Life’s lessons can emerge from cartoons
by Chris Taylor, editor-in-chief

    I have discovered possibly the greatest injustice ever to mankind.
Nowhere on 300 channels of television can I find the Pink Panther. Not the movies, but the cartoon.

    Pink Panther may be the greatest cartoon ever made. What made it so great was its simplicity. The Pink Panther didn’t talk. Every joke was a visual one, and you had to pay attention.

    A few years ago, a new Pink Panther cartoon emerged. It was nowhere near as clever as the original, and the producers decided it would be great if the Pink Panther talked.

    Not only did he talk, but he was a sarcastic jerk. To me, making the Panther talk was like putting Superman in hot pink or changing the Lone Ranger’s mask to clown make-up.

    Sure, it’s just a cartoon, but it has some of the most recognizable theme music of any mass medium.

    And don’t cartoons capture a little bit about ourselves? Don’t we all feel like Wile E. Coyote occasionally?

    Who hasn’t continued to chase after something that you may not ever catch, whether it is a material object or something abstract like love?

    Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang are another good example of how cartoons can reflect life.

    Charlie Brown is the lovable loser, the typical kid with an annoying sister and a dog. He hangs out with a tomboy, and his best friend, Linus, has some serious codependency issues.

    Charlie Brown never had anything go right for him. His baseball teams lost by outrageous scores, and even something as simple as flying a kite became a trial with the dangerous kite-eating tree lurking in the yard.

    Possibly, the most telling aspect of “Chuck’s” character would occur whenever he played football.

    Every time Lucy would hold the football for him, she promised not to pull it away at the last minute. Charlie Brown would run full speed at the ball determined to kick it, only to have Lucy yank it away at the last possible second.

    It happened to him every time, but he never stopped trying. He knew that one day he might eventually kick the ball, and he also knew that he would never kick it if he stopped trying.