Bugged by Bugs

For Christmas we got a flat screen tv and a digital box. With all these modern conveniences what am I obsessed with? Teletoon Retro. The channel that shows all the old cartoons that I used to watch as a kid. Transformers, The Smoggies, The Smurfs, Spiderman, The Flintstones, GI Joe (which insultingly the kids find beyond hysterical)... I'm in heaven.

I'll often just watch what's on for a few minutes and move on but I find I'm watching whole episodes of Bugs Bunny quite often. When I was a kid there was no worry about tv violence causing kids to act out. Every Saturday morning we'd watch the coyote blow himself up courtesy of Acme but it never made me or my friends want to construct an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to try to drop an anvil on the neighbour's cat. So it bothers me that these episodes are often cut to unrecognisable shreds because of it.

I understand that years ago these cartoons were the only things that children were watching so if they had dynamite related outbursts Bugs was blamed first. But nowadays when my 14 and 11 year old boys have access to video games where they can correctly identify each tank plundering innocent European villages and could disturbingly name every gun and rifle in the Unibomber's shack, I'm thinking that seeing Daffy Duck getting hit in the head by an umbrella isn't going to scar them for life. So to whom it may concern, put my precious violence back in classic cartoons.

That reminds me... I need to limit those boys from playing that Nazi Zombie game for a while. Henry is starting to develop an unnerving twitch in his left eyelid.

kxx