Freddy the Freshman (Cheer Factor)

Director: Rudolf Ising

Summary: A one-shot musical cartoon centered on “Freddy the Freshman,” a college upstart who crashes a pep rally and wins the unnamed college’s big game.

The Channel: Cartoon Network (Late Night Black and White)

Part(s) Edited: A brief scene featuring three Jewish parrots (with pennants in Hebrew) and a stereotypically homosexual chicken (the sissy stereotype that was popular in pre-Code films, if you can believe it) as cheerleaders during the big game was cut. Despite this, the unaired ToonHeads special, The Twelve Missing Hares (a special that would have shown clips of the 12 Bugs Bunny cartoons that were supposed to be a part of the 2001 June Bugs weekend marathon, but were pulled for being too racially insensitive, even though most have aired on Cartoon Network and other channels before) had the offending clip (despite that it is not a Bugs Bunny cartoon, nor was it made when Bugs Bunny was created) as an example of how older Warner Bros cartoons had racial, ethnic, and, in the case of the homosexual chicken, sexual stereotypes that would be considered offensive by modern standards.

How It Plays Edited: Since the short is thinly-plotted with only the title song and some visual gags keeping it from falling apart, the edit doesn’t really make or break the short. What gets me, however, is the whole “Cartoon Network still used that scene on a special that never aired to illustrate the reason why the special -- and the cartoons within that special -- will never air” deal. And if it weren’t for amateur home media sleuths who ended up finding said lost special about banned cartoons, you would have thought that I was having a stroke or suffering from burnout while typing this.

Uncut version: 

Edited version (created by me as an approximation, as I can't find any actual footage):

Uncut clip as shown on The Twelve Missing Hares (all credit and blame go to Jerico Dvorak, whose YouTube channel is filled with lost and rare media. The controversial scene starts at 4:26):

Availability Uncut: Has been in the public domain since 1961, so you can watch it online without breaking any copyright laws. If that’s not your thing, then there’s always The Golden Age of Looney Tunes laserdisc from 1992 (volume three, side 7) or the Blu-ray version of The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was released this year (2024), where it’s a special feature.