The Age of Reason: cartoons
by Eric Blair (3/21/98)

Some Saturday, you should watch ABC early morning television.  Since the Walt Disney Corporation produces the show, one might easily assume that here, at least, is a safe place to leave the children.
     It isn’t.
     If you study the concepts presented and techniques utilized, and don’t happen to be a bubbleheaded, Clinton-lusting liberal soccer-mom, a rabid socialistic member of a sick minority group or a caring-sharing, mauve 90’s kind of white guy, you will be shocked at the ideology.

     Just about the only human villains allowed are white, middle-aged and male.
     Parents who do not display liberal value structures are physically unattractive.
     Business (the economics of capitalism) is presented as evil.
     Collectivism (the economics of socialism) is presented as good.
     In any dispute liberals are correct.
 
    It’s fascinating to watch, actually.  You wouldn't think a writer of cartoons for children would be able to so neatly weave African-American-Extremist, environmental-wacko, FemiNazi,  homosexual and socialist prejudice into this format.  Take the liberal black angle, for example.
    The chanting non-music style of urban negro rap seems to predominate.  Since this "music" as a class is heavily infused with anti-caucasian, anti-capitalistic (read: pro-tribal or socialistic) rhetoric, and since it suggests the murdering of those in law enforcement, the robbing of law-abiding citizenry and the raping of women – all of which are these days common in both Washington, D.C. and the land of milk and honey (read: Africa) – you have to wonder just who in the hell runs Disney these days.
     Liberals, are so predictable.
    Repression is defined as inequality of outcome.
    The answer to repression, real or imagined, is repression. (The opposite inequality of outcome.)
    I am, it is sad to say, in part anyway, probably responsible for all this crap.
    I loved big band forties music when I was growing up, but I also responded to the blues-based rhythms of rock and roll.  I loved the music of both Frank Sinatra and Chuck Berry, in other words.  Both Nat King Cole and Bill Haley were great, as far as I was concerned.  And, both Little Richard and Bing Crosby, as well.  Until I saw photos of these people, I had no idea what color they were.  And, before or after receiving that information, I couldn't have cared less.
    You see, as Peter Jennings will tell you, it was a naive, bigoted era.
    (And, partially, the old Canadian liberal is right.  I chanted rhymes about catching by his toe what would  today be called an African-American.  I understand that I am similarly ridiculed by negros these days because I can't jump.  May the best poet win!)
     Just as an aside, looking back, those days in the Pacific Northwest remind me of something  I recently saw for an instant on Oregon Public Broadcasting.   I've mentioned it before.  It was a photo of  Harlem  in the Twenties.  The shocking thing was that it wasn't the broken-windowed, garbage-strewn, drug-infested, gang-raped hell hole of  violence and illegitimacy it and the South Bronx, and chunks of Detroit, L.A., the nation's capitol and dozens of other cities are today -- Thank God for The Great Society and Liberal Progress!
    This photo was of Joe Lewis' old neighborhood, presented during a program about the history of racism in America.  The place was clean, in good repair and orderly.  Not one single piece of graffiti in sight!  It was wonderful!  And, it made me ask myself a question.
    If I were a black parent, and those were my two choices, which would I pick?
    Do you understant the question?
    If I were black, and had kids, would I choose the grungy, dangerous Harlem of the liberated today, or the clean, relatively safe Harlem of the Jim Crow past?
    Anyway, getting back to the naive Forties and Fifties, because of the racist, female-suppressing, anti-environmental, homophobic, right wing fascist cartoons I was exposed to, my very soul was deformed.  Sadly, they left me under the idiotic impression that  in America, I was allowed to pick and choose from all the ingredients in the national stew, and that "good" was a matter of character. (Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, the former before I was born and the latter when I was a young adult, told me that.)
    But now, as I take a moment to study the programming being fed to America’s children by the saintly Walt Disney corporation and the American Broadcasting Corporation, I see that I was entirely wrong.  Bad guys only come in the color European white, and in the sex male, and in the sexual preference heterosexual and in the economic philosophy capitalistic.  If a person is both white and male, however, as long as he dresses, believes and supports the dress, speech and beliefs of FemiNazis, militant homosexuals, environmental wackos, socialists, black racist moslem fanatics and the leaders of the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo, plus gives them his money, he is tolerable, if not actually acceptable.
    The Saturday morning cartoon message is clear.
    If I had any kids, I wouldn’t let them anywhere near it.

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