Now It's Gone Too Far...

The following is an article ripped off the net concerned about cartoon characters' smoking habits. Fortunately, it's still ok to drop pianos on each others' heads or to shove dynamite up their butts, but it's not ok to smoke. I have many weaker peers who smoke, but some of us refused to succumb to the peer pressure of our cartoon cohorts who evilly puffed away with no detrimental health effects. They can digitally remove Popeye's pipe now, but they can't remove it from my memory. (I only wish they could have actually removed the dangling cig from my mom's mouth then maybe she wouldn't have suffered the stroke. But she got hooked at an early age by watching these toons.) Here's the article as written (with some minor emphasis added.)

"A British TV channel is snuffing out smoking from classic children's cartoons after a viewer complaint about episodes of Tom and Jerry.

Children's channel Boomerang said Tuesday it had cut scenes from two episodes of the violent cat-mouse cartoon "where smoking could be deemed to be glamorized."
"We have now pledged to view Boomerang's entire library of favourite cartoons and remove all other references that could be seen as glamorizing smoking in all our shows," said Cecilia Persson, vice-president of programming, acquisitions and presentation for Boomerang's parent, Turner Broadcasting UK.

Turner said the decision applied only to Boomerang's output in Britain, which includes The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Scooby-Doo.

British TV regulator Ofcom said Monday that one (let me emphasize ONE) viewer had complained about two Tom and Jerry cartoons - each more than 50 years old. In Texas Tom, Tom tries to impress a female cat by rolling and smoking a cigarette with one hand. In Tennis Chumps, Tom's opponent is seen smoking a cigar.

Ofcom said it welcomed the broadcaster's decision to remove scenes "where smoking appeared to be condoned, acceptable, glamorized or where it might encourage imitation." Britain's broadcasting code says smoking should not be featured in programs aimed at children "unless there is strong editorial justification."

The pro-smoking group Forest described the move as "totally absurd."

Fortunately, I was too young to see this cartoon in its original incarnation and only saw it in sanitized syndication a few years later, when the sponsor became Breakfast Cereal and not Winstons, or I might be hooked too.



Fortunately, they've decided to keep smokers who are villains puffing away. I'd hate to think that only the good guys smoked.

I almost got hooked on these as a kid, but I noticed that he smoked a pipe, not fags. But come to think of it, he rarely lit his pipe, he usually used it to suck up spinach.