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If you’ve been wondering why barbaric violence is rampant in the Middle East, the head of Egypt’s Information Service can explain it. Tom and Jerry cartoons. The 1940’s American cartoon characters leave the impression violence is funny and it’s OK to blow up others. So there you have it.

Egypt official blames ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons for violence in the Middle East

“Tom and Jerry” portrays “the violence in a funny manner and sends the message that, yes, I can hit him … and I can blow him up with explosives. It becomes set in [the viewer’s] mind that this is natural,” SIS head Salah Abdel Sadek told the audience, according to a translation by the website EgyptianStreets.com

And the video games?

“It has become very normal for a young man to spend long hours playing video games, killing and spilling blood, and he’s happy and content,” Abdel Sadek continued. He added, according to the website, that youths are “faced with social pressures that push them to resort to violence, which they consider normal and understandable.”

There were many astonished responses to these comments. Some agreed. From an Egyptian website:

The title: “Five accusations Tom and Jerry Faces in Egypt.”

The article is about how children learn bad habits from the American cartoon, such as smoking, stealing and drinking booze, according to a translation by EgyptianStreets.com. The article also opines that the cartoon “warps the idea of justice, helps children come up with sinister plans, and encourages violence and the use of sharp instruments such as knives, guns, and chainsaws.”

Yes, the cartoons are pretty violent. I watched them as a kid and thought they were hilarious. Yet, I and my cohorts to this day have not demonstrated a penchant for mass slaughter or chainsaw justice.

Maybe the connection between Tom and Jerry cartoons and Middle East violence goes the other way. Perhaps it’s a lust for violence that makes the cartoons popular in the Middle East these days.

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