Letter to President Obama #40 | Subject: Cartoons

Dear President Obama,

In my experience, cartoons are quite effective when selling things to children, but the U.S. government's record on utilizing cartoons as an educational tool is mixed, at best. There have been notable successes-- perennial favorites like Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl and "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" campaign.

Nevertheless, there have been failures--for instance, thanks to the McGruff "Take a Bite Out of Crime" campaign, I'm always tempted to bite criminals when I see them. I'll admit that if everyone in society bit criminals, that would be a pretty good deterrent, but as far as I know, I was the only one to do this, and I got a big old black eye for my trouble.

To be fair, the private sector has had failures too. For instance, every time I think of Trix, I think of a bunch of kids starving a rabbit. Animal cruelty rarely makes me think of breakfast, that's for sure.

In any case, many governmental organizations don't have cartoon campaigns at all! This seems like a glaring error, as that means there are no cartoon ambassadors for the military. Of course, because we're talking national defense, we'd want to promote two different ideas at the same time--one, that the U.S. is a rational and diplomatic nation, and two, that the U.S. is fully prepared to defend herself when necessary. This would require a good-cop, bad-cop sort of set up.

The good cop could be First Sargent Friendly from "your Department of Defense" and he'd be kind, generous, and willing to listen. His bad-cop pal would be a pro-wrestler-sized-commando simply referred to as "the Department of Offense." We could then show First Sargent Friendly cordially talking to our would-be-enemy and being really diplomatic about things, listening to our enemy's reasoning and arguments intently, getting him a cup of coffee, and always quick to proffer a compromise solution that works for all parties. When this appears ineffective, Friendly perserveres, while quickly glancing at his watch and taking note of the time; while Friendly's still talking, The Department of Offense is slowly climbing up the ropes of the ring. (Oh, I forgot to mention, for this episode, they just happen to be next to a wrestling ring in a stadium with a capacity crowd.)

If Friendly doesn't reach a conclusion in time, he'll quickly step out of the way as the Dept. of Offense leaps down, and WHAMMO, our enemy is eating a foot-sandwich.

To give such characters added depth, we could give each of them pets. Friendly could have a pet Dove or a Butterfly or something and we could call it Harmony. The Dept. of Offense could have a pet too--maybe an oversized vampire bat named Impending Doom.

The referee could have a United Nations jersey or something and the judges could be members of the Security Council. If this campaign were successful, perhaps a spin-off could happen at the U.N.; every country in the U.N. would get to pick a representative for the throwdown (I'm glad Brock Lesnar is American!) and then it'd on--U.N. headquarters would be a total cagematch and all resolutions would be decided by no-holds-barred matches. If countries were allied, they could fight in a tag team match, and so on.

This pro-wrestling, in turn, could replace actual war, thereby (a) making life better and (b) always ensuring that something interesting is on TV. Even if the U.N. wrestling league is a pie in the sky idea, I think it's pretty apparent that our military should be represented in cartoon form soon.

Please ask the folks at the D.O.D. to look into this for me.

Brett