good things from our childhoods, someone from Hollywood has come along and ruined them.
As they prepare to relaunch many of the familiar Looney Toons cartoons for today’s overly sensitive children, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam (that “rootin, tootin, shootin cowboy”) will no longer be carrying guns. Elmer will instead be seen chasing Bug Bunny with a scythe! And yet TNT, massive explosions and other “cartoony violence” will be “grandfathered in.” The guns were removed from the cartoons in response to “anti-bullying” efforts, according to Peter Browngardt, the executive producer of the HBO remake.
Apparently today’s kids are OK seeing violence – but it has to be the politically correct type.
