While cleaning out the cat box this morning, I started thinking about Lil' Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks. I mean, why is he called "Warbucks"? I'm sure someone out there knows. I'm guessing it is to show that he made his money in wartime. Perhaps he was a gun runner, a mercenary? Or just had a factory that made cannons? But if so, why is he pictured as such a sweet guy in the end? Shouldn't he be this horrible evil man who lurks around in corners, twirling his moustache and casting lecherous glances at innocent young women? Instead, he adopts Annie, who turns him into a big ol' softy.
Then I started wondering what would happen when she got to be Teen Orphan Annie . . . she turns a bit rebellious, she starts picketing his ouzi factory, she runs away from home (after a big shouting scene in which she calls him a despot and throws a priceless vase into the garden) to . . . San Francisco. There she takes up with a young man who lives in the park and makes money by playing a guitar and a harmonica. That'll serve him, she thinks! Now I'm poor again!
This move from liberal to conservative to liberal again makes me wonder -- as a teenager I was extremely conservative, with lots of Republican views on money, society, gender, race, etc. Now the older I get, the more liberal I become. Isn't that a bit backward?