This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (December 2010)

Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁
President of the Republic of China
In office May 20, 2000 – May 20, 2008
Vice President	Annette Lu
Preceded by	Lee Teng-hui
Succeeded by	Ma Ying-jeou
Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party
In office October 15, 2007 – January 12, 2008
Preceded by	Yu Shyi-kun
Succeeded by	Tsai Ing-wen
In office July 21, 2002 – December 11, 2004
Preceded by	Frank Hsieh
Succeeded by	Su Tseng-chang
Mayor of Taipei
In office December 25, 1994 – December 25, 1998
Preceded by	Huang Ta-chou
Succeeded by	Ma Ying-jeou
Member of the Legislative Yuan
In office February 1, 1990 – December 25, 1994
Constituency	DPP at-Taipei City
Personal details
Born	(1950-10-12) October 12, 1950 (age 61) Guantian, Tainan City (Tainan County, Taiwan at that time)
Nationality	Republic of China
Political party	independent
Other political affiliations	Democratic Progressive
Spouse(s)	Wu Shu-chen
Residence	Taipei Prison
Alma mater	National Taiwan University
Occupation	Lawyer Politician
Religion	Chinese Folk Religion

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Chen Shui-bian (traditional Chinese: 陳水扁; simplified Chinese: 陈水扁; pinyin: Chén Shuǐbiǎn; Taiwanese: Tân Chúi-píⁿ; born October 12, 1950) is a former Taiwanese politician who was president from 2000 to 2008. Chen's election ended more than fifty years of Kuomintang (KMT) control of the Executive Yuan in Taiwan. A native-born Taiwanese, he is colloquially referred to as A-Bian (阿扁; Ābiǎn; Taiwanese: 阿扁仔 A-píⁿ-à).

A lawyer, Chen entered politics in 1980 during the Kaohsiung Incident as a member of the Tangwai movement and was elected to the Taipei City Council in 1981. He was jailed in 1985 for libel as the editor of the weekly pro-democracy magazine Neo-Formosa, following publication of an article critical of Elmer Feng, a college philosophy professor who was later elected a Kuomintang legislator. After being released, Chen helped found the DPP in 1986 and was elected a member of the Legislative Yuan in 1989, and Mayor of Taipei in 1994.

Chen won the 2000 presidential election on March 18 with 39% of the vote as a result of a split of factions within the Kuomintang, when James Soong ran for the presidency as an independent against the party nominee Lien Chan, becoming the only non-member of the Kuomintang to hold the office of president. Although Chen received high approval ratings during the first few weeks of his term, his popularity sharply dropped due to alleged corruption within his administration and the inability to pass legislation against the opposition KMT, who controlled the Legislative Yuan. In 2004, he won reelection by a narrow margin after surviving a shooting while campaigning the day before the election. Opponents suspected him of staging the incident for political purposes. However, the case was officially closed in 2005 with all evidence pointing to a single deceased suspect, Chen Yi-hsiung.

Convicted, along with his wife Wu Shu-chen, on two bribery charges, he is currently serving a 19-year sentence in Taipei Prison, reduced from a life sentence.^[1] Supporters have insisted that his trial was unfair and politically motivated, retribution by the Kuomintang for his years in power.

Early years[link]

Chen was born to an impoverished tenant farming family in Guantian Township of Tainan County (now part of Tainan City) on the second day of the ninth lunar month in 1950 but was not formally issued a birth certificate until February 18, 1951 because of doubts that he would survive.^[2]

Academically bright from a young age he graduated from the prestigious National Tainan First Senior High School with honors. In June 1969, he was admitted to National Taiwan University. Initially a Business Administration major, he switched to Law in his first year and became editor of the school's law review. He passed the bar exams before the completion of his junior year with the highest score becoming Taiwan's youngest lawyer. He graduated in 1974 with an LL.B. in Commercial Law.

In 1975, he married Wu Shu-chen, the daughter of a physician. The couple have a daughter, Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤), who is a dentist; and a son, Chen Chih-Chung (陳致中), who, having received a law degree in Taiwan, gained a Master of Laws from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005.^[3]

From 1976 to 1989, Chen was a partner in Formosa International Marine and Commercial Law, specializing in maritime insurance. He held the firm's portfolio for Evergreen Marine Corporation. Chen has made an appearance in chapter 66 of the popular Japanese Manga Fullmetal Alchemist by Arakawa Hiromu

Entry into politics[link]

Chen became involved in politics in 1980 when he defended the participants of the Kaohsiung Incident in a military court. While his client Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介), the leading opposition dissident, and seven co-defendants, including his future Vice President Annette Lu, were found guilty, Chen came to be known for his forceful and colorful arguments. He has stated that it was during this period that he realized the unfairness of the political system in Taiwan and became politically active as a member of the Tangwai movement.

Chen won a seat in the Taipei City Council as a Tangwai candidate in 1981 and served until 1985. In 1984, he founded the pro-opposition Civil Servant Public Policy Research Association, which published a magazine called Neo-Formosa.

On January 12, 1985, Chen was sentenced to a year in prison for libel as a result of his editorship of Neo-Formosa, following the publication of an article critical of Elmer Fung, then a college philosophy professor who was later elected a Kuomintang (KMT) legislator. While appealing the sentence, he returned to Tainan to run for county magistrate in November 1985. Three days after losing the election, his wife, Wu Shu-chen was hit twice by a truck driven by Chang Jong-tsai (張榮財) as Chen and Wu were thanking their supporters. She was left paralyzed from the waist down. His supporters believed this was part of a government campaign to intimidate him^{[citation needed]}, although another theory says it was a simple traffic accident.^[4] Chen writes in his autobiography that he harbors guilt towards his late father-in-law for this incident because of his failure to keep his promise that his involvement in politics would not harm his family and for ignoring repeated death threats from his opponents^{[citation needed]}.

Chen lost his appeal in May 1986 and began serving eight months in the Tucheng Penitentiary (土城看守所) along with Huang Tien-fu (黃天福) and Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋), two other defendants in the case. While he was in prison, his wife campaigned and was elected to the Legislative Yuan. Chen also reflects how the various visits his wife made to him in prison overwhelmed him as she often fell from the wheelchair with no one to assist her. Upon his release, Chen served as her legislative assistant and practiced law.

In 1989, Chen was elected to the Legislative Yuan and served as the executive director of the Democratic Progressive Party Congress. With the support of some KMT colleagues, Chen was also elected convener of the National Defense Committee. He was instrumental in laying out and moderating many of the DPP's positions on Taiwan independence, including the four ifs. He was reelected to another three year term in 1992, but resigned in two years to become mayor.

Taipei mayoralty, 1994–1998[link]

Chen was elected as the mayor of Taipei in 1994, largely as the result of a vote split between the KMT incumbent Huang Ta-chou and the KMT-spin-off New Party (NP) candidate Chao Shaokong (趙少康). Unable to find experienced bureaucrats from his own party, Chen and his inner circle of young law school graduates retained many of the KMT administrators and delegated considerable authority.

During his term, Chen received accolades for his campaigns to drive illegal gambling and prostitution rackets out of Taipei. He levied large fines on polluters and reformed public works contracts. He closed brothels and demolished slums on municipal land in the Daan District to complete what is now Daan Forest Park. Chen renamed many of the roads in Taipei, most notably the road which runs between KMT Headquarters to the Presidential Palace from "Chieh-shou Road" (介壽路 jiè shòu lù; "Longevity for Chiang Kai-shek Road") to "Ketagalan Boulevard" (凱達格蘭大道) in an effort to acknowledge the aboriginal people of the Taipei basin. Chen also made highly publicized evictions of longtime KMT squatters on municipal land, and ordered Chiang Wei-kuo's estate demolished. Chen was also named one of Asia's rising stars, and Taipei became one of the top 50 cities in Asia according to Time Magazine's Asia version.

Despite receiving more votes both in absolute and in percentage terms than his 1994 campaign, Chen lost this position in 1998 to the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou in large part because the KMT was able to gain the support of New Party supporters. In his first autobiography, "The Son of Taiwan", Chen wrote that he was not entirely upset about losing the reelection as it gave him opportunity to find out what areas in his political career he could improve. For example, he wrote that Mainlanders generally approved of his social and economic improvements in Taipei, but they ultimately voted for Ma because of ethnic tensions. He also traveled extensively nationwide and abroad. In South Korea, he met with President Kim Dae Jung, who presented him with an award.

He also met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who promised that he would celebrate if he won the 2000 presidential elections. Due to political complications, this promise was not fulfilled until late 2003.

Presidency, 2000–2008[link]

First term[link]

In an election similar to Taipei's in 1994, Chen won the 2000 presidential election on March 18 with 39% of the vote as a result of a split of factions within the Kuomintang, when James Soong ran for the presidency as an independent against the party nominee Lien Chan.

Lacking a clear mandate and inheriting a bureaucracy largely loyal to the KMT, Chen tried to reach out to his opposition. He appointed the KMT conservative mainlander Tang Fei, a former general and the incumbent defense minister, as his first Premier. Only about half of Chen's original cabinet were DPP members, as few DPP politicians had risen above the local level. Although a supporter of Taiwan independence, Chen moderated his stance during his campaign and pledged the Four Noes and One Without in his inaugural address—that as long as the People's Republic of China has no intention to use military force against Taiwan, he would not declare independence nor change the national symbols of the Republic of China. He also promised to be, "President of all the people" and resigned his chairmanship from the DPP. His approval rating reached nearly 80%.

Chen's administration ran into many problems, and its policies were constantly blocked by the Pan-Blue Coalition-controlled legislature. The stock market lost over half its value within a year and unemployment reached 4.5% in part because of the Asian stock market crash. While Chen's detractors blamed Chen's poor leadership for the economic crisis, the administration blamed the legislature for blocking its relief efforts.

More troublesome for Chen was the political showdown over the construction of the Number Four Nuclear Power Facility. This multibillion dollar project in Kungliao (貢寮) was already one-third completed and favored by the pro-business KMT as a means of avoiding an energy shortage. However, the environmentalist DPP strongly objected to the expansion of nuclear power. Premier Tang had threatened to resign if the project were canceled, and Chen accepted his resignation on October 3, 2000, only four and a half months after both had taken office. Chen appointed his political ally Chang Chun-hsiung as Tang's replacement. On October 27, Chang announced that the government would halt construction. But less than an hour before, President Chen had met with Lien Chan to reconcile differences^{[citation needed]}. Lien had asked Chen to leave the matter for the Legislative Yuan to decide and Chen seemed receptive to the suggestion. When Chang's announcement came out, Lien was furious and the KMT began an effort to recall the President. The Council of Grand Justices intervened and declared that it was the legislature and not the cabinet that had the power to decide on the issue. This was widely seen as the end of Chen's attempts to face the pan-blue groups head on. By the end of his first year in office, Chen's approval ratings had dropped to 25%.^{[citation needed]}

During summer of 2001, Chen flew to Los Angeles, Houston, and New York City, where he met with members of the U.S. Congress. The mayor of Houston presented Chen with a key to the city and gave him cowboy clothing. His trip to New York was a first for a head of state from Taiwan as there was unwritten agreement between the US and China that no head of state from Taiwan would be permitted to visit either New York or Washington, D.C.

After his first year in office, Chen seemed to move away from sending conciliatory gestures. In the summer of 2002, Chen again became the chairman of the DPP. During his tenure, images of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo disappeared from public buildings. The word "TAIWAN" is now printed on new ROC passports. Also continuing a trend from the previous administration, the Education Ministry revised the school curriculum to be more Taiwan-centered. Government websites have also tended to promote the notion that China is synonymous with the PRC instead of the ROC as was mandated by the KMT. The "Free China Review" was renamed the Taiwan Review and Who's Who in the ROC was renamed Who's Who in Taiwan. In January 2003, a new Taiwan-Tibet Exchange Foundation was formed but the Cabinet-level Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission was not abolished. Though Chen has proposed talks with the PRC, relations remain deadlocked as Chen refused to pledge to the One-China policy, as required by the PRC for talks to begin. Such a pledge seemed unlikely for Chen since there remained strong opposition within his own party. Despite these symbolic gestures, Chen moved away from "no haste, be patient" policy and opened the three mini links.^{[citation needed]}

Re-election campaign[link]

In late 2003, he signed a controversial referendum bill, which he had supported but was heavily watered down by the Pan-Blue majority legislature. One concession that the legislature made was to include a provision for an emergency defensive referendum and during the legislative debates it was widely believed that this clause would only be invoked if Taiwan was under imminent threat of attack from China as has been so often threatened. Within a day of the passage of the referendum bill, Chen stated his intention to invoke this provision, citing PRC's over 450 missiles aimed directly at the Taiwanese. Pan-Blue believed that his bill was only intended to benefit Chen in the coming election, as whether PRC removes the missiles would not be pressured or decided by referendum result.

Images of Chiang Kai-shek were removed from public buildings. Chen's portrait was hung at a location in the Presidential Office that previously displayed a portrait of Chiang.

In October 2003, Chen flew to New York City for a second time. At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he was presented with the Human Rights Award by the International League of Human Rights. In the subsequent leg of the trip to Panama, he met with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and shook hands with him. This high profile trip raised Chen's opinion polls ahead of his opponent Lien Chan for the first time at 35%, according to Agence France Presse.

His use of the referendum in combination with his talk of a new constitution lead many among his reunification critics to believe that he would attempt to achieve Taiwan independence in his second term by invoking a referendum to create a new constitution that would formally separate Taiwan from any interpretation of China. This caused the government of the United States to follow the lead of Chen's political critics and issue a rare rebuke of Chen's actions.

Chen was reportedly shot in the stomach while campaigning in the city of Tainan on Friday, March 19, 2004, the day before polls opened on Saturday. According to Chen, the bullet left a flesh wound that was 11 cm long and 2 cm deep and was found in his clothes. He left the hospital on the same day with 14 stitches. His Vice President Annette Lu was also reportedly shot in the leg in the same incident. After the election, video from the hospital Chen and Lu were taken to showed Chen walking into the hospital after the Presidential Office Secretary General said that he had been taken in. The opposition made many allegations into the conduct of the security and hospital procedures requiring Chen and Lu to change parts of their stories in order for it to make sense. While many theories were put forth, the opposition had no access to the physical evidence so the Criminal Investigation Bureau refuted them.

The following day, Chen narrowly won the election with a margin of less than 30,000 votes out of 12.9 million votes counted. Both of his referendum proposals were rejected due to insufficient turnout, in part by the Pan-Blue boycott. Those that did vote for the referendum overwhelmingly favored it. Due to the activation of the so-called National Security Mechanism which prevented military officers from voting, and island-wide reports of election fraud, Pan-Blue candidate Lien Chan refused to concede and sued both for a recount and for a nullification of the outcome while supporters held a week-long protest led by the Pan-Blues front of the presidential office in Taipei. He also claimed that the shooting was staged by Chen to win sympathy votes. Chen claimed that the shooting could not have been staged, because it would be too dangerous to have himself shot in a moving jeep and also challenged Lien and vice-presidential candidate James Soong to try their luck with a shooter in a stationary jeep. This challenge was based on the assumption that his belly wound was inflicted while he was in the moving jeep and not before or afterwards.

The opposition also raised the fact that Chen had faked a food poisoning incident while running for Tainan County Commissioner in 1985. Chen arrived at a debate on a stretcher accusing the KMT of poisoning his tea earlier. Later that night after the debate, Chen was seen as having no ill-effects from the apparent incident which prompted the opposing candidate to accuse him of staging the incident to garner sympathy.

The Criminal Investigation Bureau hired renowned forensic scientist Henry Lee (forensic scientist) to examine the physical evidence. Dr. Henry Lee was famous for defending O.J. Simpson in the murder of his wife and lover, and helped acquit Simpson based on the LAPD's lack of professionalism and possibility of planted evidence at the murder site. Dr. Henry Lee and his team of Americans had previously established the belly wound was in fact a gunshot wound, and then claimed the windshield hole had been struck from the outside based on the lack of windshield powder outside the jeep. Despite widespread speculation that the casings were planted on the street, Lee expressed no concern regarding the origin of the evidence even though the casings had been found some 3½ hours after the incident occurred and street cleaning had cleaned up the firecracker debris. Dr. Lee was also not critical of the local police and National Security Bureau's inability to secure the scene of the incident afterwards until the casings were found.

Several months later, Dr. Lee released a report on the evidence and suggested to the Criminal Investigation Bureau to trace the suspect according to the casings and bullets. In March 2005, Chen Yi-hsiung, a local Tainan resident, was the main suspect for the shooting but allegedly committed suicide 8 days after the election. The Criminal Investigation Bureau closed the case in August 2005 implicating him as the shooter. But in 2006, James Chun-i Lee, a professor at National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Forensic Medicine, led an investigation and concluded that Chen Yi-hsiung was most likely murdered, because his body, wrapped in a fishing net, was dumped into the water only after he died. Another report reached by the Criminal Investigation Bureau task force concludes that the two bullets could not have come from the same pistol because a 9.1 mm bullet would not fit into a 9 mm pistol that the police said was used by the suspect.^[5] The KMT continues to claim that it was all engineered by Chen to this day.

Throughout the election, Chen planned to hold a referendum in 2006 on a new constitution to be enacted upon the accession of the 12th-term president in May 2008. After the election, he sought to reassure critics and moderate supporters that the new constitution would not address the issue of sovereignty, and that the current constitution was in need of comprehensive reform after more than a decade of patchwork revision.

There have been two interpretations of Chen's actions during the election in terms of independence politics. The first is that he is ideologically committed to advancing Taiwan independence and that his actions are intended to systematically remove the constraints which prevent this from occurring. Seen in this light, his actions are intended to provoke a crisis in which the PRC must either start a war or accept independence, with the expectation that the PRC would back down. Ironically, this interpretation of his actions is shared both among his most fervent supporters (who think it is a good thing) and his most bitter opponents (who think that it is a bad thing). It is largely to counter this possibility that the PRC has issued statements that it will definitely go to war if certain red lines are crossed. However, they in reality carry little meaning, as Beijing has made such statements warning against electing former President Lee and Chen in the 1996 and 2000 elections, which both failed to materialize. Some people regard these statements now as reverse psychology, as Lee and Chen may help to weaken ROC and advance the unification process.

The second interpretation is that Chen's actions were primarily intended to placate his core supporters rather than provoke a crisis. People who subscribe to this interpretation point out that Chen's early efforts to moderate his pro-independence position did not create a positive reaction either from the PRC or from his anti-independence opponents on Taiwan. He also alienated some pro-independence supporters. Therefore Chen was forced to take a more assertive approach both as a negotiation tactic with the PRC and to keep support from his core supporters. This strategy is consistent with the oft-stated position that Taiwan would only seek independence as a preemptive measure in the face of evidence of PRC military aggression. However, even this interpretation provokes unease among many people, especially among policy makers in the PRC and the United States. The first problem is that this interpretation makes Chen seem like an old-style Taiwan politician that seems to say whatever pleases people. The second, more serious problem is the fear that through misunderstanding and misinterpretation, Chen may have provoked a war without intending to do so, as the PRC has repeatedly claimed that any progress towards independence would provoke war.

Second term[link]

This article is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Please see the talk page for more information. (November 2010)

On May 20, 2004, Chen was sworn in for his second term as President amid continued mass protests by the pan-blue alliance over the validity of his re-election. Having heard protests from pro-independence figures in Taiwan, he did not explicitly re-state the Four Noes and One Without but did state that he reaffirmed the commitments made in his first inaugural. He defended his proposals to change the constitution, but asked for constitutional reform to be undertaken through existing procedures instead of calling for a referendum for an entirely new constitution which was proposed by former president Lee Teng-hui. This would require approval by a three-fourths majority of the National Assembly which could authorize a referendum. This has two major implications. First, by going through existing constitutional amendment procedures, this has the symbolic effect of maintaining continuity with the existing constitution which was originally written in China. Second, this has the practical effect of requiring the Chen administration to get the consent of the opposition Pan-Blue coalition to pass any amendments, and while the opposition is willing to consider constitutional reforms that would increase governmental efficiency, they are unlikely to support anything that would imply a de jure declaration of independence.

However, even these seemingly conciliatory gestures did not quell unease by his critics at his election. Some have pointed out that he qualified his statements on the constitution with the statement that this is a personal suggestion. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Taiwan that some of these gestures were essentially forced on him again by pressure from the United States and the PRC. The PRC has stated many times that it cares little about what Chen says, but will watch closely in the next few months to see what he does, a standard sentence that Communist China continues to quote.

Chen Shui-bian addressed his opening speech at "2006 Taiwan Sports Elite Awards"

Three days before Chen's inauguration, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the PRC issued what has become known as the May 17 Declaration. In that declaration, China accused Chen of continuing with a creep toward independence, having merely paid lip service to his commitments in his first term of office, and reiterated that there would be consequences if Chen did not halt policies toward Taiwan independence, but at the same time offered major concessions if Chen would accept the One China Principle.

In late 2004, in effort to maintain the balance of power in the region, Chen began eagerly pushing for an US$18 billion arms purchase from the United States, but the Pan-Blue Coalition repeatedly blocked the deal in the legislature. Criticism has been made of this, citing contradictory arguments used, such as that the weapons were not what Taiwan needed, or that the weapons were a good idea but too expensive. By late 2006, the KMT had signalled it would support some of the arms sale being approved, but failed to pass a revised arms bill by the end of the legislative session in early 2007, despite promises by then KMT Chairman, Ma Ying-jeou, to do that.

Chen announced on December 5 that state-owned or private enterprises and foreign offices bearing the name "China", such as China Airlines, the China Steel Corporation, and Chinese Petroleum Corporation, would be renamed to bear the name "Taiwan." On December 14, 2004, following the failure of the Pan-Green coalition to gain a majority of seats in the ROC legislative election, 2004 (as many had expected to occur), Chen resigned as chairman of the DPP. This dashed hopes that the stalemate that plagued Chen's first term would end.

At the funeral of Pope John Paul II, Chen (far left), whom the Holy See recognized as the head of state of China, was seated in the front row (in French alphabetical order) beside the first lady and president of Brazil.

In 2005 Chen became the first ROC president to visit Europe, when he attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican City (the Holy See continues to maintain diplomatic relations with the ROC). In order to shore up diplomatic support, it is common for the ROC president to visit the ROC's remaining diplomatic allies; however past presidents had been prevented from visiting the Vatican because such a visit would require passage through Italy, which maintains relations with the PRC. Under agreement with the Vatican, Italy permitted all guests to the funeral passage without hindrance and Chen was received at Rome's airport in his capacity as a foreign head of state. In this religious ceremony where U.S. President George W. Bush greeted Iranian President Khatami, Chen did not seem to attempt making a high profile of himself by reaching out to other heads of states such as Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Chen was named one of the Time 100 for 2005.^[6]

Later in the year, Chen traveled to Miami in stopover for a forum in the Caribbean. He met with members of the U.S. Congress through video conference and was invited to visit Washington, D.C. On his way back, he was originally scheduled to fly through San Francisco. However, he changed course and stopped-over at the United Arab Emirates. The head of state greeted him and hosted a formal state dinner, infuriating the Chinese officials. Chen made his way back after making a stopover at Jakarta. His request for a pitstop at Singapore was denied; authorities cited weather problems.

On May 3, 2006, Chen canceled plans to pass through the United States on his way to Latin America. He was hoping to stop by either San Francisco or New York City to refuel and stay overnight, but the US refused his request instead limiting him to a brief refuelling stopover in Anchorage, Alaska where Chen would not be allowed to step off the plane. Chen and Taiwan saw this as a snub and led to Chen's cancellation. The trip to Latin America will continue, however, without a US stopover. The US State Department claimed that the Alaska stopover offer was consistent with its previous accommodations. However, former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui was granted a visit to Cornell University eleven years ago. More recently, in addition, Taiwan's leaders have in general been granted permission to stopover in the United States for brief periods before continuing on to other countries. This recent American stance is interpreted by Taiwan to be an expression of the increasing irritation the United States feels towards Taiwan and Chen's seemingly pro-independence gestures. Chen attended the inauguration of Óscar Arias, the president of Costa Rica, one of the few countries that recognized the Republic of China at that time. Laura Bush was also present to represent U.S. president George W. Bush. Chen seized the opportunity, approached her and shook her hands, while Chen's aide produced a camera immediately for an impromptu photo-op. Chen's supporters saw this act as a step forward in Taiwan's struggle for diplomatic recognition, while his detractors claimed that it was a grave breach of international etiquette and put Taiwan to shame.

On May 12, 2007, Premier Su Tseng-Chang resigned his position, and Chen soon appointed Chang Chun-hsiung to fill the vacant premiership. During Chen's tenure, beginning in 2000, the country has seen six different premiers in the past seven years. During the same period of time, from 2000 onward, the Democratic Progressive Party has also seen seven different chairmen.

Chen's tenure as President expired on May 20, 2008, yielding to successor Ma Ying-Jeou. From his election to his first term to his last days as President, Chen's approval ratings fell from 79% to just 21%.^[7]

Family scandals[link]

In May 2006, his approval rating, as determined by the TSU, fell to 5.8%,^[8] after a series of scandals centered on his wife and son-in-law. Additional sources showed his approval rating at around 20%.^[8] Support from his own party has also dropped with a few members calling for his dismissal as he had a bad influence on his party and has already caused them to lose the Republic of China presidential election, 2008^{[citation needed]}.

On May 24, 2006, his son-in-law, Chao Chien-ming, was taken into custody by the Taipei police on charges of insider trading and embezzlement by the opposition party. This was a setback for the Chen Shui-bian administration. In related charges, there were accusations from the opposition party that Chen Shui-bian's wife was involved in trading stocks and obtaining Pacific Sogo Department Store's gift certificates illegally in exchange for settling the disputed ownership.^{[citation needed]}

On June 1, 2006, Chen declared that he was handing control of governmental matters to Premier Su Tseng-chang and announced he would not be involved in campaigning. He also stated that he was retaining authority on matters that the Constitution required him to retain authority over, presumably foreign affairs and defense policy, as well as relations with the PRC.^[9]

On July 20, 2006, Opposition politicians accused that Chen used a total of NT$10.2 million (US$310,000) worth of "fake invoices" to claim expenses after the National Audit Office found irregularities in Presidential Office accounts. The Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office is currently investigating over this accusation.^[10]

In a press release issued by the Presidential Office responded that the president assured the investigators that he did not pocket a single cent of the fund. During questioning at the Presidential Office on the afternoon of August 7, 2006, the president detailed to the prosecutor how he spent the fund and presented relevant receipts and bank remittance statements.^[11]

President Chen also lost a libel case brought on successfully by PFP Chairman James Soong. Soong sued the President after Chen repeatedly accused him of secretly meeting the director of the People's Republic of China's Taiwan Affairs Office. Soong successfully sued Chen for NT$3 million.^[12]

On November 3, 2006, Chen's wife Wu Shu-chen and three other high ranking officials of the Presidential Office were indicted of corruption of NT$14.8 million (US$450,000) of government funds using faked documents. Due to the protection from the Constitution against prosecution of the sitting president, Chen could not be prosecuted until he left office, and he was not indicted, but was alleged to be an accomplice on his wife's indictment.^[13]

The prosecutor of the case indicated that once Chen left office, his office would start the procedures to press charges against Chen. His wife Wu became the only sitting First Lady of the Republic of China to face criminal charges since the foundation of the Republic in 1911.^{[citation needed]}

The indictment filed by prosecutors states that the indicted persons obtained government funds earmarked for secret foreign affairs, yet of six supposed secret diplomatic missions, there was sufficient evidence presented for only two. Of the remaining four, it was concluded that one did not exist, and in the case of the other three, the invoices presented were not found to be related to the secret missions.^{[citation needed]}

The Pan-Blue coalition, after receiving the news, demanded to call for another recall motion unless Chen resigned immediately. Another small party that backed Chen previously, Taiwan Solidarity Union, said Friday they would likely to support the upcoming recall measure. If the recall passed, it would be up to the voters to decide Chen's fate in an island-wide referendum.

Leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party met together to discuss the unfavorable charges. The meeting ended when party leaders demanded Chen to explain the accusation within three days. There has long been crumbling inside the DPP that Chen has become their liability and should recall him before the presidential election. If Chen resigned, he would be the first Taiwanese president to step down and the vice-president, Annette Lu, would likely take power.

After the prosecutor announced the indictment news, the campaign leader Shih proclaimed that the indictment was the historical high point in Taiwan and the month long campaign was a success.^{[citation needed]}

In a press conference November 5, 2006, Chen rebutted the charges against his wife and members of his Presidential office. He said that Taiwan government offices advised him to prepare the receipts in such a fashion, and that after six years of doing so, it is strange that they would never mention an irregularity if it was not the right way to do it. He promised that all of the money actually went to diplomatic missions and did not go into any private pockets. Furthermore, he mentioned that when he took office, he thought his salary was so excessive that he cut his own salary in half, and that reduction is more than the amount he is accused of embezzling, so there is no need for him to take that money. In addition, he said that if the charges against his wife were proven in a court of law just as they were charged, then he would at that time step down as President of the Republic of China.^{[citation needed]}

In defense of Chen, journalist Therese Shaheen of The Wall Street Journal Asia pointed out that controversy surrounding Chen can be in part attributed to the radical reforms he has tried to implement since stepping into power.^[14]

Recall motion[link]

In mid-June 2007, opposition pan-blue camp lawmakers initiated a recall motion that would allow the voters to remove Chen from power via a public referendum. On June 20, President Chen addressed the nation by television, denying any involvement of the first family or himself (other than his son-in-law) in any of the alleged scandals, or "directly" accepting the department's gift certificates.^[15] The motion was not passed. Of 221 lawmakers in the Legislature, all 119 pan-blue and independent legislators voted in favor of the measure, 29 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the motion. Pan-green legislators from the president's own party, the DPP, refused to receive ballots. Pan-Green legislators from the allied TSU cast abstaining ballots. No legislator voted against the recall motion.

After Wu was indicted, the Pan-Blue parties renewed calls to recall Chen, and TSU at first indicated that it would support the recall this time, but then said it would only support the new recall motion if "concrete evidence concerning corruption is presented."^[16]

The "Besiege the Presidential Office" demonstration on October 10, 2006

On September 1, 2006, political activist Shih Ming-te launched an "anti-corruption campaign". The movement accused Chen of corruption and asked for his resignation. By September 7, more than one million signatures were collected, each with a donation of NT$100 (approximately US$3.00).^[17] On September 9, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Taiwan, wearing red. According to organisers, around 200,000 to 300,000 people joined the protest outside the presidential offices, but the police used aerial photography crowd counting techniques to put the number at about 90,000.^[18] Shih Ming-teh confirmed that most of his supporters are from the Pan-Blue Coalition in a September interview in The New York Times.

2008 elections[link]

In the Republic of China legislative election in 2008, Chen's party suffered a clear defeat, and Chen subsequently resigned as party chairman. With Chen's resignation and Frank Hsieh's ascension as the party's new chairman, the DPP has changed chairmen seven times since Chen took office in 2000.

In the presidential election on March 22, 2008, Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou defeated DPP candidate Frank Hsieh.

Post-presidency[link]

Chen stepped down on May 20, 2008, the same day that Ma Ying-jeou took office as the new President of the Republic of China^[19] No longer bearing the title of President, Chen left the Presidential Office Building, his presidential immunity was removed. He was placed under restrictions, such as confinement to Taiwan, by prosecutors as a result of allegations of corruption and abuse of authority, both of which he was later charged guilty of. One fraud case involved the handling of a special presidential fund used to pursue Taiwan's foreign diplomacy.

President Ma Ying-jeou declassified government documents which aided the investigation into Chen's usage of special government funds. Chen's lawyers responded by suing Ma, on August 6, 2008, alleging Ma's declassification of the documents that were initially classified by Chen to be "politically motivated." The documents consisted mainly of receipts and other records of special expenses, which according to Ma's chief aide assured pose no danger to the country's interests once declassified.^[20]

On September 11, 2009, Chen received a life sentence and was fined NT$200 million^[21] (US$6.13 million) for embezzlement, bribery and money laundering involving a total of US$15 million (NT$490 million) in funds while in office from 2000 to 2008.^[22] Supporters of Chen contended that the prosecution was politically motivated.^[23][24] Chen is the first ROC president to receive a prison sentence.^[25]

On June 8, 2010, the Taipei District Court found Chen not guilty of embezzling diplomatic funds.^[26][27] On June 11, 2010, the High Court decided to reduce the former president Chen's life sentence to 20 years.^[28][29] Through several court cases and pleads for bail, the High Court rejected his request for bail and continued to detain him in jail for another 5 months.^{[30][31][32][33]} The detention led Chen's supporters to protest that the detention of Chen for more than 600 days without proving him guilty^{[clarification needed]} was illegal, inhumane and unjust, and a result of political revenge by the part of the Kuomintang (KMT).^[34][35] The Yellow Ribbon Movement took to demonstration over alleged exploitation of justice and political revenge.^[36]

Meanwhile, on August 17, 2010, both the Taipei District Court and the High Court found ex-deputy military minister, Cheng-Hen Ke (柯承亨), not guilty of revealing non-military secrets to former president Chen Shui-Bian.^[37]

The parliament with a KMT and pan-blue coalition majority passed an amendment to the Act Governing Preferential Treatment for Retired Presidents and Vice Presidents (卸任總統副總統禮遇條例) on August 19, 2010.^[38] Introduced by the KMT, the amendment stipulated that former presidents and vice presidents will be stripped of courtesy treatment, including their monthly allowance and annual expenses, if convicted by a court of grave offense(s), such as sedition and graft. The number of bodyguards assigned to former presidents and vice presidents who are convicted of corruption in a first trial will also be reduced. Former president Chen's son stated the act was created to target the now imprisoned former president. (陳水扁條款).^[39][40][41]

Political positions[link]

Chen's and the Democratic Progressive Party position on Taiwan's political status is that Taiwan is already an independent, sovereign nation named the Republic of China. This has the implication that a declaration of independence is unnecessary as Taiwan is already independent. This view point, however, is subject to change in each election campaign. At the same time, it also has the implication that the pledge by Chen to preserve the status quo or not change Taiwan's sovereign status would not preclude a declaration of independence but would preclude acceptance of the one China policy.

Some said that Chen's position on this issue was intended and to some degree succeeded in placating his pro-independence supporters without crossing any red lines that could trigger war with the PRC. His supporters saw these positions as creative and indicative of a willingness to compromise. However, it was also common among his opponents in Taiwan, as well as among policy makers in China and the pro-PRC United States politicians to see his statements in their own much darker terms. Many among his critics (especially those from the Pan-Blue coalition) believed that his positions and actions showed that his seemingly conciliatory statements were merely a smokescreen to advance a hidden agenda of advancing de facto Taiwan independence.^{[citation needed]} These suspicions appeared to arise from the actions of his KMT predecessor Lee Teng-hui who now readily admits to secretly^{[citation needed]} trying to advance de facto Taiwan independence during his presidential terms.

President Chen admitted that he leans towards independence but his main position is opposition to adopting the One China principle since it prevents Taiwanese people from being able to decide upon their own future.

In an interview in July 2005, Chen explicitly repudiated the position of Lee Teng-Hui that Taiwan / Republic of China and China / People's Republic of China are two different countries. He said, "The Republic of China on Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on the mainland are two separate countries with divided rule and do not exercise sovereignty over each other," he said. "Under the principle of popular sovereignty and self determination, we consider that the question of whether Taiwan should be united with China should be the decision of the 23 million people of Taiwan."^[42]

On February 28, 2006, Chen announced the National Unification Council, set up in 1990, and its guidelines, which had committed Taiwan to unification if China adopts democracy, would "cease to function". He took care to use the phrase "ceased to exist" rather than abolish when he made the announcement because he had promised in 2000 that he would not abolish the council or its guidelines. Newspapers on both sides of the Taiwan strait criticized Chen severely for scrapping the unification council although others reported that Chen may have acted in reaction towards China's Anti Secession Law.^{[citation needed]}

On March 2, 2006 in a stern announcement, Adam Ereli, Deputy Spokesman of the US state department, said that the US expected the Taiwan authorities to publicly correct the record that there is no distinction between "abolish" and "ceasing activity" and unambiguously affirm that the February 27 announcement did not abolish the National Unification Council and did not change the status quo and that the assurances remain in effect.^[43]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Republic of China portal

• Politics of the Republic of China
• Four Wants and One Without
• Four-Stage Theory of the Republic of China

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (December 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Chen Shui-bian

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Chen Shui-bian

• Unofficial advocacy website
• Full text of Chen's 2004 Inaugural Speech
• Official Democratic Progressive Party web site in Chinese
• America and Taiwan, 1943–2004
• Chinataiwan.org, Key events in career
• Former President of Republic of China (Taiwan) Chen Shui Bian taking oath of office

v t e Candidates in the 2000 Republic of China presidential election Li Ao (Elmer Fung) Lien Chan (Vincent Siew) Hsu Hsin-liang (Josephine Chu) Chen Shui-bian (Annette Lu) James Soong (Chang Chau-hsiung) Names in brackets indicate accompanying candidate for the Vice Presidency. Winners shown in bold.

v t e Presidents of the Republic of China Provisional Government (1912–1913) Sun Yat-sen Yuan Shikai Beiyang Government (1913–1928) Yuan Shikai Li Yuanhong Feng Guozhang Xu Shichang Zhou Ziqi Li Yuanhong Gao Lingwei Cao Kun Huang Fu Hu Weide Yan Huiqing Du Xigui Gu Weijun Nationalist Government (1928–1948) Chiang Kai-shek Lin Sen Chiang Kai-shek Constitutional Government (since 1948) Chiang Kai-shek Li Zongren Chiang Kai-shek Yen Chia-kan Chiang Ching-kuo Lee Teng-hui Chen Shui-bian Ma Ying-jeou Italics indicates acting President

Look up Sam or sam in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Sam, SAM or SAm may refer to:

People[link]

• Sām, a Persian folk hero, whose name means 'very dark'
• Sam (Book of Mormon), the third son of Lehi and elder brother to the prophet Nephi
• Samantha or Samhita, female given name often shortened to Sam
• Sammy, an informal variation on the name Sam
• Samuel (name), includes a list of people known as "Sam"

Animals[link]

• Sam (army dog) (died 2000), former army dog that was awarded the Dickin Medal
• Sam (koala) (died 2009), koala rescued after the 2009 bush fires in Victoria, Australia
• Sam (orangutan), an orangutan that starred in the movie Dunston Checks In
• Sam (ugly dog) (1990–2005), dog voted the world's ugliest dog in 2003, 2004, and 2005
• Unsinkable Sam, a cat who lived through World War Two on three different military ships, and survived each of their sinkings

Places[link]

• IOC and FIFA country code for American Samoa
• Sam, Austria (in Bundesland Salzburg)
• Sam, Benin
• Sam, Burkina Faso (disambiguation), several towns in Burkina Faso
• Sam, Gabon (in Woleu-Ntem province)
• Sam, Iran (in Ostan-e Sistan va Baluchestan)
• Sam, Kazakhstan (in Torghay Oblysy)
• Sam, Mali (in Tombouctou region)
• Sam, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan
• Sam, North-West Frontier, Pakistan
• Sam, Papua New Guinea
• Sam, Diourbel, Senegal
• Sam, Fatick, Senegal
• Sam, Kaolack, Senegal
• Sam, Louga, Senegal
• Sam, South Africa (in Orange Free State)
• Sam, Alvsborgs Lan, Sweden
• Sam, Hallands Lan, Sweden
• Sam, Jamtlands Lan, Sweden
• Sam, Antalya Ili, Turkey
• Sam, Gaziantep Ili, Turkey
• Sam, Idaho, United States
• Sam, Virginia, United States
• Sam, Zambia (in Northern province)

Entertainment[link]

• Sam, one half of the Freelance Police duo known as Sam & Max
• Sam (1976 film), a 1976 film directed by Larry Buchanan
• Sam (film), a 1986 documentary film
• Sam (iCarly), a character in the TV show iCarly
• Sam Gamgee, a.k.a. Samwise Gamgee and Samwise Gardner, a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium
• "Sam" (Meat Puppets song), 1991
• "Sam" (Olivia Newton-John song), 1977
• Sam (Osvajači album), 1995
• Sam (Škabo album), 2003
• Sam (Trick 'r Treat), the main character in the horror movie Trick 'r Treat
• Sam (1973 TV series), a 1973 British television drama series
• Sam (1978 TV series), an American crime drama television series

Software[link]

• SAM Broadcaster
• SAM card (Security Authentication Module card), a small smart card used to hold cryptographic keys
• Sam (text editor), a text editor by Rob Pike
• San Andreas Multiplayer, the multiplayer feature on GTA: San Andreas
• Secure access module
• Security Account Manager, the accounts database used by Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, and later Microsoft operating systems
• Sequential access memory, a class of storage devices that are read sequentially
• Software asset management
• Software Automatic Mouth, a computer program for speech synthesis
• Microsoft Sam, the default voice for the screen reader program in Windows 2000 and Windows XP
• Symantec Anti-Virus for Macintosh

Science and technology[link]

• SAm, in astrophysics, the de Vaucouleurs code for an unbarred one-armed Magellanic spiral galaxy
• S-Adenosyl methionine, a common co-substrate involved in methyl group transfers
• Scanning acoustic microscope, a device using focused sound to investigate, measure, or image an object
• Scanning Auger microscope, a device to image the surface using Auger electron spectroscopy
• Self-assembled monolayer, an organized layer of amphiphilic molecules
• Shoot apical meristem, a tissue in plant cells
• Significance analysis of microarrays, a permutation-based method to estimate the false discovery rate in microarray analysis
• Small article monitor, a monitoring device designed to screen small items for radioactive contamination
• Southern Annular Mode, a mode of atmospheric variability of the southern hemisphere
• Sparse Anti-Magic square, in mathematics, another name for an Antimagic square
• Swinging Atwood's machine, a mechanism that resembles a simple Atwood's machine
• Systolic anterior motion of the mitral valve, in cardiac medicine

Business[link]

• SAM, the stock ticker symbol of the Boston Beer Company, the brewers of Samuel Adams
• SAM Records, an American disco/post-disco record company
• S.A.M.: Simply About Music, a satellite-driven radio network
• Sustainable Asset Management a sustainable investment company

Transportation[link]

• SAM, IATA airport code of Salamo Airport in Papua New Guinea
• SAM (vehicles), a Greek truck manufacturer
• Sandy Area Metro a transit system in Sandy, Oregon
• Sociedad Aeronáutica de Medellín, a Colombian airline

Other uses[link]

• Sam (Olympic mascot), the mascot of the 1984 Summer Olympics
• SAM Coupé an 8-bit British home computer
• Seattle Art Museum
• Shared appreciation mortgage
• Sigma Alpha Mu, a fraternity at the City College of New York
• Social accounting matrix, a matrix representation of the national accounts
• Society of American Magicians
• South Atlantic Medal, a British campaign medal for the Falklands War
• South Australian Museum
• Stop action magnet, a device used in a pipe organs
• Surface-to-air missile, an anti-aircraft missile
• Syriac Abbreviation Mark, a Unicode control character in the Syriac block

See also[link]

• Uncle Sam, a personification of the United States government
• Samsø, earlier Samsey, literally "Sam's island"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2011)

Bugs Bunny is an American animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons.^[1] Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray hare or rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality, a pronounced Brooklyn accent, and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most notably the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of theatrical short films. His popularity there led to his becoming a corporate mascot of the Warner Bros. company. Bugs has appeared in more films than any other cartoon character and is the ninth most portrayed film personality in the world.^[2]

According to Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, Bugs was born on July 27, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York in a warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In reality, he was created by many animators and staff, including Tex Avery, who directed A Wild Hare, Bugs' debut role, and Robert McKimson, who created the definitive "Bugs Bunny" character design. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs has a Flatbush accent. Bugs has had numerous catchphrases, the most prominent being a casual "Eh... What's up, doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot.

History[link]

Bugs' precursor[link]

A rabbit with some of the personality of Bugs, though looking very different, first appears in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. Co-directed by Ben "Bugs" Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton (who was responsible for the initial design of the rabbit), this short has an almost identical plot to Tex Avery's 1937 cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt, which had introduced Daffy Duck. Porky Pig is again cast as a hunter tracking a silly prey less interested in escape than in driving his pursuer insane. The latter short replaces the little black duck with a small white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself with the odd expression "Jiggers, fellers", and Mel Blanc gave the character a voice and laugh almost like that he would later use for Woody Woodpecker. This cartoon also first uses the famous Groucho Marx line, "Of course you realize, this means war!" This rabbit was so popular with its audience that the Schlesinger staff decided to use it again.

The rabbit appears again in 1939's Prest-O Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he is the pet rabbit of unseen character Sham-Fu the Magician. Two dogs, fleeing the local dogcatcher, enter his absent master's house. The rabbit harasses them, but is ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.

His third appearance is in another 1939 cartoon, Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway. This short, the first where he is depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one, is also notable for the rabbit's first singing role. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the short, gave the character a name. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway.^[3][4] In promotional material for the short, including a surviving 1939 presskit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used at the very beginning).^[5] In his later years, Mel Blanc stated that a proposed name was "Happy Rabbit."^[6] Oddly, "Happy" was only used in reference to Bugs Hardaway. In the cartoon Hare-um Scare-um, a newspaper headline reads, "Happy Hardaway".^[7]

In Chuck Jones' Elmer's Candid Camera Happy first meets Elmer Fudd. This rabbit looks more like the present-day Bugs, taller and with a similar face. However, this rabbit, speaks with a rural drawl. The early version of Elmer is also different from the present-day one, much fatter and taller, although Arthur Q. Bryan's voice is the same as it would be later. In Robert Clampett's 1940 Patient Porky, a similar rabbit appears to trick the audience into thinking that 750 rabbits have been born.

Bugs Bunny emerges[link]

A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27, 1940, is the first cartoon where both Elmer Fudd and Bugs are shown in their fully developed forms as hunter and tormentor, respectively. In this cartoon Mel Blanc first uses what would become Bugs' standard voice; this cartoon also marks the first time that Bugs uses his catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?" Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first "official" Bugs Bunny short.^[8] The short was a huge success in theaters and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.^[9]

Bugs's second appearance, in Jones' 1941 short Elmer's Pet Rabbit, introduces the audience to the name Bugs Bunny, which until then had only been used among the Termite Terrace employees. It was also the first short where he received billing under his now-famous name, but the card, "featuring Bugs Bunny", was just slapped on the end of the completed short's opening titles when A Wild Hare proved an unexpected success. However, Bugs' voice in this cartoon is noticibly different, and his design was slightly altered as well. For the next several cartoons produced afterwards, Bugs' original design from A Wild Hare would be re-used. Mel Blanc would also re-use the voice he had created in A Wild Hare for Bugs' subsequent appearances.

World War II[link]

By 1942, Bugs had become the number one star of Merrie Melodies. The series had originally been intended only for one-shot characters in shorts after several early attempts to introduce characters (Foxy, Goopy Geer and Piggy) failed under Harman–Ising. (In 1937, under Schlesinger, it had started introducing newer characters.) The 1942 short Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid shows a slight redesign of Bugs, with less-prominent front teeth and a rounder head. The character was reworked by Robert McKimson, then an animator in Robert Clampett's unit. The redesign at first was only used in the shorts created by Clampett's unit, but in time it would be taken up by the other directors, with Freleng and Frank Tashlin the first. When McKimson was himself promoted to director, he created yet another version, with more slanted eyes, longer teeth and a much larger mouth. He used this version until 1949 (as did Art Davis for the one Bugs Bunny cartoon he directed) when he started using the version he had designed for Clampett. Jones would come up with his own slight modification, and the voice had slight variations between the units.^[3] Bugs also made cameos in Tex Avery's final Warner Bros. short, Crazy Cruise.^[10]

Since Bugs' debut in A Wild Hare, he had appeared only in color Merrie Melodie cartoons (making him one of the few recurring characters created for that series in the Leon Schlesinger era prior to the full conversion to color), alongside Elmer predecessor Egghead, Inki, Sniffles, and Elmer himself. While he made a cameo appearance in the 1943 Porky and Daffy cartoon Porky Pig's Feat this was his only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tune cartoon. He did not star in a cartoon in the Looney Tunes series until that series made its complete conversion to only color cartoons beginning with 1944 releases. Buckaroo Bugs was Bugs' first cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, and was also the last Warner Bros. cartoon to credit Leon Schlesinger.

Bugs' popularity soared during World War II because of his free and easy attitude, and began receiving special star billing in his cartoons by 1943. By that time Warner Bros. had become the most profitable cartoon studio in the United States. In company with cartoon studios such as Disney and Famous Studios, Warners put its characters against Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the Japanese. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips features Bugs at odds with a group of Japanese soldiers. This cartoon has since been pulled from distribution due to its racial stereotypes of Japanese people. He also faces off against Herman Goering and Hitler in the 1945 short Herr Meets Hare, which introduced his well-known reference to Albuquerque as he mistakenly winds up in the Black Forest of 'Joimany' instead of Las Vegas, Nevada. Bugs also appeared in the 1942 two-minute U.S. war bonds commercial film Any Bonds Today, along with Porky and Elmer.

At the end of the 1943 short Super-Rabbit, Bugs appears wearing a United States Marine Corps dress blue uniform. As a result, the Marine Corps made Bugs an honorary Marine Master Sergeant.^[11] From 1943 to 1946, Bugs was the official mascot of Kingman Army Airfield, Kingman, Arizona, where thousands of aerial gunners were trained during World War II. Some notable trainees included Clark Gable and Charles Bronson. Bugs also served as the mascot for 530 Squadron of the 380th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force, U.S. Air Force, which was attached to the Royal Australian Air Force and operated out of Australia's Northern Territory from 1943 to 1945, flying B-24 Liberator bombers.^[12] Bugs riding an air delivered torpedo served as the squadron logo for Marine Torpedo/Bomber Squadron 242 in the Second World War.

In 1944, Bugs Bunny made a cameo appearance in Jasper Goes Hunting, a short produced by rival studio Paramount Pictures. In this cameo (animated by Robert McKimson, with Mel Blanc providing the voice), Bugs pops out of a rabbit hole, saying his usual catchphrase; Bugs then says, "Hey, I'm in the wrong picture!" and then goes back in the hole.^[13]

The post-war era[link]

After World War II Bugs appeared in numerous cartoon shorts in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, making his last appearance in the theatrical cartoons in 1964 with False Hare. He was directed by Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Arthur Davis and Chuck Jones. The short Knighty Knight Bugs (1958), in which a medieval Bugs trades blows with Yosemite Sam and his fire-breathing dragon (which has a cold), won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1959.^[14] Three of Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny shorts — Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit, Duck! — comprise what is often referred to as the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" trilogy. Jones' 1957 classic, What's Opera, Doc?, cast Bugs and Elmer in a parody of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. It has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, the first cartoon short to receive this honor.^[15]

In the fall of 1960, ABC debuted the prime-time television program The Bugs Bunny Show. This show packaged many of the post-1948 Warners shorts with newly animated wraparounds. After two seasons, it was moved from its evening slot to reruns on Saturday mornings. The Bugs Bunny Show changed format and exact title frequently, but remained on network television for 40 years. The packaging was later completely different, with each short simply presented on its own, title and all, though some clips from the new bridging material were sometimes used as filler.

After the classic cartoon era[link]

Bugs Bunny did not appear in any of the post-1964 Looney Tunes shorts produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises or Format Films, nor did he appear in the lone Looney Tunes production produced by Filmation. He would not appear in new material on-screen again until How Bugs Bunny Won the West aired in 1978.

After Mel Blanc died in 1989, Jeff Bergman, Greg Burson, Billy West, and Joe Alaskey became the new voices of Bugs Bunny and many of the other Looney Tunes, each taking turns doing Bugs' voice for various projects over the years.

Bugs has made appearances in animated specials for network television, mostly composed of classic cartoons with bridging material added, including How Bugs Bunny Won the West, and The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special. Bugs Bunny's Busting Out All Over (1980) contained no vintage clips and featured the first new Bugs Bunny cartoons in 16 years. It opened with "Portrait Of The Artist As a Young Bunny", which features a flashback of Bugs as a child thwarting a young Elmer Fudd, while its third and closing short was "Spaced Out Bunny", with Bugs being kidnapped by Marvin the Martian to be a playmate for Hugo, an Abominable Snowman-like character. (A new Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner short filled out the half hour.) Compilation films included the independently produced Bugs Bunny: Superstar, using the vintage shorts then owned by United Artists; as well as Warner Bros. efforts The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters. He also made guest appearances in episodes of the 1990s television program Tiny Toon Adventures as the principal of Acme Looniversity and the mentor of Babs and Buster Bunny, and would later make occasional guest cameos on spinoffs Taz-Mania and Animaniacs.

Bugs has had several comic book series over the years. Western Publishing had the license for all the Warner Brothers cartoons, and produced Bugs Bunny comics first for Dell Comics, then later for their own Gold Key Comics. Dell published 58 issues and several specials from 1952 to 1962. Gold Key continued for another 133 issues. DC Comics, the sister/subsidiary company of Warner Bros., has published several comics titles since 1994 that Bugs has appeared in. Notable among these was the 2000 four-issue miniseries Superman & Bugs Bunny, written by Mark Evanier and drawn by Joe Staton. This depicted a crossover between DC's superheroes and the Warner cartoon characters.

Bugs Bunny's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Like SpongeBob SquarePants for Nickelodeon and Mickey Mouse for Disney, Bugs has served as the mascot for Warner Bros. and its various divisions. He and Mickey are the first cartoon characters to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the 1988 animated/live action movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Bugs was shown as one of the inhabitants of Toontown. However, since the film was being produced by Disney, Warner Bros. would only allow the use of their biggest star if he got an equal amount of screen time as Disney's biggest star, Mickey Mouse. Because of this, both characters are always together in frame when onscreen. For the same reasons, Bugs never calls Mickey by his name, only referring to him as "Doc," while Mickey calls him "Bugs."

Bugs made an appearance in the 1990 drug prevention special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. This special is notable for being the first time that somebody other than Mel Blanc voiced Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. (In this special, both characters were voiced by Jeff Bergman.) Bugs was also featured in The Earth Day Special showing his displeasure on how man started mistreating the environment.

Bugs returned to the silver screen in Box Office Bunny in 1990 (1991 in the U.S.). This was the first Bugs Bunny cartoon short since 1964 to be released in theaters, and it was created for the Bugs Bunny 50th anniversary celebration. It was followed by (Blooper) Bunny, a short that was shelved from theaters, but later premiered on Cartoon Network in 1997 and has since gained a cult following among animation fans for its edgy humor.^[16]

In 1996, Bugs and other Looney Tunes characters appeared in the live-action/animated film, Space Jam. In the film, the Looney Tunes are in danger of being enslaved by a group of aliens. Due to the aliens' small stature, the Looney Tunes challenge the aliens to a basketball game, but the aliens (known as the Nerdlucks) steal the talent of the best NBA players such as Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and become hulking, talented players known as the Monstars. Because of this, Bugs (voiced by Billy West) calls upon the help of the greatest basketball player in the world, Michael Jordan, who is initially reluctant to help due to his having retired from the NBA to play baseball for the MLB. The film also introduced the character of Lola Bunny. The film received mostly mixed to negative reviews from critics, but was a box office success grossing over $230 million worldwide. The success of Space Jam led to the development of another live-action/animated film, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, released in 2003 and directed by Joe Dante. Unlike Space Jam, Back in Action was a box-office bomb, but received more positive reviews from film critics. The film marked the first time Joe Alaskey provided Bugs' voice.

In 1997, Bugs appeared on a U.S. postage stamp, the first cartoon to be so honored, beating the iconic Mickey Mouse. The stamp is number seven on the list of the ten most popular U.S. stamps, as calculated by the number of stamps purchased but not used. The introduction of Bugs onto a stamp was controversial at the time, as it was seen as a step toward the 'commercialization' of stamp art. The postal service rejected many designs, and went with a postal-themed drawing. Avery Dennison printed the Bugs Bunny stamp sheet, which featured "a special ten-stamp design and was the first self-adhesive souvenir sheet issued by the U.S. Postal Service."^[17]

A younger version of Bugs is the main character of Baby Looney Tunes, which debuted on Cartoon Network in 2002. In the action comedy Loonatics Unleashed, his definite descendant Ace Bunny is the leader of the Loonatics team and seems to have inherited his ancestor's Brooklyn accent and comic wit. Strangely, Bugs was one of the few Looney Tunes characters who never appeared in the 2003 Duck Dodgers series.

Bugs has appeared in numerous video games, including the Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle series, Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rampage and the similar Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble, Looney Tunes B-Ball, Space Jam, Looney Tunes Racing, Looney Tunes: Space Race, Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, and its sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz Time Busters, and Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal.

[edit] The Looney Tunes Show

Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang returned to television in 2011 in the Cartoon Network sitcom The Looney Tunes Show, with Jeff Bergman returning to voice both Bugs and Daffy Duck. This series will also feature the characters singing original songs as well. A large difference between Bugs and Daffy's friendship in the show is that, whereas Bugs would hardly mind Daffy's flaws in the original cartoons, in the show Bugs is often and openly annoyed at Daffy's antics, sometimes to the point of aggression when Daffy becomes too obnoxious. He also dates Lola Bunny , but he found her to be "crazy" and a bit too talkative. Though later on as the series progressed they did rekindle their relationship. Unlike the original cartoons, Bugs lives in a regular home, which he shares with Daffy. However, in one episode, his old home (a hole in the ground) was seen. Bugs' income comes from having invented the carrot peeler.

Return to film[link]

On August 13, 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures announced that they were planning a live-action/CG-animated combo feature film based on the Looney Tunes character.^[18]

Personality and catchphrases[link]

Bugs Bunny is characterized as being clever and capable of outsmarting anyone who antagonizes him, including Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Willoughby the Dog, Marvin the Martian, Beaky Buzzard, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tasmanian Devil, Cecil Turtle, Witch Hazel, Rocky and Mugsy, Wile E. Coyote, the Crusher, Gremlin, Count Blood Count and a host of others. Bugs almost always wins these conflicts, a plot pattern which recurs in Looney Tunes films directed by Chuck Jones. Concerned that viewers would lose sympathy for an aggressive protagonist who always won, Jones arranged for Bugs to be bullied, cheated, or threatened by the antagonists while minding his own business, justifying his subsequent antics as retaliation or self-defense. He's also been known to break the fourth wall by "communicating" with the audience, either by explaining the situation (e.g. "Be with you in a minute, folks!"), describing someone to the audience (e.g. "Feisty, ain't they?"), clueing in on the story (e.g. "That happens to him all during the picture, folks."), explaining that one of his antagonists' actions have pushed him to the breaking point ("Of course you know, this means war."), etc.

Bugs will usually try to placate the antagonist and avoid conflict, but when an antagonist pushes him too far, Bugs may address the audience and invoke his catchphrase "Of course you realize this means war!" before he retaliates, and the retaliation will be devastating. This line was taken from Groucho Marx and others in the 1933 film Duck Soup and was also used in the 1935 Marx film A Night at the Opera.^[20] Bugs would pay homage to Groucho in other ways, such as occasionally adopting his stooped walk or leering eyebrow-raising (in Hair-Raising Hare, for example) or sometimes with a direct impersonation (as in Slick Hare).

Other directors, such as Friz Freleng, characterized Bugs as altruistic. When Bugs meets other successful characters (such as Cecil Turtle in Tortoise Beats Hare, or, in World War II, the Gremlin of Falling Hare), his overconfidence becomes a disadvantage. Most of Bugs' antagonists are extremely dim-witted, and Bugs is easily able to outwit and torment them, though on occasion they will manage to get the best of Bugs. Daffy Duck, who is arguably more intelligent but less clever, is unaffected by Bugs' usual schemes, which usually results in the two trying to outsmart the other with Bugs always triumphing in the end. However, there are only three antagonists that successfully defeated Bugs in the end of the cartoon, such as the Gremlin from Falling Hare, the unnamed mouse from Rhapsody Rabbit, and the fly from Baton Bunny.

During the 1940s, Bugs starts off immature and wild, but starting in the 1950s his personality matured and his attitude was more refined. Though often shown as highly clever, Bugs is never actually malicious, and only acts as such in self-defense against his aggressors; the only two cartoons where Bugs ever served as an antagonist were Buckaroo Bugs and Duck Amuck; the latter cartoon depicts him as far more sadistic than usual, as he becomes the animator and abuses his newfound divine powers to torture Daffy.

Bugs Bunny's nonchalant carrot-chewing standing position, as explained by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett, originated in a scene in the film It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable's character leans against a fence, eating carrots rapidly and talking with his mouth full to Claudette Colbert's character. This scene was well known while the film was popular, and viewers at the time likely recognized Bugs Bunny's behavior as satire.^[21]

The carrot-chewing scenes are generally followed by Bugs Bunny's most well-known catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?", which was written by director Tex Avery for his first Bugs Bunny short, 1940s A Wild Hare. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in his native Texas and that he did not think much of the phrase. When the short was first screened in theaters, the "What's up, Doc?" scene generated a tremendously positive audience reaction.^[22] As a result, the scene became a recurring element in subsequent films and cartoons. The phrase was sometimes modified for a situation. For example, Bugs says "What's up, dogs?" to the antagonists in A Hare Grows in Manhattan, "What's up, Duke?" to the knight in Knight-mare Hare and "What's up, prune-face?" to the aged Elmer in The Old Grey Hare. He might also greet Daffy with "What's up, Duck?" He used one variation, "What's all the hub-bub, bub?" only once, in Falling Hare. Another variation is used in Looney Tunes: Back In Action when he greets a lightsaber-wielding Marvin the Martian saying "What's up, Darth?"

Several Chuck Jones shorts in the late 1940s and 1950s depict Bugs travelling via cross-country (and, in some cases, intercontinental) tunnel-digging, ending up in places as varied as Mexico (Bully for Bugs, 1953), the Himalayas (The Abominable Snow Rabbit, 1960) and Antarctica (Frigid Hare, 1949) all because he "shoulda taken that left toin at Albukoikee." He first utters that phrase in Herr Meets Hare (1945), when he emerges in the Black Forest, a cartoon seldom seen today due to its blatantly topical subject matter. When Hermann Göring says to Bugs, "There is no Las Vegas in 'Chermany'" and takes a potshot at Bugs, Bugs dives into his hole and says, "Joimany! Yipe!", as Bugs realizes he's behind enemy lines. The confused response to his "left toin" comment also followed a pattern. For example, when he tunnels into Scotland in 1948's My Bunny Lies over the Sea, while thinking he's heading for the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, it provides another chance for an ethnic stereotype: "Therrre's no La Brrrea Tarrr Pits in Scotland!" (to which Bugs responds, "Uh...what's up, Mac-doc?"). A couple of late-1950s shorts of this ilk also featured Daffy Duck travelling with Bugs ("Since when is Pismo Beach inside a cave?!").

Bugs Bunny has some similarities to figures from mythology and folklore, such as Br'er Rabbit, Nanabozho, or Anansi, and might be seen as a modern trickster (for example, he repeatedly uses cross-dressing mischievously). Unlike most cartoon characters, however, Bugs Bunny is rarely defeated in his own games of trickery. One exception to this is the short Hare Brush, in which Elmer Fudd ultimately carries the day at the end; however, critics note that in this short, Elmer and Bugs assume each other's personalities—through mental illness and hypnosis, respectively—and it is only by becoming Bugs that Elmer can win. However, Bugs was beaten at his own game. In the short Duck Amuck he torments Daffy Duck as the unseen animator, ending with his line, "Ain't I a stinker?" Bugs feels the same wrath of an unseen animator in the short Rabbit Rampage where he is in turn tormented by Elmer Fudd. At the end of the clip Elmer gleefully exclaims, 'Well, I finally got even with that scwewy wabbit!"

Although it was usually Porky Pig who brought the WB cartoons to a close with his stuttering, "That's all, folks!", Bugs would occasionally appear, bursting through a drum just as Porky did, but munching a carrot and saying in his Bronx-Brooklyn accent, "And dat's de end!"

The name "Bugs" or "Bugsy" as an old-fashioned nickname means "crazy" (or "loopy"). Several famous people from the first half of the twentieth century had that nickname, like famous gangster, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who disliked the nickname. It is now out of fashion as a nickname, but survives in 1950s–1960s expressions like "you're bugging me", as in "you're driving me crazy".

Bugs wears white gloves, which he is rarely seen without, although he may remove one and use it for slapping an opponent to predicate a duel. Another glove-less example is the episode Long-Haired Hare, where Bugs pretends to be the famed conductor Leopold Stokowski and instructs opera star "Giovanni Jones" to sing and to hold a high note. As Giovanni Jones is turning red with the strain, Bugs slips his left hand out of its glove, leaving the glove hovering in the air in order to command Jones to continue to hold the high note. Bugs then nips down to the mail drop to order, and then to receive, a pair of ear defenders. Bugs puts on the ear defenders and then zips back into the amphitheater and reinserts his hand into his glove as singer Jones is writhing on the stage, still holding that same high note.

Bugs Bunny is also a master of disguise: he can wear any disguise that he wants to confuse his enemies: in Bowery Bugs he uses diverse disguises: fakir, gentleman, woman, baker and finally policeman. This ability of disguise makes Bugs famous because we can recognize him while at the same time realizing that his enemies are stumped. Bugs has a certain preference for the female disguise: Taz, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam were fooled by this sexy bunny (woman) and in Hare Trimmed, Sam discovers the real face of "Granny" (Bugs's disguise) in the church where they attempt to get married. For all the gullible victims of all these disguises, however, for some reason, Daffy Duck and Cecil Turtle are among those who are never fooled.

Bugs Bunny may also have some mystical potential. In Knight-mare Hare he was able to return to his bunny form (after being transformed into a donkey) by removing his donkey form as if it were a suit. Merlin of Monroe (the wizard) was unable to do the same thing. Later Bugs Bunny defeated the Count Blood Count in a magical spell duel. However, the story was a dream and Bugs Bunny's victory over Count Blood Count was a result of his intellect, not innate magical power.

Rabbit or hare?[link]

The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically, they are not synonymous, being somewhat similar but observably different types of lagomorphs. Hares have much longer ears than rabbits, so Bugs might seem to be of the hare family, yet rabbits live in burrows, as Bugs is seen to do. Many more of the cartoon titles include the word "hare" rather than "rabbit," as "hare" lends itself easily to puns ("hair," "air," etc.) although Elmer Fudd has always referred to Bugs as a "wabbit".

Within the cartoons, although the term "hare" comes up sometimes, again typically as a pun—for example, Bugs drinking "hare tonic" to "stop falling hare" or being doused with "hare restorer" to bring him back from invisibility—Bugs as well as his antagonists most often refer to the character as a "rabbit." The word "bunny" is of no help in answering this question, as it is a synonym for both young hares and young rabbits.

In Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, Bugs had been referred to as "Hare Jordan."^[23][24]

Openings and closings of shorts[link]

In the opening of many of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes irises contain Bugs Bunny's head after the Warner Bros. shield (generally from 1944 and 1949 onward). Others have Bugs Bunny relaxing on top of the Warner Bros. shield: He chews on his carrot, looks angrily at the camera and pulls down the next logo (Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes) like a window shade (generally on cartoons between 1945 until early 1949). Then he lifts it back up, to now be seen lying on his own name, which then fades into the title of the specific short. In some other cases, the title card sometimes fades to him, already on his name and chewing his carrot then fade to the name of the short. At the finish of Hare Tonic and Baseball Bugs, Bugs breaks out of a drum (like Porky Pig) and says, "And that's the end". Also, at the end of Box Office Bunny, right after Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd run out through the Looney Tunes "That's All Folks!" sequence, Bugs later comes in through the rings and says, "And that's all, folks!". He did the ending for the last time at the end of Space Jam but this time saying "Well, that's all, folks!".

Voice actors[link]

The following are the many voice actors who have voiced the character Bugs Bunny over the last seventy-one years:

Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc was the original voice of Bugs Bunny and would voice the character for nearly five decades.

Mel Blanc voiced the character for 49 years, from Bugs' 1940 debut in A Wild Hare until Blanc's death in 1989. Blanc described the voice as a combination of Bronx and Brooklyn accents; however, Tex Avery claimed that he asked Blanc to give the character not a New York accent per se, but a voice like that of actor Frank McHugh, who frequently appeared in supporting roles in the 1930s and whose voice might be described as New York Irish.^[3] In Bugs' second cartoon Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Blanc created a completely new voice for Bugs, which sounded like a Jimmy Stewart impression, but the directors decided the previous voice was better. Though his best-known character was the carrot-chomping rabbit, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One often-repeated story, possibly originating from Bugs Bunny: Superstar, is that Blanc was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction — but his autobiography makes no such claim.^[6] In fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots.

Jeff Bergman

Jeff Bergman was the first to voice Bugs Bunny (and several other Looney Tunes characters) after Mel Blanc died in 1989. He got the job by impressing Warner Bros. higher-ups with a tape of himself re-creating the voices of several of Blanc's characters, including Bugs. He had rigged the tape player so that he could use a switch to instantly toggle back and forth between the original recording of Blanc and Bergman's recording of the same lines. Upon doing this, it was almost impossible for the producers to tell which voice was Blanc's and which voice was Bergman; thus his vocal ability was established and his career launched. Bergman first voiced Bugs during the 1990 Academy Awards, the television special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, and the first season of Tiny Toon Adventures. Bergman also voiced Bugs in the 1990s Looney Tunes shorts Box Office Bunny, (Blooper) Bunny, and Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers. In 2011, Bergman returned to voice Bugs after an almost 20-year absence for Cartoon Network's new series, The Looney Tunes Show.

Greg Burson

Greg Burson first voiced Bugs Bunny in later episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. He was then given the responsibility of voicing Bugs in 1995's Carrotblanca, a well-received Looney Tunes short originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure (US) and The Pebble and the Penguin (non-US); it has since been released on video packaged with older Looney Tunes cartoons and was even included in the special edition DVD release of Casablanca, of which it is both a parody and an homage. Burson next voiced Bugs in the 1996 short From Hare to Eternity; the short is notable for being dedicated to the memory of the then-just deceased Friz Freleng, and for being the final Looney Tunes cartoon that Chuck Jones directed. Burson also voiced Bugs in the Animaniacs episodes "Video Revue," "Warner's 65th Anniversary," and "Back in Style," as well as in The Bugs and Daffy Show, which ran on Cartoon Network during the 1990s. He died in 2008.

Billy West

Billy West has been in television since the late 1980s. His first role was for the 1988 revived version of Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil. West's breakthrough role then came almost immediately, as the voice of Stimpy and later Ren in John Kricfalusi's Ren & Stimpy. West has since been the voice talent for close to 120 different characters, including some of the most iconic animated figures in television history. Perhaps West's most notable film work came in the 1996 film Space Jam. Starring alongside Michael Jordan, West provided the voice of both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. West would go on to reprise the roles of Bugs in subsequent Looney Tunes productions, including his cameos on Histeria!, also he made a cameo appearance on Kid vs. Kat in "Class Act", the Kids' WB! promotional spots, and the 2006 Christmas-themed special Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas and the DVD compilations "Reality Check" and "Stranger Than Fiction", along with several Looney Tunes-centric CDs and video games.

Joe Alaskey

Joe Alaskey, like Jeff Bergman, is well-known for his ability to successfully impersonate many Looney Tunes characters. In fact, Alaskey voiced Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as original voice actor Mel Blanc had found it too hard on his vocal cords (which makes Sam and Foghorn two of the few voices created by Blanc to be voiced by someone else during his lifetime). Alaskey's first performance as Bugs Bunny came in the 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, although he had tested performing the role in a few earlier projects, such as Tweety's High-Flying Adventure. While still best known for providing the voice of Daffy Duck, Alaskey has also gone on to do Bugs' voice in several subsequent productions, including Daffy Duck for President (which was released on The Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 and dedicated to the deceased Chuck Jones) and several recent video games and Looney Tunes cartoons, including Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Samuel Vincent

Samuel Vincent served as the voice of Bugs in the Cartoon Network TV series Baby Looney Tunes.

Noel Blanc

Noel Blanc, Mel Blanc's son, voiced Bugs for the Tiny Toon Adventures special It's a Wonderful Tiny Toon Christmas Special. The elder Blanc claimed in his later years that Noel substituted for Mel in various cartoon studios, including doing Bugs at Warner Bros., while he was recovering from a near-fatal car wreck. Noel can also be seen doing Bugs' voice with his father in the documentary on the making of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Legacy and influence[link]

In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of the magazine's 50th anniversary. Bugs Bunny was given the honor of number 1.^[25][26] In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide editor talked about the group that created the list. The editor also explained why Bugs pulled top billing: "His stock...has never gone down...Bugs is the best example...of the smart-aleck American comic. He not only is a great cartoon character, he's a great comedian. He was written well. He was drawn beautifully. He has thrilled and made many generations laugh. He is tops."^[27] Additionally, in Animal Planet's 50 Greatest Movie Animals (2004), Bugs was named #3, behind Mickey Mouse and Toto. In 2005 Bugs Bunny was voted the 10th greatest cartoon in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons behind The Simpsons, Tom and Jerry, South Park, Toy Story, Family Guy, Shrek, The Lion King, Spirited Away and The Incredibles. According to Time Warner, Bugs Bunny became the current official mascot for Six Flags theme parks beginning with their 45th anniversary. During an interview for Inside the Actors Studio, comedian Dave Chappelle cited him as one of his earliest influences, praising voice actor Mel Blanc.

Awards[link]

Academy Awards[link]

• Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)

Academy Award nominations[link]

• A Wild Hare (1940)
• Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941)

See also[link]

	Animation portal
	United States portal
	Film portal
	Biography portal

• Looney Tunes
• Merrie Melodies
• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons
• List of Looney Tunes feature films
• Golden Age of American animation

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Adamson, Joe (1990). Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-1855-7. 
• Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-0894-2. 
• Blanc, Mel; Bashe, Philip (1989). That's Not All, Folks!. Clayton South, VIC, Australia: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-39089-5. 
• Jones, Chuck (1989). Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12348-9. 
• Maltin, Leonard (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Revised ed.). New York: Plume Book. ISBN 0-452-25993-2. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bugs Bunny

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bugs Bunny

• Bugs Bunny at the Internet Movie Database
• Bugs Bunny at Toonopedia
• Warner Bros. Studios