At the Historic Normal Theatre they usually show vintage cartoons before the “classic, foreign, and independent” films, and in a recent one, Elmer Fudd lights up a smoke and obviously enjoys it (before some incredibly violent mayhem ensues involving his complete disregard of gun safety).

Man, I love those old cartoons.  But they are being Bowdlerized to excise unacceptable scenes.  “Won’t someone please think of the children!!!” Do they think kids will be inspired to smoke in imitation of Elmer Fudd?  It’s a wonder we who grew up with such cartoons aren’t all mass murderers, after all. 

i’d think it’d be interesting to have cigerettes with sparklers in for fireworks night
Anyway i think the causes of smoking are different now, more out of peer pressure and experimentalism than trying to be ‘classy’ back in the times of treatment by class, and also before people realised the dangers

The MPAA is a religion unto itself.  As some wag said years ago, “Expose a breast, and you get an R.  Slice off a breast, and you get PG-13.”

Although I too am a moderately rabid anti-smoker, this is ridiculous.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

Regardless of smoking’s actual dangers, the anti-smoking rhetoric gauge these days is high into the religious realms of “condemning the sin, not the sinner” and self-righteousness. If smoking were a book, anti-smoking activists would be clamoring for people to burn it - and here we have the first salvos for censorship. Remember folks, it’s not just the smokes that are harmful to you now. It’s watching people smoke, too. Hello, Thought Police.

Although I too am a moderately rabid anti-smoker, this is ridiculous.

Ditto.

I had to look up Bowdlerized for its etymology. It’s a wonder ‘they’ haven’t taken the murder and mayhem and other bad shit from the bible and call it The Bible - Lite; maybe cos then it could be sold a short story; no money in short stories.

I am a heavy smoker.  The last several generations of my family have had some heavy smokers, and plenty of relatives that don’t appreciate it, and won’t let us smoke in their homes, and good for them, Dammit!  My point being, it’s a lot harder to demonize a habit when your loving grandma does it.  But Mister Mook already made my point better than I can.

My real reason for being here is to share the Good News.  Jerry Falwell is dead and will not be resurrected anytime soon.  I suggest a hearty lager for celebratory purposes, and a little appropriate music:
From Frank Zappa’s 1981 Album “You Are What You Is” tracks 14, 15, and 16, my personal “Holy Trinity”: “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing” “Dumb All Over” and “Heavenly Bank Account.”
In all seriousness, give them a listen if you can, or at least look up the lyrics and give them a read- a close examination shows how prescient- hell, almost psychic, a great artist can be.

From Frank Zappa’s 1981 Album “You Are What You Is” tracks 14, 15, and 16, my personal “Holy Trinity”: “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing” “Dumb All Over” and “Heavenly Bank Account.”

FANTASTIC!!! A Frank Zappa reference always warms my heart.

my personal fav is; “Without deviation from the norm. Progress is not possible.”

Remember children are stupid robots and their parents are shitty programmers. That why we need almighty Microsoft, I mean the church, wait the government, sorry the movie industry (this time) to tell us how to raise our kids.

Luckily for us parents, timmeh, there’s no surveillance (so far) of our shifty programming, and we can raise our kids as we wish.  Luckily for the world, our kids make up their own minds anyway, by and large.

What’s funny is I never dreamed of smoking until I joined the Marines.