TOM AND JERRY AS SOCIAL COMMENTATORS

I am home sick today. That means I am watching Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network. It also means I could NEVER work from home, since I would never get anything done.

Anyway, I am suddenly struck by Tom and Jerry and their insightful social commentary. The episode is the one where Tom paints Jerry white and sells him to a pet shop, which offers “top dollar” for white mice. The woman of the house promptly finds Tom’s ill-gotten loot and buys Jerry as a pet. When Tom attacks Jerry he is thrown out of the house. To get back into the house he tries to expose Jerry as a fraud. Thus, Tom cleans the white off of Jerry several times. Jerry, knowing that a “white” mouse is an acceptable pet, while a “brown” mouse is not, quickly covers himself in white again.

Thus, Jerry “passes” for white, and the lady of the house is content with a “white” mouse after years of trying exterminate the “brown” mouse. It is reminiscent of the traveling baseball teams that used to list black ball players as Cubans in the South so that they could play with white players.

The other possibility is that I have taken too much cold medicine…