‘They’ve decided that the next stop is Virtue Town…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) According to NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, kids TV icon Thomas The Tank Engine has gone off the rails.
In the “Final Cut” segment of her show Relentless on NRA TV last week, Loesch took aim at the show Thomas and Friends for its new multi-ethnic makeover, which includes anthropomorphic trains of different genders, cultures and nationalities.
“They’ve decided that the next stop is Virtue Town,” Loesch said.
The show now includes a staggering array of train characters from places like Kenya, China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Russia and different regions of India.
While some may see it as a marketing ploy to sell more toys, Loesch questioned the logic in ascribing different ethnic stereotypes to the mechanical objects.
“That’s where it gets really strange to me, because I’ve looked at Thomas and Friends—at their pictures—and I see gray and blue,” she said. “Am I to understand that this entire time Thomas and his friends were white?”
Loesch underscored her point on the senselessness of injecting identity politics into a kids’ show by using a graphic of three cartoon engines wearing KKK hoods.
“Was there some concern that the show had racist undertones? … Thomas the Tank Engine has been a blight on race relations for far too long. Clearly, this is overdue,” she said.
After Media Matters picked up on it, the segment made the rounds in liberal talking points, enabling lefties like director Judd Apatow to vent their spleen at Loesch and an unspecified “they.”
Such a hateful nightmare they are. We are all so exhausted by dumb, vicious people. Vote in November. Let’s enjoy ending this nightmare. @WhenWeAllVote https://t.co/R8uQFgiYmY
— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) September 13, 2018
No word on whether the once androgynous trains are planning to represent all 73 genders in the future.