Be ye as wise as doves, and as harmless as serpents . . .

Are you quite certain that what passes for reality is not in fact a mass non-consensual illusion imposed upon us by some cosmic hoaxter? PETA mounts a campaign to educate the public respecting the complex and rich intellectual life of poultry. The NYT is nearly apoplectic at the crimes of Karl Rove, while its lawyers insist in court that no crime has been committed.

There used to be a real world out there:

Cats eat birds. Pride goeth before a fall. So does stupidity. Better not stick your shotgun down a hole. A skunk in love is as bad as a Frenchman. The race is not always to the swift. Perseverance does not always pay off. A fist is sometimes better than reason. If you step off a cliff, you will not fall until you look down. Males and females are males and females. If Leopold Stokowski shows up at your recital, better check his conductor's license.

In case you don’t recognize that real world, it’s the world of Chuck Jones, creator of Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin Martian, and Pepe le Pew. A world-class animator, he was fond of recalling that when told that Jones "drew Bugs Bunny," one little girl denied the claim, and explained, "He doesn’t draw Bugs Bunny. He draws pictures of Bugs Bunny." And so he did.

Where is Chuck Jones' heir today? Or the successor to his partners in crime, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, Jay Ward, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson, Walter Lantz? As noted yesterday by an editor of Touchstone Magazine, contrasting the work of these giants with the thin, politically correct pap he had observed on a recent trip to Canada ("that bridge between the follies of the United States and the follies of Europe"):

Too violent, they said about Jones's cartoons; as if children could not tell the difference between a barnyard chicken with a boomerang and a thug down the street, and as if wickedness would just melt away under the warmth of niceness. But a quiet and velvety corruption can kill. In this same Canada, a homosexual kindergarten teacher is suing for the right to use books to promote same-sex "marriage" in his classroom; and the Canadian Supreme Court, combining a lust for power with absolute doltishness, ruled that the school district's decision to forbid the books was unconstitutional -- because some of the opponents expressed themselves in, O horror! religious language. And another homosexual teacher is pushing to require the inclusion of "Queer Studies" in the curricula of every school in British Columbia, including even private and religious schools. Of course such wisdom shows up every day in the United States, too.

The whole piece, "Of Course You Know This Means WAR!" is HERE.