What CNN Called Thomas The Tank Engine Proves How Off The Tracks They Really Are…

As anyone that either has children or has watched a family member’s children at one point or another will tell you, you will be watching children’s programming at one point or another. Having several nieces and nephews, I have personally spent a sizable portion of my adult life watching kid’s shows because to be quite frankly that’s what kids should be watching.

That being said, CNN could be considered children’s programming because it is a show that is full of fantastic fiction and scary monsters (they have a guy named Wolf for crying out loud) that try to frighten people with out and out falsehoods.

CNN called Thomas the Tank Engine and Paw Patrol “fascist cartoons” in an article on Friday, days before children around the globe will find toys from the popular shows under the Christmas tree.

In the article, titled “Why kids love ‘fascist’ cartoons like ‘Paw Patrol’ and ‘Thomas,’” CNN contributor Elissa Strauss claimed children are “drawn to worlds in which identities are fixed, order trumps imagination and transgressions are met with routine punishment.”

“This clash between what parents desire for their children and what children desire for themselves is most easily observable in cartoon preferences.

So often, the more parents dislike a show, the more their children love it,” Strauss claimed.

“‘Thomas,’ the long-running television franchise about a group of working trains chugging away on the Island of Sodor, has been called a ‘premodern corporate-totalitarian dystopia’ in the New Yorker, imperialist and sinister in Slate, and classist, sexist and anti-environmentalist in the Guardian. And yet people —presumably parents — spend $1 billion on ‘Thomas’ merchandise every year.”

“‘Paw Patrol’ is equally polarizing. The show, about a group of rescue dogs led by a boy named Ryder, is a regular source of complaint among parents and of adoration among their kids,” she continued. “Buzzfeed called the show ‘terrible’ and pointed to instances of gender and social inequality that go unchecked on the show. In the Guardian, Ryder is described as a megalomaniac with an implied ‘unstoppable God complex.’

Nevertheless, ‘Paw Patrol’ is ubiquitous. Branded merchandise featuring Ryder and the gang outsells most other television shows, according to recent data from the Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association.”