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Monday, March 4, 2013

Bigamy and Cartoon Rabbits

— "Mom, what's bigamy?"

— "Where did you learn that word?"

— "Cartoons."

— "Was it The Simpsons?"

— "No, it was Tiny Toons."

— "Are you sure?"
This a partially remembered, probably fictionalized version of a conversation that occurred several years before my mom probably wanted to learn about bigamy, trigamy or any of the polygamies offering married types a respite from the horrors of monogamy. I hadn't thought about it in years, but Sunday morning, I was struck with the similarity of the word bigamy and the phrase big of me. Then I realized why: Tiny Toons had made the joke years ago.

Of course, the clip is posted on the internet:



Even knowing about the whole finger prints/finger Prince joke on Animaniacs a few years later, doesn't this seem like a unusually adult joke for this show? Vocabulary-wise, if not alternative lifestyle-wise? Especially because the payoff isn't that great? I mean, it's just entry-level wordplay. And yet the censors — you know, the people that Tiny Toons purported to crack up, per the opening theme song — must have seen this and said "Yeah, that seems about right. If they didn't learn about bigamy from the Bible, they can learn it on Tiny Toons."

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