What is a maroon?

[RockRaven]

35. A lot of the old Looney Tunes use language which is now really shunned... Rightly.

I recall there's a Bugs Bunny cartoon which uses "cotton picking" as a substitute for what might otherwise be a curse word (or at minimum a derogatory adjective) and it went right over my head as a kid. It was just a nonsense phrase to child-me.

As for maroon, I have no reason to grant the cartoonists the benefit of the doubt... So here's why it could be intentional: AFAIK, the word "nimrod" entered the US lexicon as an insult akin to idiot because Bugs referred to Elmer Fudd as "Nimrod" in an early cartoon. My interpretation is that the cartoonists inserted that as a joke for the adults. It was a sarcastic insult (in the Bible Nimrod is called "a mighty hunter before the Lord" ), but kids just knew Bugs was insulting Fudd, who is kind of dumb, so it became a childish insult for the dumb. But mid 20th century Americans were pretty steeped in religion, and the reference in question is in the Book of Genesis, so if they'd read just a bit of the bible they would get the joke. So maybe the maroon thing is also a double duty adult-kid line.

But I don't see "maroon" making sense as a similarly slightly esoteric reference. It seems too obscure, at that time, with that intended audience (did they even know about maroons' part in history?). Middle America in the mid 20th century had huge historical blind spots...

Seems to me, absent any quotes from the creators on the subject, that an intentionally idiosyncratic pronunciation (which itself is an ironical joke, as Bugs is mispronouncing an intelligence-based insult) is somewhat more likely.