A whole new world

Do any of you remember the cartoon featuring the animated skunk, Pepe Le Pew?

For those of you who don't remember Pepe or are too young to have enjoyed Merrie Melodies cartoons while lying on the sofa under a blanket while your grandma made you Lipton chicken noodle soup on days when you stayed home from school sick, Pepe was a skunk. And it has recently become plain to me that he was a SKUNK. If you know what I mean.

Pepe was a skunk, a lovelorn French skunk, who had fallen madly and desperately in love with a black lady cat. The cartoons were all about his pursuit of the lady cat, the one whose "leeps said non, non, non, but whose eyeeeesssss said yess, yesss, yesss." Which is disturbing when I think about this an adult. Because the lady cat? She did not return his affections. In fact, she did everything she could to get away from him, but there he still was, a smelly rodent stalker.

So he stunk in more ways than one.

I don't think these cartoons are shown anymore, at least I fervently hope not. I stumbled across one on YouTube, just a short little clip, and it was perfectly apparent to me that Pepe is the most vile of sexual harrassers, quite possibly guilty of misdemeanor assault. He was meant to be sweet, silly and crafty in the ways of amour like all lusty Frenchmen (which is strange in itself, giving children the impression that men from France are all potential date rapists?), dead-set on wooing his lady, whom he had mistaken for a fellow member of the biological family Mephitidae.

But nowadays? Ewwww!!! Sexual predator, much! Pepe, I used to think you were so cute and funny, but now I think you're just a weirdo who needs counseling and a jail term. Check out this video of Pepe in action and see what you think.

My innocence is just, like, ALL GONE.