Group Wants Cartoon to Help, Not Hurt : Porky Pig: Pickets at Warner Bros. urge the studio to use its popular character as an advocate for stutterers.

Members of a national organization that wants to turn the cartoon character Porky Pig into an advocate for stutterers picketed Saturday at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, where Porky has been a star for more than 55 years.

Chanting “Make friends, don’t make fun,” about 10 members of the nonprofit National Stuttering Project, who marched for about an hour at the studio, said the stuttering pig has for years been used in a negative and derogatory way against children who stutter.

“I think all of us have been called Porky by a playmate at some time in our lives,” said Ira Zimmerman of San Juan Capistrano, a spokesman for the 4,000-member organization. “And when you’re a kid, that hurts.”

Zimmerman said representatives of the organization met last month with Warner Bros. executives to ask that the studio “show some corporate responsibility and help children who stutter and who have been maligned as a result of their money-making cartoon character.”

Specifically, the stutterers’ group asked that the cartoon character be used in an animated public service announcement to call attention to their issues.

“Stuttering made Porky unique and profitable to Warner Bros., and funny,” Zimmerman said. “Indeed, most people laughed so loud they could not hear the children who cried.”

Warner Bros. responded in a press release that the studio “appreciates the National Stuttering Project’s advice that Porky’s impediment, and all stutterers, always be positively portrayed.”

The statement said that the studio is unable to comply with the organization’s request this year “because of existing public service commitments.” But the company said it hoped to pursue “a cooperative relationship” either with the National Stuttering Project or another responsible organization.

Because of the studio’s positive response, marchers said they had toned down Saturday’s protest to only a few picketers.