UnNews:Discovery of Fred Flintstone's diary sheds light on ancient Bedrock

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30 January 2007

A page from Fred Flintstone’s autobiography

BEDROCK, A PLACE RIGHT OUT OF HISTORY - Archæologists' recent discovery of several pages of Fred Flinstone’s personal diary has shed light on the history and culture of the caveman’s hometown, Bedrock, A Place Right Out Of History.

The star of a Hanna-Barbera animated television series, Fred Flintstone was believed to have been a completely fictitious character based on Ralph Kramden, a character in The Honeymooners. “We had no idea he actually existed,” said William Hannah. “This is astonishing!”

His long-time partner, Joseph Barbera, having died at age 95 as a result of a recent fall, was unavailable for comment, but, were he still alive, it is suspected that he, too, would be amazed.

Fred Flintstone, as portrayed by Hanna-Barbera

Hannah-Barbera portrayed Flintstone as an overweight, bulbous-nosed man with a large head and a perpetual five-o’clock shadow who wore a one-piece animal skin robe, complete with necktie. He was also depicted as being married to Wilma, with whom he had a daughter, Pebbles, and as living in a stone house in Bedrock, A Place Right Out Of History.

The diary reveals that Flintsone was actually a wealthy Cro-Magnon of a paradoxically low social status. His next-door neighbors were not Barney, Betty, and Bam Bam Rubble. However, he did apparently start out in life as a crane operator in a stone quarry before amassing a fortune as a pornographer, at which time he changed his name to Larry Flint.

Flintstone, as he actually appeared

One of the pages of the journal, which is written in cuneiform, included a carved portrait of the Bedrock resident, depicting him as he actually appeared. As one can see by examining the likenesses, Hanna-Barbera’s version of the caveman was much kinder than that of the "camera." Fred Flintstone, as he appeared in person, was a rather unattractive man.

However, he was wealthy as a result of his publishing enterprise, Hustle magazine, which featured local and regional cavewomen, sans their furs. Historians now believe that he was responsible for the launching of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), whose slogan, at one time, was “I’d rather go naked than wear fur.”

Flintstone’s wealth bought him a luxurious penthouse cave on a mountaintop overlooking Bedrock. The home was equipped with the best furniture that could be hewn from granite, slate, marble, or limestone, and his residence boasted every convenience known (at that time) to mankind, including many of the animal-powered appliances that Hanna-Barbera showed him and his family to use.

Although the first ten years of his marriage were apparently happy, he and Wilma divorced, Wilma retaining custody of Pebbles, who later accused her father of having molested her sexually, and he changed his name to Larry Flint [1], carousing with a series of women before moving to Bel Air, a posh neighborhood near Beverly Hills, California. His diary hints at his involvement in a number of lawsuits based on allegations of peddling pornography, although he characterizes them as “tests of free speech.”

Parts of the text of his diary are missing, the stone tablet upon which its entries are carved having been broken. Archæologists also believe that the journal may be continued on a number of other, as-yet undiscovered tablets, because Flintstone alludes to passages in his diary that are not included on the extant tablet, such as affairs he had with a homosexual named King Gilgamesh and a half-man, half-animal, hermaphroditic Neanderthal named Enkidu.

What there is of the diary sheds light on the ancient town of Bedrock, showing, for example, that it had various social strata; that it considered pornography degrading to cave people, albeit titillating; that there was some effort to embrace free speech, despite the possibility that its exercise might lead to moral abuses or offenses; that Cro-Magnon men were capable of communicating their ideas about themselves and their society in a written form (cuneiform); that an industry existed that was capable of harnessing and using animal power to create household appliances and commercial equipment; and that, if Fred Flinstone’s portrait is any indication, cavemen were singularly unattractive.

Historians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and a host of other experts are clamoring for a chance to study the antique diary, which, for now, reposes among other antiquities in the dusty vaults of a museum at an undisclosed location.

Unnews will keep its readers apprised of any updates.

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