Intro for March 17, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

A thing I find myself saying a LOT lately is “may they never know peace”. I try not to wish ill on anyone directly, because I believe in the threefold rule, which says that whatever energy you put out into the universe will be returned upon you three times. I get annoyed and people piss me off and the State of Everything is upsetting, but I try to direct my anxiety, fear, and anger into positive actions, like volunteering more. I try to be mindful of the energy I’m putting into the world. That said, Warner Bros. Discovery removed the original Looney Tunes from Max this weekend, so they can get f-cked. May they never know peace.

I say this as someone who watches—watched—the Looney Tunes on Max, and as someone tracking WBD’s weirdanti-Toon agenda, but also as someone who is saddened by the disappearance of children’s media. I know kids still have stuff like Cocomelon and Peppa the Pig and Bluey and Spongebob, but the intergenerational stuff, the stuff kids can share with their parents, is disappearing. Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood are getting harder and harder to find—in no small part due to WBD, who slowly strangled Sesame Street like Judge Doom dipping that poor shoe.

 

For the record, Sesame Street is available through PBS Kids, and Mr. Rogers is available for free on the show’s website.

I’m not going to yell at clouds about changing technology shifting these shows from randomly available on your TV to streaming, but I WILL yell about soulless business ghouls tanking children’s programming because it “doesn’t fare as well and is no longer viewed as a priority”.

Not everything has to make money! Some things you let exist simply because THEY ARE GOOD! Sesame Street isn’t supposed to make money, it’s supposed to teach kids the alphabet and how to share and how to process big feelings! The Looney Tunes don’t have to make money, they just have to entertain kids! 

The special value of Looney Tunes, in particular, is two-fold. One, it’s a long-running franchise, from the original cartoons that began in 1930 to the many spin-offs that cropped up through the new millennium, like Baby Looney Tunes, New Looney Tunes, and the 2020 reboot series Looney Tunes Cartoons. The value of that is that it can be shared between generations. Kids need their own entertainment—I worry most about adolescents and teens, who have almost entirely lost their own programming—but kids also need touchpoints they can share with parents, grandparents, and other adults in their lives. Things that can create shared experiences, you know? The stuff that bridges then and now, yours and mine. 

But the other value of the Looney Tunes, in particular, is that it’s a gateway to cinema. Looney Tunes is a place where kids can be exposed to things like slapstick, irony, satire, various storytelling styles, and stunt cinema in an age-appropriate way, never mind that it might be the first—and only—place kids hear opera. If you want to grow the next generation of artists, you have to expose them to art. It almost seems like the people in charge want a generation of creatively bankrupt monsters who never learned to handle their emotions or to appreciate anything but money! 

This idea that everything has to make money and if it doesn’t, it is worthless to society is dangerous. Small scale, it means classic Looney Tunes is no longer available, which is just a reminder that physical media is important, and if you love it, you should shelve it. Having it within reach is the only way to guarantee you can watch it. But large scale, it means disposing of beauty, silliness, and dreams in our world. Whimsy is rarely profitable, but it often makes people smile. I guess the point of all this is to make sure we never smile, that we’re too sad to do anything about the State of Everything. To everyone architecting this world with less color, less laughter, less joy, may you never know peace.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah