28 March 2002

I don't know exactly when, in my life, I started to hate Ted Turner.  Well, perhaps "despise" would be better.  Maybe it was when he married Hanoi Jane.  Maybe it was because of the Atlanta Braves, the almost-champs of baseball for the last decade (and the team the Yanks have beaten in the World Series TWICE - fuck you, Ted).  Maybe it was when he started fucking up old movies by colorizing them.  Who knows.

Whatever event triggered it, I have to bring myself to take my loathing of Ted to a new level.  I just heard about this yesterday on the radio:  Cartoon Network has preemptively stopped showing "Speedy Gonzales" cartoons so as not to offend Mexican Americans.  "Why hate Ted because of that?" you may ask.  Because the fuckhead owns Cartoon Network, which, coincidentally, owns the exclusive rights to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.  Somewhere, Mel Blanc is fuming.  That, in itself, is almost as offensive to pop culture as Michael "I'm black I'm white I'm a girl what the FUCK AM I?" Jackson owning most of the songs by The Beatles.

Now, I am going to offend some people here, and I'd apologize, but I just don't give a fuck.  Number one:  not one person, group, or entity - not even the fucking ACLU - has raised an issue with Cartoon Network about Speedy being insensitive to Mexican Americans, stereotyping them as boozing, womanizing, and lazy (not just Speedy, but his mice friends, including Slowpoke).  This is something that apparently was born inside that fucking warped mind of Ted.  Second:  What fucking jackass gave Ted Turner complete control over Looney Tunes?  Third:  the stereotypes fit.  After all, if you're going to humanize one creature in a cartoon and make it Mexican, it is entirely fitting that it's a mouse, since Mexicans reproduce as fast as mice.  If you don't think so, hop in the car with me sometime and I'll drive you to a part of Phoenix where the "Mexican Americans" (a politically correct way of saying fencejumpers) make the mice in Speedy Gonzales cartoons look like model citizens.  But this is not a rant about my neighbors to the south - it's about political correctness.

The thing is, it didn't start here.  Looney Tunes and other cartoons, including Tom and Jerry, have been re-dialogued and edited for years from their original content.  And as anyone who has a clue about the origins of cartoons knows, Looney Tunes were not originally meant for kids.  They were shown before movies in theaters.  They were meant to be shown to adults, to carry political messages at times, and carried many adult themes.  Dozens of cartoons have been censored or pulled completely, including those involving Indians and blacks, and one episode called "Bugs Nips the Nips" which was against Japan.  Japanese groups put down their Minoltas, karaoke microphones, and soiled women's panties long enough to complain about that episode and succeeded in having it locked up.  Hey Slanty, remember Pearl Harbor?  Fuck you.

Remember the Bugs Bunny episode where he has the re-match with the turtle?  Bugs builds himself a rocket-propelled turtle shell, and the other rabbits think he's the turtle and eventually stop him from winning the race.  At the end when he shows them he's really the rabbit, the three other rabbits look at the camera and say, "Now he tells us!"  These days, that's the end of the cartoon, fade to black.  In the original, one rabbit pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head, the bullet goes through all three rabbits, and they drop to the ground.  I saw that cartoon as a kid.  I never tried shooting myself in the head.  However, in the "socially conscious '90s" this was taken out, because as we all know, kids these days get everything they learn from television because most parents are too wrapped up in their own lives to remember that they fucking have kids.  And NO, this is not going to be a Parent Rant, but one of those may come in the future.

The Tom and Jerry (not Warner Brothers, I know, but it fits the rant) I referred to is one where the black maid tells Tom that if he makes another mess, "you're going out!  O-W-T out!"  In order not to offend blacks, this has been edited to "O-U-T out!"

As an adult, I still enjoy watching Looney Tunes, because I think they're the best cartoons that were ever made (Rocky and Bullwinkle come in second), they're funny, and they're intelligently written.  They contained social commentary and are a reflection of the world and time in which they were produced.  Now, I can't enjoy them anymore, because that little faggot in Atlanta is fucking with them.  I don't know.  I'm losing my faith in the human race.

UPDATE

Speedy Gonzales is back after fans' outcry
Shelley Emling
Cox News Service
June 20, 2002 11:30:00

NEW YORK - He foiled Sylvester the Cat. Now the cunning Mexican mouse known as Speedy Gonzales has apparently outwitted the forces of political correctness.

The Atlanta-based Cartoon Network is returning Speedy Gonzales to its programming mix later this month following an outcry from fans.

The Cartoon Network yanked Speedy's cartoons from the air in the late 1990s. Some fans say owner Ted Turner ordered the move because he believed the cartoons - which included the likes of Speedy's lazy cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez - perpetrated an offensive Mexican stereotype.

Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg claimed in March that the Speedy cartoons simply weren't that popular compared to other selections in an archive of some 8,500 cartoons.

That has changed, she said Thursday.

"We never had a demand for it before. Now there's this vocal group that wants it back. If it does well, it will stay, and if it doesn't, it won't. After all, we are a business," Goldberg said.

In recent months thousands of fans - many of whom are Hispanic - created a brouhaha pequena by lobbying hard to get the fastest mouse in all of Mexico back on the network.

Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh said Speedy's removal was political correctness gone too far. The League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest Hispanic-American rights organization, called Speedy a "cultural icon" who displayed plenty of admirable pluck.

One diehard fan, Matthew Hunter, launched an online petition in April to get Speedy back on the air and gathered more than 2,500 signatures.

"It's been silly not to have Speedy on the air because people watch him in Latin America and they love him," said Virginia Cueto, associate editor of HispanicOnline.com, an English-language Web site based in Florida. "It will be good to have him back."

Thousands of Hispanics and others have logged onto HispanicOnline's message board to voice their support for Speedy's return.

Said one fan: "Speedy is more of a positive symbol. He always brings down that loco Daffy Duck to the point that the latter finally started respecting Speedy. People like Speedy."

Speedy starred in more than 47 Looney Tunes shorts and won an Academy Award in 1955.

The Cartoon Network, owned by AOL Time Warner Inc., has exclusive rights to show the cartoons in the United States. It took control of the Warner Bros. stable of animated movies in 1999.

According to the Cartoon Network's Web site, Speedy cartoons will air throughout late June and July.

Among the Speedy shorts scheduled are "Speedy Ghosts to Town" and "Well Worn Daffy," which will air on "The Looney Tunes Show" in June.