Role models aren’t always easy to come by. And the best ones, like the good and noble Haile Selassie, don’t necessarily understand the reasons behind their own notoriety. They’re not out there to become a false prophet, standing up (or sitting down depending on the strength of their knees) for something they don’t believe in or comprehend. But the secret to finding role models – since we all could use some guidance, especially as lost children – is knowing where to look.
Personally, I found most of mine seated atop a scalding radiator, inches from the TV screen, letting the alleged entertainment enter me unfiltered and uncontextualized. I wasn’t watching cartoons to laugh. I was watching them to live. Hindsight is a tricky thing, adding clarity to years gone by. I used to think that cartoons were righteous and moral. I know now how wrong I was to follow their shaky lead. It took years of deprogramming and professional psychiatric help to see just how far these Saturday morning villains had led me astray.
I was in my late 20s when I learned that a person couldn’t sprint several hundred feet off a steep cliff into thin air without falling - so long as they didn’t look down. I believed speech impediments were hilariously funny until someone recently dithabuthed me of that pernithith idea. And just yesterday, I finally accepted that when animals do talk they aren’t full of wisecracks or riotous quips, but rather, like all sentient beings, profoundly overwhelmed by their place in the universe, marked by deep ennui. Here are some of the cartoon characters I once mistakenly loved. Good thing I’ve come to my senses, even if it took several decades and relentless ridicule from friends and employers to get here.
Drugs Bunny
A pusher, a dealer, a doctor – this high rabbit of pharmacology left the forest focused on success regardless of the anguish left in his wake.
Hagiography Duck
After years spent working in failed states as a lobbyist, political fixer and quasi-warlord, this canard of canards, decided to devote his career to penning idealized portraits of the truly worst people society has to offer.
Industrial Parky Pig
A rapacious contractor, leveling the once gorgeous American pastoral landscape, in favor of endless strip malls and double-wides.
Poseur Fudd
A man without his own personality, copying everything he does from others, even down to the weird way he speaks.
Screedy Bird
Modeled after Martin Luther, this tiny yellow bird was full of lectures and diatribes – no audience too small, no topic too stupid.
Sequester the Cat
A hermit feline, who neither hunts or claws, nor scratches or paws – choosing to live in feral obscurity avoiding all animal contact.
Yopedantry Sam
A college professor who’s never met a sabbatical that didn’t need to be indefinitely extended.
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