Academic Angst

For some reason, I thought of some of the academy bashing from a while back when I recently saw a prototypical Betty Boop cartoon from 1931, Betty Co-ed. The lyrics of the hit by Rudy Vallee that provide the backdrop (complete with bouncing ball) are a wonder:

Flirtation is an art with Betty Co-ed
Her station quite depends upon her charms
She gets the men in rushes
By well developed blushes
And she’s happy with a fellow on each arm

Betty Co-ed has lips of red for Harvard
Betty Co-ed has eyes of Yale’s deep blue
Betty Co-ed’s a golden head for Princeton
Her dress, I guess, is black for old Purdue . . .

After the ball has finished bouncing, there is a lovely scene of rather naked-looking mice marching into one side of the college and marching out the other side fully clothed, diplomas in hand. However, the animators didn’t stop there. They also had to comment on post-graduate education. A post-graduate education makes you a fully qualified street sweeper. Somehow, the current complaining hardly seems news.