Drawing Blanks
A History of Cartoon Persecution
The world was miffed last Tuesday, when a decision passed by the president of the International Olympic committee, Thomas Bach, officially banned cartoon characters from participating in the quad annual games, as well as engaging in brand sponsorships.
The decision came after long deliberation from the Olympic board, and deep consideration from attending members, all three of them. The issue of a cartoon’s place in the wide world of sports had been brought up in conference several months ago by Huckleberry Hound, a representative of the ACLU (American Cartoon Legitimacy United).
When asked about the subject, Hound gave a less than pleased response:
“You think it’s easy being an anthropomorphic dog in this town, let alone blue? I was taught to judge by the content of character, not the color of one’s skin, and yet here I am looking at bigotry the likes of which I have not seen since the days when Mickey Rooney did his routine in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
Co-Chairman of the ACLU, Foghorn Leghorn, expressed his dissatisfaction as well:
“I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, I say, hwat?”
(Editor’s note: some words had to be omitted for the purpose of creating a concise quotation).
To say that the recent downturn in cartoon opinion has been harsh would be an understatement. According to a Toon Gallup poll, the approval of drawn figures has dropped in recent years, from 64% to just 56%. For those inexperienced with mathematics, that’s an 8% drop which is more than 7%, and somewhere below 9%.
Several contributing factors from the poll have been cited, not the least of which being infamous public displays of cartoon athleticism in the past, incidents which the public hope to never revisit. One might remember the “Laff-A-Lympics”, an event hosted in 1977 which saw the advent of representation for cartoon communities. While acting as a tentpole in the cartoon liberation movement, the games inadvertently sowed trepidation in the hearts of some of the non-toon public. The event is best known for popularizing the use of the colloquialism, “normies”, by toons to describe three-dimensional creatures.
The conditions of said event did not undergo proper inspection from event officials, resulting in numerous mistakes being made: Bathrooms were holes dug in the dry soil, beer prices were outrageous, and some individuals, including most of the toon athletes themselves, smoked cannabis, a practice that’s apparently only cool when you’re in college, and — like, you only try it once and realize maybe it’s not for you.
Rampant violations of sanitation protocol, as well as misrepresentation of the facilities provided to spectators by “Laff-A-Lympics” leadership, has led modern historians to call it the “Fyre Festival of the Disco Era”.
Famed villain, Dick Dastardly, went so far as to call the proceedings “shit.”
The athletic scene for toons is not the same as it once was, however, since the popularity of recreational drugs moved in the direction of performance enhancing ones in its stead. Along with toons, we must also consider recent controversies involving illegal substances in “normie” communities, and the often flagrant use of illicit substances on social media.
In the weeks leading up to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Czech Republic faced controversy when shocking Instagram video of key members of their women’s luge team surfaced. The footage showed needles with a width of approximately 3 inches, and about 2 feet in length being inserted into their buttocks by Beverly Hills urologist Dr. Strangemoon.
Let me interject my own opinion by asking a simple question: Did the Olympic committee scrutinize this?
Barely!
Within the same month, a crackdown of the manufacturing and distribution of illicit substances resulted in the raid of Dexter’s Laboratory, located in San Bernardino, California. Among the substances found were Super D-Bol, Jungle Juice, and Spinach, all substances technically legal under… some country’s legislation.
Figures like Popeye and his history of juicing were, for some reason, going to spell disaster for the reputation of the Olympic board, with Olympic officials even citing the saucy sailor as reasoning behind the disbarment.
And Manikova gets a week long ban from McDonald’s in Olympic village, all the while an entire species of being is exempt from sporting. Ridiculous.
It would be unfair, however, to not address an elephant in the room…or a dog, I suppose. The events discussed have been compounded with recent racial tensions between cartoons and well… just about everyone else, painting a checkered public perception of the toon community. The most prominent example of this being Hong Kong Phooey’s comments on China’s involvement in the U.S. economy, as well as his drunken tirades about the presence of Asian Americans in political circles.
Do these events justify the sudden malignment of cartoons? I’ll let you decide that on your own. In these times of tribulation and conflict, it’s easy for us to forget that there were days in which harmony existed between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional beings, and advocacy has surfaced in recent years to remind us of that.
The year 1996 saw the birth of an epic showdown, Space Jam, a cartoon sporting event that literally saved the galaxy from Danny DeVito and the Monstars (it happened again in 2021, but let’s not talk about that). In an emotional interview about his past experiences shooting hoops with the toons, former Bulls point guard Michael Jordan, said “I don’t remember any of that. Are you paying me for this? Shit, man. These lights are hot as fuck, y’all better be paying me for this shit.”
With those beautiful words in mind, this writer must ask a valid question:
What’s the big deal?
A cartoon is, in essence, the creation of man. We are their gods, and yet, we look down on the children we’ve sired. The sins of the father be not passed down to the child (as my grandfather used to say before whooping me, a result of him “ironically” forgetting to pick up grandmother at the bingo hall).
I’d like to to call on the words of a wonderful activist for the cartoon crusade:
“Can’t we aw just get awong? — Tweety Bird the Bird
Hours later, he was tossed in a Balsamic glaze, and devoured a la carte by Sylvester J. Pussycat Sr. Truly, a fine representation of the pattern of violence that continues on, until the pencil of the artist has been laid down, and the toons can finally be laid to rest. These times are a testament to both the violence and the beauty that lives within us all.
He will be missed.
END.
