You used to be cool, man.
You gave us Churchill and Benny Hill. Ricky Gervais to laugh at. Rachel Weisz to look at. Monty Python and Black Sabbath. Iron f&*@ing Maiden, for crying out loud!
But now...now you're messing with our classic cartoons.
Not. Cool.
The review was triggered by a complaint to British media regulator Ofcom by one viewer who took offence to two episodes of Tom and Jerry shown on the Boomerang channel, part of Turner Broadcasting which itself belongs to Time Warner Inc...
In the first, "Texas Tom", the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, "Tennis Chumps", Tom's opponent in a match smokes a large cigar.
First of all: Turner Broadcasting--you're a bunch of pussies, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Second: Even if you accept the premise that the activities of cartoon cats influence childrens' behavior, smoking rates have been steadily falling in the UK (and the rest of the western world) for decades now. This is a solution in search of a problem. (I was unable to find reliable data on the rates of anvil-related assaults over the past few decades in the UK).
Sadly, this is only the latest incident in a long history of retroactively sanitizing our popular culture.
Personally, I dread sharing the world with an entire generation that has never been exposed to anything offensive. They're going to be even bigger tools than their baby-boomer parents.
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