Philly EDGE Movie Lunatic Mike Sullivan weighs in on an American icon .
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Every celebrity has a skeleton they'd rather keep hidden deep within their closet.
Did you know that Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley allegedly had their professional debuts in black face?
How about the fact that Sylvester Stallone's first film was the soft-core film "Party at Kitty and Studs.”
Even the world of animation isn't free from these little indiscretions. It's an open secret that beloved family icon Bugs Bunny has starred in a pair of cartoons so thoroughly offensive the original prints have probably been buried in an undisclosed location in the Nevada desert.
In 1941 Warner Brothers released "All This and Rabbit Stew" an animated short that at first glance appears to be just another cartoon where Bugs Bunny evades a slow-witted villain, that is until we meet
the film's antagonist, Little Hunter.
A shucking and jiving embarrassment from the Stepin Fetchit School of Fine Acting, Little Hunter embodies every degrading stereotype imaginable about the African American community including a lazy sing song voice often used by people in black face or Jar Jar Binks.
Simply put the cartoon is appalling but it doesn't quite hit rock bottom until the final minute when Bugs produces a pair of dice and proceeds to shake them near his ear. Seemingly unable to control his stereotypical impulses, Little Hunter quickly drags the rabbit behind a shrub for a quick game of craps.
"Dice don't fail me now", Little Hunter says in a soul crushing
moment.
Not surprisingly, Little Hunter loses everything and is left nearly naked, with only a fig leaf separating him from the audience. But just before the screen irises out, Bugs emerges in front of the screen and grabs the fig leaf making sure to proudly hold it aloft in the humiliating finale.
Surprisingly, Tex Avery, the man who gave us Droopy the Dog is credited with directing this fiasco.

By 1944 the bombing of Pearl Harbor was still fresh in many Americans' minds. As a result the Japanese were still considered by many as public enemy No. 1. In other words, perfect cannon fodder for one very vicious rabbit.
In "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips," Bugs drifts inexplicably through the Pacific in a crate. As he waits for the "inevitable island to inevitably show up,” he washes ashore on a Japanese military base where the soldiers almost immediately attempt to cut his head off and blow him up.
Of course this only manages to piss Bugs off and soon he's handing out "Good Rumor" ice cream bars with grenades hidden inside and dressing up as a geisha in order to bring down the entire Japanese army once and for all.
Without a doubt this has to be the most offensive cartoon ever made. Between the short's insistence on portraying the Japanese as buck toothed, 'Engrish' speaking, yellow-skinned savages and Bugs Bunny's
mutterings of the words "monkey face" and "slant eyes," you're head will start spinning until it eventually explodes.
To paraphrase "Family Guy's" Peter Griffin –in these episodes, at least- "Bugs Bunny is a fuckin' dick.”