From Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, to Wile Coyote’s Roadrunner-catching Acme ingenuity, Warner Brothers’ hilarious Looney Tunes have filled generations of Americans with innocent childlike laughter. Unfortunately, political correctness run amok is depriving future generations of one unforgettable toon. The Cartoon Network, a subsidiary of AOL-Time Warner, has shelved all 40 six-minute Speedy Gonzales shorts.
The Cartoon Network yanked Speedy because of un-P.C. village-lounging tobacco-smoking drunken Mexican mice and his lazy slow-witted cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez. “[Speedy] hasn’t been on the air for years because of its ethnic stereotypes,” states Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg. “We’re not HBO. We have a diverse audience and we have an impressionable audience.”
The Cartoon Network quickly forgets a 1955 Academy Award winning Speedy cartoon and two Speedy shorts nominated for Oscars in 1957 and 1961. Oh yeah, and Speedy is Cartoon Network Latin America’s most popular character. “I’ve never heard any Mexican-American complain about him,” states Gabriela Lemus of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the US’s oldest Hispanic-American rights group. [“When I [was growing up in] Chicago, he was the only English-language Mexican cartoon character,” says Lemus. “He’s a savvy mouse; I love him!”]
[Comments Rush Limbuagh on his website:
“Speedy routinely outruns “el gringo gato” Sylvester, Daffy Duck and others who invade his turf. He helps out the poor mice in town, who often starve because their leaders hog all the cheese for themselves – much like the old communist party big wigs. There is, in short, not a thing wrong with how this mouse portrays Mexicans. On the contrary, Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg admitted to Fox that Speedy is “hugely popular” in Latin America!
“The Cartoon Network has the right to air whatever it wants, so this is not censorship in the true sense of the word. But this is exactly the kind of thing the left calls censorship whenever a museum decides not to air poop art or run a TV show featuring some deviant content. In short, “Viva Speedy!” Free the mouse, Cartoon Network, and give the people what they want.”]
If Speedy Gonzales is offensive to Mexicans, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, are offensive to whites. Two dimwitted fumbling white men who can’t kill a “cwazy wabbit” with all the lead they’re packing? Looks like a pretty racist stereotype to me. Or what about the skirt, er, cat-chasing Pepe LePew? Obviously a derogatory sex-crazed French stereotype. And let’s not even get started on Porky Pig’s mockery of the speech impaired.
Or maybe they’re just cartoons, and the folks running Cartoon Network need serious psychiatric help
