Underdog

"When headlines in the papers read of those whose hearts are filled with greed, who rob and steal from those who need, the call goes out with lightning speed..."

When I was in fifth grade, one of my classmates started raving about "Underdog". I had no idea what he was talking about. My TV viewing at the time consisted primarily of Ed Sullivan, Bonanza, and Major Astro's after-school cartoon show. But this fellow's enthusiasm was infectious, so I watched the show the next Saturday morning. That's all it took—I was hooked.

The show was worth watching because of the theme song alone. But when you add the vocal talent of Wally Cox, the narration of George S. Irving, great puns, and some of the most engaging villains in cartoon history, well, you've got something special. Plus, Sweet Polly was pretty hot for a cartoon dog.

The Underdog show was good for my vocabulary, too. I learned the meaning of words like cad, riff-raff, and, well...underdog. (I even looked up "overcat" in the dictionary, but apparently, some stuff was just made up.)

The Underdog Mania among my school chums also presented an opportunity for entrepreneurship. Jeb Bolan and I took some old campaign buttons and bank-promo pins and painted them black, then scratched out a big letter "U" in the center. We claimed that they were official Underdog fan club pins, and that you'd definitely enhance your social status by wearing one. We sold them for a nickle, and probably made upwards of 50 cents total from the enterprise (minus expenses, of course).

All was well in Underdog fan-land...until one day our preacher gave a sermon that disrupted my youthful naiveté.

Most Sundays, I'd sit quiety in the church pew, reading the lyrics in the hymnal, or playing with the little offering envelope golf pencils, pretending they were rocket ships having great battles in outer space. I rarely paid any attention to the preacher...the sermons seemed to be just endlessly-repeated stories about old dead guys fighting battles in countries that no longer existed, sprinkled here and there with references to Satan or Jesus or some fat guy that flew airplanes (they always just called him "Paunchy Pilot"). But one day, when Rev. Curtis raised his voice and denounced Underdog, well, that got my attention.

During that sermon, I learned that Underdog and Adolph Hitler had much in common. Growing up in the suburbs of WASP Wichita (er, I mean West Wichita), I had very little sense of ethnicity issues at all. My parents never made any sorts of comments at all about anyone's race, culture, or heritage. Bill Cosby, Moms Mabley, and Lt. Uhura were the only people of color on television, and the only holiday that came in December was Christmas. I knew that Jesus had been dubbed "King of the Jews", and everybody liked him -- so I had no idea that I ought to be concerned with anti-Semitism encroaching into my little world.

But there it was: Reverend Curtis said that Underdog was anti-Semitic, and that we should all boycott the show. According to him, the character of Simon Bar Sinister is obviously Jewish, since "Simon" is a biblically Jewish name, and "Bar Sinister" is...well, I'm afraid that "Bar Sinister" is an English term arising from medieval heraldry -- but it sounds Jewish. And since Simon is a bad guy, well, this obviously implies that all Jews are bad and that Underdog is a Nazi.

Reverend Curtis was a powerful speaker and a nice guy, so I wanted to believe him. But I had trouble following his logic. Perhaps it was because I was only in the fifth grade, but I figured if Underdog were a Nazi, he'd probably want to exterminate Simon, rather than just punch him so hard that he flew into a jail cell. On the other hand, the name Sweet Polly Purebred is rather reminiscent of Aryan Supremacy dogma. I was confused, but overall...unconvinced.

Still, I had to give the Rev. credit for trying to make his sermons topical. But I think he'd have had a better case if he'd have spoken about Noodles Romanoff, one of the villains from the Roger Ramjet show.

Noodles was obviously a libelous depiction of Italian-American pasta dishes in general, and was even more of a hurtful representation of people who wore hats and/or trenchcoats. And let's not even talk about how badly the program specifically defamed the Solenoid Robots ("solenoid" being another vocabulary word for me, by the way) and caused general harm to the image of robotic citizens in general.

What's my point here, you ask? Well, there are a couple: First, if you're going to create a cartoon character who wants to use mad scientific schemes to take over the world, do NOT name him "Simon". (Try a name that describes his primary features, like, oh, I don't know..."Brain".) Second, if you're a preacher who wants to get a kid's attention, start ranting about his favorite TV shows. And third, if your desires to rid the planet of anti-Semitism include buying and then burning DVD copies of those egregiously Hitler-esque Underdog TV shows, DO NOT, under any circumstances mistake it for the recent "live action" Underdog movie. (You may burn that piece of crap entirely for artistic considerations.)