Month: July 2020

DAVE’S GONE CANCELING #002 – QUICK DRAW McGRAW

((c)2020 David Lefkowitz. This piece first aired July 11, 2020 on the 754th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By.)

Ladies and gentlemen, last week, we inaugurated this new segment of the Dave’s Gone By program, Dave’s Gone Canceling. We here in the Daverhood feel it is important to call out cultural icons who represent the worst kinds of racism, sexism, genderism, and jingoism. It isn’t enough to put questionable content into context, we must erase it! Cancel it! Begin a clean slate so that America can cease its unrest and . . . rest. 

A week ago, we eviscerated musician and painter Joni Mitchell for her appropriation of black-American culture. Sure, she’s one of the great pop songwriters of the 20th century, but she dressed in blackface on an album cover; therefore, she must be banishe’d from the cultural landscape. There’s no room for shades of grey in our black-versus-white society. You either make politically correct art all the time, or you get called out and canceled. 

Which brings us to this week’s offender. Someone white, someone who prides himself for upholding law and order—just like the police, and we all know how wrong they are these days. Someone who not only oppresses a Mexican who serves him, but appropriates Latinx stereotypes whenever it suits him. All of this, by the way, in the name of “fun.” 

I am, of course, talking about that Cancel Criminal, Quick Draw McGraw. Hanna-Barbera’s white cartoon horse who serves as a sheriff in the Old West. His deputy? A little Mexican donkey with a ridiculous accent, a sombrero, and the embarrassing name, Baba Looey—a bastardization of the Cuban song “Babalu.” Granted, Baba Looey is often shown to be smarter than his boss and warning Quick Draw of impending danger, but he is still the lackey, the second banana, the comical sidekick donkey to the great white horse. 

To make matters worse Quick Draw isn’t satisfied with having a best-friend Mexican stereotype; he, himself, takes on a farcical hispanic persona when becoming El Kabong. A masked vigilante, El Kabong conquers his enemies by shouting “Ole’!” and then bashing their heads in with a Spanish guitar. If you don’t think that’s offensive, just imagine El Kabong as a hegemonic Anglo-Saxon. He’d be named Elliot Kabson, he’d shout “Fore!”, and whack his enemies with a golf club. Or a bottle of chilled white wine.

To those of you who say, “Yes, there’s something unseemly about how Mexicans were treated in that animated series. But these things were drawn 60 years ago. Why take offense now?” Because cartoons are evergreen entertainment, and they’re loved best by children—the most susceptible to systemic racist ideology seeping into their post-cradle crania. Do we want our five year olds watching Quick Draw McGraw and then growing up to say, “Hey, where’s my servile donkey with the funny accent? And why is it, when I hit my little brother over the head with an electric guitar, he didn’t go `Kabong!, he just bled a lot and had to be rushed to the hospital?”

We must protect our youth, ladies and gentlemen, and we must also be offended on behalf of our brothers who are Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Columbian and all those other countries with diarrhea food. It is therefore with a corazon muy triste that we cancel you, Quick Draw McGraw. Baba-Boo to you! Your 45 cartoons shall be blotted out and erased like Daffy in “Duck Amuck.” Long live political correctness. El Ka-bye. 

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27784