Making Waves: They’re just cartoons

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They’re banning Dr. Seuss books. Our society has finally lost it.

Censoring innocent children’s book marks the downfall of intelligent thought. A nicer way to say it is that it’s just plain silly.

If you can find something harmful in a harmless children’s book, the problem is not in the book, but in you.

Come on, Dr. Seuss? Really?! They might as well ban Disney movies, wait a minute, they are banning Disney movies. No more zipitty do da sung by a friendly Black man. No more Song of the South movie, they say it hints of the Confederacy and slavery. There’s a stretch for you.

Now Disney has warning labels on the Muppets. Watch out for Big Bird, he’ll corrupt your children. America has lost its mind. Someone put something in the water.

Somehow we have slipped into a parallel, infantile universe where adults believe that kindergarten cartoon shows are real and will ruin our lives. People have become so paranoid and delusional they believe the cartoon characters, Peter Pan, Aladdin, Lady and the Tramp, Dumbo, Pepe Le Pew represent evil and will corrupt our mind.

I can’t imagine what they’ll do to Lilo and Stitch.

Did you see they finally got Mr. Potato Head, that male chauvinist potato. He was called “Mister” all these years. Didn’t he realize the pain he was causing to all the female potatoes out there? They longed for equality, cried their eyes out.

The toy company had to give in and dropped the “Mr.,” now he’s just plain Potato Head. All is equal in Potato Land. We can breathe easier.

Give me a break. Believing that cartoon animals and cartoon people seriously affect our lives has to be a form of insanity. Hello, they aren’t real, they’re just pretend.

What happened to being grown up adult people that can discern fact from fiction?

How did hardy Americans turn into wimpy little kids scared of Big Bird?

This leads to changing the names of football teams. They want to make everything nice. They changed the long ago offensive word, Redskins to Washington Football Team, and dropped the name Pittsburgh Pirates because pirates were bad guys long ago.

These are words from the past and no longer have the same meaning they once had. Over time they have turned into logos and toys for kids. They’ve lost their punch.

Redskins is no longer the horrible word it was long ago. After 70 years of cheering the hometown football team it’s changed into something fun and good, now it’s just a football cheer.

Same with pirates, they have turned into likable guys like Capt. Jack Sparrow and the pirate on the cereal box. They are symbols from the past. Those who focus on pictures on a football helmet need to find a real problem to solve.

As for censoring kid’s cartoons, that’s easy to answer.

If they can show violent cop shows all day long, and endless reruns of the horrible Capitol riot they can endure Elmer Fudd asking the whereabouts of that Wascal Wabbit.

I will end with Porky Pig’s immortal words, “That’s All folks!”

Dennis Gregory writes a bi-weekly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com