Rudolph the Male Chauvinist Reindeer, circa 1964

Last night I was lazy and left the TV on after the news. The old animated puppet version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer came on and feeling nostalgic, I watched it. It was an education. I realized that it was in the same theme as the current crop of Public Broadcasting cartoons "Difference and diversity are great!" It's good to have freakish appendages hanging off your face, except when it isn't, then you get aborted or euthanized!

Rudolph's dad, the world's only monogamous stag, is just horrified at Rudolph's red nose. He is so humiliated by it that he makes Rudolph wear a big, black fake nose over it. The fake nose makes him sound funny, so he still gets made fun of, totally defeating the pupose. Rudolph falls in love with an underage girly fawn, with big pretty eyes, but her dad will not let her date Rudolph because of his disgusting nose. But Rudolph can fly better than the other reindeer, so I get the idea that Rudolph was a stand in for a Black guy. Good athlete, "big," uh, red nose.

Then there was Herby, or Kirby, (my ears are getting bad and the soundtrack has not been digitally remastered) the totally gay elf, who does not want to make toys. He wants to be a dentist. A fetish if there ever was one. No one wants to be a dentist because they love it, they do it for the money, despite what 1-800-DENTIST would have you believe. But not Herby/Kirby, he reads dental books like other gay elves read gay elf porn.

Even Yukon Cornelius or Klondike Pete, or who ever the trapper that didn't trap animals but instead, befriended them, struck me as gay in a manly, hairy bear, gay guy way. His beard was just too meticulously trimmed for a straight trapper's. Besides, where was his Indian bride?

So when Rudolph and Kirby/Herby ran away across the tundra, to San Francisco to explore their differences, in a place they will be exactly like everybody else, and met up with Yukon Cornelius/Klondike Jack and the Misfit Toys on the Island of Misfit Toys and the Abominable Snowman, aka Bumble, tried to eat them and Kirby/Herby emulated Bobby in Deliverance by getting on his hands and knees and snorting like a pig, I wasn't sure what to think. This is not the Rudolph I remember, I thought.

But then, Yukon Pete/Klondike Cornelius pulled a suicide stunt on the Bumble by throwing himself against the Abominable Transvestite and going over the cliff with him. By this time Rudolph's jail-bait girlfriend had showed up with some other female toy, a blow up doll, rag doll or some such thing. Rudolph and Kirby/Herby realize their friend died by suicide, while saving them from the Bumble, and the first thing they say is, "We have to get the women home!"

But all is not lost because they hear a knock at the door and it's Yukon Jack/Klondike Pete, with the Bumble, and Herby/Kirby grabs a wicked looking, pair of tooth pulling pliers and proceeds to pull out all of the Abominable Snowman's teeth. Which will be handy for both Yukon Cornelius/Klondike Pete and Herby/Kirby, but that's a different stag film. Then Yukon Jack/Klondike Cornelius makes the Bumble dance and crawl around to show how "tame" he is. Then they make him into a slave and forcibly convert him to Christianity by making him decorate a Christmas tree.

Then Santa says that the weather is too crappy for flying, (surely not the first time this has happened but they make out like it is) then he looks at you know who's nose and the rest is history.