If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. The statement on Amazon’s webpage legitimizes a discussion that has occurred among Amazon’s viewers, who for years have debated the merits of including this content in the comments section of “Tom and Jerry” boxed sets.Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: Two Shoes, along with other elements that reveal the prejudices of the time, are presented here to accurately reflect a part of our history that cannot and should not be ignored.” “And these prejudices were wrong then and are certainly wrong today.”īut Mammy Two Shoes, she said, was “an important component that made the interplay in those cartoons work so well.” “Some of the cartoons here reflect prejudices that were common in American society, especially when it came to racial and ethnic groups,” she says. She placed racist elements in the context of their time, but argued for their inclusion on the edition. In 2005, Whoopi Goldberg introduced a spotlight collection of Tom and Jerry episodes, t he Huffington Post reported. “We’ve come a long way, but we recognize that these images still exist,” she says. Her students then discuss how Disney characterizes Latinos and Asian Americans in its films. In her race and ethnicity course, Prof. Picca shows “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” (2002), which she says takes an alternative lens to the classic films that many of her students grew up watching. When these cartoons were made, she says, these depictions were “commonplace and accepted.” Releasing entire episodes – with these warnings – may help “start an honest conversation and dialogue” about the progress American society as made and how it can improve, she says. This selective inclusion lowers the authenticity of the work, says Leslie Picca, an associate sociology professor at the University of Dayton. In the 1960s, some “Tom and Jerry” scenes were edited before distribution, CBS News reported. “Let’s bring back this history carefully and sensitively,” he says. The case that could breach the wall between church and state While it is important to recognize that some content may offend viewers, he says refusing to show controversial content would cross a line, calling releasing this content an “ethical responsibility.” For decades, he says, re-releases of shows from the 1930s and 1940s removed or altered all racist content. To Jason Sperb, a lecturer at Northwestern University’s department of radio, television and film, Amazon’s warning label makes sense – and represents progress. The "Tom and Jerry" television cartoon, nearly 75 years old, has faced criticism for its use of blackface and its depiction of Mammy Two Shoes, a black maid whose face is never seen. This warning is the exact warning that appeared on the original Warner Brothers DVDs, so may not reflect a new Amazon policy. A screenshot circulating online shows the warning sentence before viewers of the online service purchase the complete second volume of the series.
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Amazon Prime is warning its viewers that the 1940 cartoon “Tom and Jerry” has “ethnic and racial prejudices that…were wrong then and are wrong today.”