No one is trying to put ‘Paw Patrol’ to sleep
No one is coming for “Paw Patrol.” I repeat: no one is coming for “Paw Patrol.” TV dogs Chase, Marshall, Zuma, Rocky, Rubble and (my niece’s favourite) Skye — are not going to lose their jobs at the hands of leftist mobs. Why might someone think this in the first place? Because on Wednesday, the New York Times published an article by journalist Amanda Hess called “The Protests Come for Paw Patrol.” The piece isn’t really about “Paw Patrol,” a children’s show in which dogs conduct high-stakes rescue missions in the community of Adventure Bay. It’s about why in light of George Floyd’s murder in police custody and the protests that followed, some in the entertainment world and beyond are questioning the presence of the “good cop” narrative on television.
“Paw Patrol’s” Chase is only one of a gazillion “good cop” heroes on TV — a medium rife with police dramas that frequently portray cops (human ones) who break or bend the rules as decent guys impeded by gratuitous red tape. There is wisdom in this discussion.
It isn’t a bad idea for white people whose familiarity with the police is almost entirely entertainment based to think about how their TV diet impacts their perception of law enforcement and the justice system in general.
Unfortunately, though, because the New York Times chose to frame the discussion in the context of “Paw Patrol,” response to it descended fast into hysterics. Here’s what happened. Like a lot of brands, the children’s show posted a message about “amplifying Black voices” to Twitter. Many of the comments underneath that post were critical, presumably because Chase, a German shepherd and one of the show’s lead pups, is a police dog. Several of the responses were clearly lighthearted jabs at the cartoon’s lame attempt at social justice. But others were more sinister: for example, a call to “euthanize the police dog” and a meme in which Chase is pictured wearing a MAGA Hat towering over a weeping woman on her knees and a crying infant.
But outrageous as they may be, none of these responses on social media merit the attention they are getting in the press: not only from the New York Times, but from several conservative outlets (Fox News, the National Review, to name a couple) and U.S. leaders (Ted Cruz, Eric Trump) who appear positively gleeful to report that liberals are attempting to “cancel” a children’s TV show. “Now the left wants to cancel ‘Paw Patrol,’ ” Eric Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “These people are truly insane.”
The editorial board at the National Review declared: “The vanguard of the revolution has set its beady-eyed gaze on … Paw Patrol.”
Except, no, it hasn’t. Maybe a few hundred people have set their gaze on “Paw Patrol.” But most of them are kidding around. And anybody who isn’t — anybody whose sole beef is with a cartoon dog right now — is probably not at the vanguard of anything.
Because “Paw Patrol” is not, I suspect, top of mind for North Americans protesting antiBlack racism and police brutality. What is? Anti-Black racism and police brutality. Cutting police budgets and reallocating funds to community services. Justice for Black people who were killed at the hands of police.
Maybe I’m ignorant, but I have yet to see a protest in the United States or elsewhere at which masses of people are chanting to defund and abolish Chase the German shepherd.
However, for the likes of Eric Trump and Ted Cruz, it’s fun and easy to pretend that this is what the protests are about. It’s fun and easy to ignore what’s right in front of them and instead narrow in on some silly corner of social media and proclaim it the centre of the universe. “These people are truly insane,” says a man ostensibly more outraged by the remote possibility that a cartoon dog will lose his job than he is by the reality that some cops who shoot unarmed Black people get to keep theirs.
Protesters have not “come for ‘Paw Patrol.’ ” They’re a little preoccupied at the moment.