Fox passed on Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks TV show, which debuted Sunday night, reportedly because the network was uneasy about the frequent use of the N-word. Cartoon Network, which is airing the show, has no such problems with the epithet. Bill Cosby doesn’t like it either, but McGruder said the word “speaks to how juvenile racial discourse is in this country.”
Cartoon Network did ask McGruder to edit jokes about Rosa Parks (after the civil rights figure died) and Oprah (perhaps because they feared her rage). Still, the show is far from tame. McGruder has said a future episode will bring Martin Luther King Jr. back to life (where he will be less than revered), and the first episode had a child character train a toy rifle (with a real red laser) on a white woman’s breast and a white cop’s head.