Ravenwood - 11/29/05 06:00 AM
Cartoons are no stranger to political correctness. Many of the Looney Tunes are kept off the air or trimmed down when shown on TV. Now political correctness is even entering your home by way of the DVD sets you buy.
...I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the ''Looney Tunes Golden Collection.'' Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we're not meant to find funny: ''Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,'' she tells us sternly. ''These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today'' -- unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg's most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There's a gag for the ages.And of all the people to carry the message of decency and goodness, they pick Whoopi Goldberg. I guess Howard Stern was busy.I don't know what Whoopi's making such a meal about. It's true you don't see many positive images of people of color on ''Looney Tunes,'' but then the images of people of non-color aren't terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don't think about hitting the "Next" button and skipping to the cartoons: You can't; you gotta sit through it.
Category: Pleasure Police
Comments (4) top link me
It just gets more silly dose,nt it? the real LONIE TUNES are the PC crowd of weirdos and poltroons and as BUGS BUNNY would have said OF COURSE YOU REALIZE THIS MEANS WAR
Posted by: sandpiper at November 29, 2005 11:05 AMI'm glad to know all of this, because as much as I would love to have a 4-DVD set of Looney Tunes, there is absolutely no way I'm going to buy it if I have to listen to a lecture from Whoopi Goldberg every time I watch them.
If I wanted to see and hear Whoopi I'd buy Sister Act II (after securing my guns in another room, of course).
Posted by: roger at November 29, 2005 12:06 PMReally. Whoopi Goldberg and her "pubic hair as political commentary" displays?? She is the spokesperson?
Oh well. If Marion pipehead Barry can be Mayor of our Nations Capitol, then why not? It's a seller's market for decent black figureheads.
Didn't she and Ted Danson do a blackface routine not too long back? So, of course she's the go-to person on what is and what isn't racist and not funny.
Posted by: Kevin Baker at November 29, 2005 10:17 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014