March 25, 2006, Samedi chien qui parle bloggant (version cinq)
For this week's installment of Saturday talking dog blogging, we give you McGruff, the crime dog. McGruff's signature expression is "take a bite out of crime." Like our subject of last week, McGruff is an employee (the technical term is "tool") of the Establishment. While, of course, there's nothing wrong with encouraging children to be perennially vigilant to avoid their victimization, one suspects that there is... more... going on.
McGruff, of course, unlike our usual Saturday morning subjects (is it a coincidence that this segment of this blog appears on Saturdays?) is not intended to be "entertainment," but, like such characters as Smokey the Bear and Chimpy the President, is actually intended to be propaganda... to get the rubes to think a certain way, and then behave that way.
In this case, of course, the simple and not particularly subtle message is "crime is bad." Yes, thank you. The actual subtext of the message, of course, is "crime is bad... unless you have a license to commit it, of course, in which case, make sure the rubes keep watching the stupid cartoon dog... look at him... notice he's moving... tres freakie, n'est-ce pas?"
McGruff's emphasis, unlike the subversive intellectual Hector Peabody, or The Good Soldier Schweik Muttley, or even the common man/superhero Underdog, is much less on the "talking" part and much more on the "dog" part. In McGruff's case, as in THE MAN's best friend.
And so we get into the interesting question of why (or whether) we won't see either McGruff, or some other cartoon creation, telling us to "take a bite out of terrorism." You know... "Kids, have Mommy and Daddy been talking on the phone too long to friends in the Middle East?"... "Have any of your friends been saying bad things about the President that will make our soldiers feel bad about what they are doing?" "Are you supporting our troops... enough?" "You know that Jesus registered as a Republican, don't you?"
That sort of thing. It's really only a matter of time... because only you... can take a bite out of the Axis of Evil Crime.