Working out the Bugs

All right. So I have to drag a friend into this with me.

As always, names will be changed to protect the not-so-innocent. Let’s call her “Mania,” after the Greek goddess that, in myth, helped rule the underworld and personified insanity. Usually I choose an appellation far more benign, but in this case, Mania’s transgression is so grievous, so heinous and villainous and other words that end in -ous, that I had to give her the nastiest moniker possible without outright cursing.

The crime? Talking smack about Bugs Bunny.

The brazenness! The unmitigated gall! Obviously, Mania is out of her gourde.

Now, if you follow my babblings closely – you glutton for weirdness, you – you’ll notice that I’m something of a man-child. In most outward appearances, I seem to be a man. I shave, I pay bills, and I grunt my approval when I bite into a particularly delicious slice of pie. Those are pretty much the prerequisites for admittance into the club, aside from a willingness to scratch one’s self at inappropriate times, like when you’re a groomsman standing at the altar and your buddy’s making his vows. I still owe the wedding photographer a nice steak dinner for that one.

But beneath the veneer of adulthood there lurks the heart of an adolescent. A childish, childish adolescent. This is what happens when you have a hard time letting go of certain things, like Spaghetti O’s and the Ninja Turtles. Although, to be fair, both of those things are extremely awesome.

I consider myself something of a Looney Tunes aficionado, which is like being a wine aficionado, only it results in way fewer second dates. Bugs was always the man, the Michael Jordan of cartoon rabbits. He was, admittedly, kind of a schmuck, but if you’re a cartoon character or a U.S. Senator, schmuckiness is actually an asset. What you want, in any well-constructed seven-minute cartoon, is a troublemaker, someone who can get the ball rolling without a whole lot of preamble. This isn’t King Lear in three acts; this is a pie in the face, a wabbit hunt, and then some kind of comical explosion, all in the time it takes to make a blueberry waffle. That requires an instigator. And, for the creators, probably a lot of beer.

Bugs is the perfect catalyst, because everything he does is for his own amusement. Again, that plays to the whole putz factor, but there’s something admirable about it, too; it gives him a laissez-faire comportment that I think most of us wish we had, to an extent. Not that we actively want to be jerks, necessarily – we can’t all be Tom Cruise. (Oh, snap! Dated reference!) But there’s something attractive about passive confidence, the ability to be an unimpassioned observer to someone else’s farcical follies. It’s possible I’ve given this way too much thought.

Who else, in the Looney Tunes universe, has that Bond-like smirk and swagger? Certainly not Porky Pig. If Mania wanted to rip into a cartoon character, she should have chosen this timid, pantsless priss. Porky’s claim to fame, of course, is the endearing stutter, which I’ll admit is kind of cute. But you don’t base an entire body of work on a single personality quirk, unless you’re Ray Romano, in which case you make your living being slightly dopey. The trouble with Porky is that he’s just too nice. I didn’t tune into The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show on Saturday mornings to watch a stuttering pig being polite. Maybe that would fly in Canada, oinker, but this is ‘merica. We require a little rudeness from our cartoons.

Years ago, in college, a friend of mine gave me grief for preferring Bugs over characters like Wile E. Coyote and Daffy Duck, who apparently have more street cred, like they’re underground rappers or something. The argument was that Bugs is a figurehead, a mascot of sorts, and is therefore bland and lame. But I can prove he’s not; because if Bugs were real, and caught wind of this silly college boy’s disparaging remarks, he’d burrow a tunnel to Maine (taking an ever-important left turn at Albuquerque), light a firecracker under that wabbit-hater’s butt, and watch as he’s launched into the stratosphere, yelping like a ticklish yodeler. Then he’d munch on a carrot and have Anti-Bugs Boy’s girlfriend fan him with palm fronds. If that isn’t hard scientific proof of Bugs’ greatness, then may an Acme anvil squash me into a human accordion.

Clearly I need to find more important things to get bent out of shape about.

As trivial as this disagreement is, though, I’m caught up in a powerful compulsion to convince Mania of the wabbit’s worthiness. This means one of two things: Either I’m overly defensive of my childhood interests, or I’m dangerously close to going off the rails and doing cartwheels down Main Street while wearing a fairy costume and whistling “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Those of you playing our home game can start making bets.

Mania, I implore you to re-think your position – consider this your open letter. The rest of you have been witness to a light-hearted dispute, whose resolution is hopefully near. So let’s break it up, people; nothing more to see here.

That’s all, folks.