. . . muttered the ogre

I’m watching a collection of Tom and Jerry cartoons, made by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, who were later known for the much cruder animation of The Flintstones.

I’m puzzled by the opening disclaimer in which Whoopi Goldberg explains that while the ethnic stereotypes that appear in some early cartoons are wicked it would be wrong to falsify history by cutting them out. The sin, apparently, is that Tom’s owner, a woman of color known as Mammy Two Shoes (though her name is never mentioned in the toons, nor is her face shown), speaks in nonstandard grammar; she has no other stereotyped qualities that I can detect.

Whoopi makes the same disclaimer in a Looney Tunes collection, and there it makes more sense; I’ve had occasion to cringe at some early ones, though I have not seen such moments in this collection (yet).