Finish that title for yourself. What is it not easy being? Green like Kermit, my favorite frog, who decided he liked being what he is? Old? Young? Black? White? Male? Female? Gay? Straight? Etc. Etc Etc.
In the '30s and early '40s I was a White, country kid, laughing along with my father at the hilarious radio misadventures of Amos 'n' Andy. I suppose I knew, on some level, that the characters were played by White Men using what we might now call stereotypical Negro Dialect. At that time and place, that was beside the point. We laughed because it was funny. For those who came along 25 or more years after I did, racial stereotyping is the point, dwarfing whatever entertainment value the program offered at its time in history.
My ten year old African American Grandson loves the old, classic Disney and Warner Brothers Cartoons. They are full of racial and ethnic stereotypes and violence, with characters getting flattened and immediately springing back to life without so much as a scratch. Many of the DVDs in his huge collection include an apologetic disclaimer for the content that is deemed no longer acceptable. The boy has zero interest in that. Maybe that will change as he gets older. But for now, he laughs at those cartoons because they're funny. He found an old Muppets video that we watched last night. Kermit, Piggy and the whole crew that was hatched in the brilliant mind of Jim Henson did their version of the classic fairy tales. That show has taken some lumps from critics, too. My kids loved it and I couldn't be happier that the grandson does, too. I laugh myself silly every time Miss Piggy decks poor Kermie. My very favorite such pig-to-frog violence happens when Kermit serenades
Lydia the Tatooed Lady. That song was such a favorite of Henson's that it was performed at his memorial service.
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