By Paul Big Bear
Dea
Laughter, what a great sound; a baby laughing, children at play, or a party of people having fun, go to a show or a movie and hear the laughter. Laughter is the best medicine, it lowers your blood pressure, brings people together, makes you feel good, it can settle the stomach, in short, laughter is healthy. What has made you laugh lately? For me growing up it was radio, then television, movies, shows, and later going to a club and seeing a comedian. Disney movies, Saturday mornings with The Three Stooges and Saturday morning cartoons, so intently, wooop woop wooop, Nuk nuk nuk, beep beep, shhhh we’re huntin wabbits, if you recognize any of this then you know what I am speaking of.
Vaudeville, comedy teams; Dean and Jerry, Laurel and Hardy, Bud and Lou, Stiller and Meara, and this list goes on, all made us laugh. Now, Elmer Fudd will no longer chase Bugs Bunny with his trusty shotgun, Pepe Le Pew will find only unrequited love as he will no longer pursue kitty cats. Speedy Gonzales will have to cool his heels, who is next? All because some thin skinned, politically correct whiners fear that these things will teach children unacceptable behavior. REALLY! How many of you out there that watched the shows they are censuring ever took a large pair of scissors and clamped them on someone’s nose?
How many friends did you blind poking them in the eyes, who bought bear traps and dynamite by mail? We knew it was just humor, entertainment. If these things are really worrying you I say grow up, I never needed to be hit in the head with a hammer or have a saw drug across my head to know it would be painful or to realize it was not something I should do to a friend. It is called education and, of here’s a word for you to go look up, COMMON SENSE. We laughed at things in life that were funny, at ourselves, at the absurd. It has been called the impossible possible when a character goes out on a limb and cuts the branch off behind him, of course the limb stays supporting him and the tree falls, funny.
I watched a show the other day as they looked at the social value of Beavis and Butthead, when asked if this show caused harm the young man (30 -40 years of age) said “No we realized that it was just humor, we knew it wasn’t real.” Should I be insulted, was I just told that I and all the youngsters I grew up with were not smart enough to know that we were just supposed to laugh and not copy because we were never as smart as they are?