YABBA-DABBA-SLABBER-DOO

I am available to write an article of any length based on the post below.

joecushnan@aol.com

I hear that the animated character Fireman Sam is sexist. I can't really be bothered to waste too much time delving into the details, but if even one of us human beans is offended these days, then that is good enough to be both news and fodder for a social media hoo-haa. Yabba-dabba-slabber-doo!

But it got me thinking about the animated shows I watched as a vulnerable child in the 1960s and I wondered what psychological flaws I have carried with me into my adult life.

Did Popeye make me think that a pipe-smoking sailor with a pot-scourer voice and a maniac's cackling laugh who guzzled spinach straight from a can and punched the living daylights out of his rival, was a good role model? Mind you, I did attempt a pipe one time but, after a few amateur sucks, I was sick for what seemed like eternity. Did Popeye encourage my sly puff? Hmmm.

Did Mister Magoo influence a prejudice in me to refer in later life to people who wore glasses as 'speccy-four-eyes' and use terms like 'blind as a bat'? That is until I had to wear them myself!

Did I think it was acceptable behaviour for Yogi Bear to stalk picnickers and nick their food baskets, and encourage his sidekick Boo Boo to learn the scurrilous skills? Jellystone Park was actually a crime scene!

Was it acceptable for a law enforcement officer, Deputy Dawg, to refer to the characters he arrested in derogatory terms such as 'pesky varmints'? Disrespectful.

Did I just accept that Top Cat's gang of mischievous moggies operating out of a back alley was normal, and that a single inept policeman was powerless to eradicate this type of criminality? A miaow mafia was at work and us kids absorbed the subliminal messages that it was all okay.

And I could go on about the deviousness of Bugs Bunny and his addiction to binge-ordering explosives and 10-ton weights from the Acme Trading Company, the lisping and swearing of Daffy Duck ('suffering succotash'), the whole rewriting of stone-age history in The Flintstones, the reckless speeding on the highway by the Road Runner, and being hit in the face with a frying pan as demonstrated in Tom and Jerry. Not to forget Postman Pat zooming around country lanes with an unseatbelted cat loose in the driving seat. Surely a disgrace to the uniform and a danger to wandering sheep and ramblers.

I could go on but I'm hungry. I'm off to the park to steal someone's sandwiches.

That's all folks!