Scooby Doo Encourages Drug Addiction

Luckily, after spending much time learning the secrets of various languages, I discovered that my opponent's second round was most likely written in Spanish. Though it is clear he himself speaks English, and that this is an English-speaking site, people who know absolutely no Spanish would not know what to do with this. His only instructions for how to get it into English are written in Spanish! Quite inconsiderate, if you ask me. Why did he do all this, you might be asking yourself. I would give you the answer, if I knew it. I thought, based on seeing his second round, that using the Google translator "Doobie" might translate into "Marijuana." Long story short, it doesn't. Source: http://translate.google.com...|es|Scooby%20doobie%20doo%2C%20where%20are%20you%3F Note that I translated his Spanish text to English using Google Translator, as per his own instructions. Any errors in text I quote from him are either the fault of his Spanish or of Google Translator, which he has instructed us to use. CLAIM: "Oh god mine! I started this discussion with comic intent. Ha-ha-ha. I'm not serious, but my opponent is very serious. I have to lose, but I will try anyway." RESPONSE: Debate.org is serious business. That does not mean one cannot choose to debate comically, but one should certainly be able to take on a serious opponent in doing so. Also note that my opponent has said himself that he has to lose. CLAIM: "I do not speak English. Let me go to "Google Translator" ... ah. " RESPONSE: Oh, come now. Does my opponent expect us to believe this? He started this debate with a well-written English rant. To claim now that he cannot speak English means he must have plagiarized the content of his opening post. What seems much more likely, though, is that my opponent can speak English quite fluently and is merely telling us a bold-faced lie by claiming to not speak English. CLAIM: "The children think subconsciously. They see their parents drink coffee, as adults, they drink coffee, too. They see Scooby Doo eat Scooby Snacks, as adults, they eat heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. This fact is obvious." RESPONSE: My opponent has completely avoided my point! Seeing a parent drink coffee will not encourage children to do OTHER addictive things, it will only encourage them to drink coffee. My opponent seems to admit this. However, he continues to claim that seeing a dog eat dog treats [Scooby Snacks] all the time will encourage all sorts of addictive behavior - "eating" heroine, "eating" cocaine, and eating ecstasy. His support for this distinction, this grand claim? "This fact is obvious." Sorry, but if it's obvious, it's my opponent's job to tell us WHY it's obvious. The fact that we're debating it means it cannot _merely_ be considered obvious, it needs some sort of argumentation to back it up. CLAIM: "You are incorrect. Scooby Doo said, "Scooby Doo MARIJUANA!" RESPONSE: Actually, he didn't. He said "Rooby rooby roo!," a mispronunciation of "Scooby dooby doo!" Note that the word "Doobie" is present neither in what Scooby pronounces or in the spelling of what he's supposed to be saying. And even if it were, a kid would already have to be thinking about drugs to make that connection. I certainly never made that connection, and I watched the show quite regularly as a kid. I reckon it's the same for most people. Also, hearing an idiotic dog say something that kinda sorta sounds like something that is related to Marijuana is certainly not something that would 'encourage' kids to use drugs, even if they did automatically make that connection. CLAIM: "Television is in the sixties or seventies. In those years, drugs were rampant." RESPONSE: I think my opponent is trying to say by this that the show was made in the 60s or seventies. This is true, but it has no bearing on our topic. We're talking about whether Scooby Doo "encourages" drug addiction, not whether he did so back in the sixties and seventies. Even so, it's unlikely that he ever did, for reasons I've listed. First, kids don't make a connection between Scooby's howling and Marijuana. Second, Scooby is hardly the sort of creature kids look up to as a role model. Drugs may have been rampant in those years, but that does not mean everything created in those years encouraged drugs. Sixty minutes was created in 1968, it certainly is not a drug encourager. The date of the show is not good evidence. Rather, my opponent should be using the show's content as evidence - and if his insinuations about the show being in a time of rampant drug usage is relevant, there would be actual things in the show that encourage drug use. CLAIM: Scooby eats drugs "Scooby Snack" like a dog! RESPONSE: Scooby snacks are no more a drug than Popeye's Spinach. Popeye eating spinach encourages kids to eat spinach. This is because spinach makes Popeye strong. Kids are luckily not encouraged to eat dog treats, since they usually realize that dog treats are made for Dogs. CLAIM: "The association is obvious! All children are going to make the connection." RESPONSE: Like the "This fact is obvious" statement earlier on, this is not an argument. If it's obvious, you'd have to show us why it's obvious. Kids are only going to make the connection if they know what a Doobie is and are actually thinking about it during the show. Most kids probably write off Scooby's 'middle name' as a mix between his first and last name - taking the beginning from "Doo" and the ending from "Scooby." Before leaving, I'd like to remind everyone of a few things. though this is clearly a debate in English [see both sides of the first round] my opponent failed to write his second round in English. He wrote instructions for people who don't speak Spanish, but he wrote them in Spanish! Following his instructions to translate his round created quite a few grammatical errors. While he may have considered the plight of the English-speaker, he did not adequately attend to our needs - he wrote instructions for us in the wrong language. That said, I thank my opponent for the debate, and I thank the audience for reading. Cheers.