Thank You Mask Man

This short animation set to Lenny Bruce’s live monologue tells how the Lone Ranger hooks up with Tonto. With Bruce doing all the voices, this animation begins with local folks upset at the Lone Ranger because he won’t stay around to be thanked after a good deed. So, he stays and finds he likes hearing “Thank you mask man.” When their attention starts to shift elsewhere, he shocks and disgusts the townspeople with a final request. According to the cartoons producer John Magnuson, at early showings of this, gay audiences were upset by its apparent fag-bashing. And its true, part of the fun of the piece is just crying out Masked mans a fag, scandalising and defacing the image of this all-American hero. But its within the larger context of Bruces analysis of heroism, and that the towns people reject the Masked Man is because of their prejudices, not because Bruce is asking us to endorse them. (from: http://ukjarry.blogspot.de/2010/01/352-lenny-bruce-thank-you-mask-man.html)