Liberal Looney Tunes
It's not a good day for anyone when you get taken to the shed by both Mark Steyn and Lileks in the same day, but if anyone deserves it it's the increasingly insufferable Whoopi Goldberg. Once a mildly amusing comic who doubled as an enigmatic Star Trek character, she's now metamorphosed into some kind of low rent Maya Angelou: otherworldly, earthy African-American wisdom dispensed from a serious, smiling, knowing face.
I ran across one of those interview shows on PBS the other night, and there she was: Whoopi the Wise discoursing on the mystery of life from a single chair in front of an all-white audience. She looked sage and wise, dropping droll bits of wisdom to the type of crowd that donates $50 to PBS instead of the usual $25 in order to score the Rick Steeves tote-bag.
Of course, Whoopi was never that funny or that good and Star Trek: TNG is as old now as the original series is for kids growing up (Remember Nat X's Top Five Reasons Not to See Burgler? Number One: Whoopi's in it.) which may go a long way in explaining Whoopi's Maya-esque transformation.
In any case, she has managed to annoy two of the best in the business and gets her due. From Steyn in today's Sun-Times:
From Lileks:
I suppose that "person who thinks that Looney Tunes cartoons need to come with political warnings" is as good a definition for "liberal" as any.
Or as Maya would say: "Crispedly. Crunchity. Butterfinger."
Or was that Deepak?
I ran across one of those interview shows on PBS the other night, and there she was: Whoopi the Wise discoursing on the mystery of life from a single chair in front of an all-white audience. She looked sage and wise, dropping droll bits of wisdom to the type of crowd that donates $50 to PBS instead of the usual $25 in order to score the Rick Steeves tote-bag.
Of course, Whoopi was never that funny or that good and Star Trek: TNG is as old now as the original series is for kids growing up (Remember Nat X's Top Five Reasons Not to See Burgler? Number One: Whoopi's in it.) which may go a long way in explaining Whoopi's Maya-esque transformation.
In any case, she has managed to annoy two of the best in the business and gets her due. From Steyn in today's Sun-Times:
The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. Already, 85 percent of Hollywood's business comes from home entertainment -- DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the ''Looney Tunes Golden Collection.'' Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we're not meant to find funny: ''Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,'' she tells us sternly. ''These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today'' -- unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg's most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There's a gag for the ages.
I don't know what Whoopi's making such a meal about. It's true you don't see many positive images of people of color on ''Looney Tunes,'' but then the images of people of non-color aren't terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don't think about hitting the "Next" button and skipping to the cartoons: You can't; you gotta sit through it.
From Lileks:
Picked up my "Looney Tunes vol. 3," and was very excited. Finally: a chance to see if "Hillbilly Hare" was as funny as I recalled. I hadn't seen it in ten years - used to come around once every few months in the morning Warner Brothers cartoon show in DC. (I would get up, check local Fox TV - the best morning show at the time - then move directly to Looney Tunes.) I put in the disc and was instantly horrified to see Whoopie Goldberg enter the frame, looking like a character cut from "Battlefield Earth." She brings with her a strange set of implications: in another dimension, people think she is funny, but in private even those people do not think she is funny, but they do not dwell on the matter. Apparently to us yokels her presence is meant to indicate the presence, or at least the imminence, of hilarity. She warns us about the cartoons we are soon to behold. Warns us! It seems - odd as this may sound - they had many unexamined casual racial stereotypes back then, and these images found their way into cartoons. These jokes "hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups." Somehow I doubt stupid barefoot idiot hillbillies are an ethnic group. But they're mercilessly mocked - not only for their appearance or lack of intelligence, but their inability to resist the instructions of a rabbit whose square-dancing calls have the force of law.
I suppose that "person who thinks that Looney Tunes cartoons need to come with political warnings" is as good a definition for "liberal" as any.
Or as Maya would say: "Crispedly. Crunchity. Butterfinger."
Or was that Deepak?
