Daffy Duck And Company

This month is the anniversary of the first appearance on screen of Daffy Duck. For people over the age of 6o it is significant. I grew up with Saturday morning carton characters who were simple and fun. There were no space rangers, alien monsters and the generally violent cartoon creatures today's kids know.  I am thankful for that because our cartoon characters, like Daffy, were harmlessly fun and silly, innocent in an innocent era. Maybe today's cartoon are so violent and cruel because the age is that way and they reflect it.

My favorite cartoons were the warner Brothers characters like Daffy, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Froghorn Leghorn etc. Strangely, each of them had an impediment, often a speech impediment, that the great voice of cartoon characters, Mel Blanc, exaggerated for humor. Today it would be politically incorrect, for instance, to introduce a new cartoon featuring a stutterer like Elmer Fudd.  This age is so insecure it can not laugh at human afflictions like stuttering because it is seen as cruel. But I never remember any stutterer complain about Elmer's affliction. It's probably because people then separated cartoons from reality. Today it's all a blur, given those cell phones make the unreal seem real and reality unreal.

That rant aside, who are your favorite cartoon characters? Are the modern ones better for you or do they disinterest you? I can't speak for others but some polls I have seen say Bugs Bunny is the all time favorite. Bugs is a street smart New York rabbit who speaks an awkward but effective English. Why he even gave us expressions from his own dialect disaster speak. "What's up Doc" is recognizable English not only in the United States, but among most non English speakers in most places world wide.

The often cited second most popular cartoon character of all time is Homer Simpson, a more modern creation who mimics human flaws. I am not often a TV watcher (since my early 20's it lost appeal to me) . I must confess that I have never seen that TV show, and thus, don't know Homer beyond what I have read about him. He does seem to be more real that the super hero cartoon characters that populate the tube today. I suspect that I would be more enlightened with time spent with homer than with some real characters that populate our culture today. Some other popular characters are Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Charley Brown, Fred Flintstone, Popeye, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Sponge bob Squarepants and on and on. Which is your favorite?

Anyway, Happy Birthday to Daffy Duck. May he live in popularity forever.