US TV goes PC: Train Thomas and Monty Python SHUNTED as ‘too sexist or racist’

And cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew has been branded a sexual “predator” for his lusty bid to win over Penelope Pussycat. 

The programmes used to air regularly in the US until the recent Hollywood sex scandal. 

“Network bosses are terrified of the reaction they would provoke,” says a Hollywood insider. 

“Slapstick scenes of Benny Hill grasping and groping his way through numerous scantily-clad women are no more acceptable than the Python team asking a new professor at an Australian university if he is gay, using a term that is now widely considered to be homophobic.” 

Thomas was canned after complaints that just eight of 49 animated characters are female, and that Thomas worked for the “capitalist” Fat Controller.  

“The truth is, you just aren’t going to see these shows any more in America,” said the source. 

“They have been quietly yanked off programming schedules, along with individual episodes or entire seasons of many home-grown shows.” 

These include cartoons, such as Popeye, in which the spinach-eating sailor sings war songs, like You’re A Sap, Mr Jap are now considered “too xenophobic”.  

And Tom And Jerry cartoons – some featuring “Mama Two Shoes”, a black woman – are accused of racial stereotyping. 

The claims are backed up by New York Syracuse University TV professor Robert Thompson. 

He played a M*A*S*H episode to his students, in which Lt Col Henry Blake is discharged from the army in the Korean War – but dies as his plane is shot down. 

Beforehand, he grabs nurse Major Margaret Houlihan, and forcibly kisses her in front of cheering comrades. 

“There was an audible gasp,” Prof Thompson said. 

“That scene was considered part of the fun high jinks of M*A*S*H. 

“But playing it to students who had been sitting through this long string of sexual harassment scandals was awkward.”