Total Eclipse

Tom n’ Jerry cartoons get a makeover. It seems the latest program in revisionist Orwellian historiography is to edit out scenes in vintage cartoons in which the main characters smoke, in a manner which is not depicted as a blatant mistake or wrongdoing. Villians in the show will still be allowed to keep their fags. This came about by a single UK viewer’s complaint, after decades of the show being aired to children around the world. Apparantly, it is feared that the poor impressionable minds of the children will see the two and a half episodes where the characters smoke and try and imitate that. Oddly enough, no one is afraid that children will imitate what appears in every other episode; that is, a heavy dose of ultraviolence. Could it be that children aren’t as dimwitted as one single viewer thinks?

A message posted on the “Organ Grinder” forum on the Guardian newspaper’s Web site said: “Have to dig out all those photos and films of (Winston) Churchill and airbrush out the cigars.”

See, I love how the brits are so naive; what they posit as a knockdown argumentum ad absurdum, the Americans have already done, airbrushing the cigarettes out of the famous photos of Jackson Pollock, Robert Johnson, and others, appearing on USPS stamps.

This is just an example of the extreme measures brought about by the paternalistic approach to the dangers of smoking and the myth of secondhand smoke. Of course, smoking is a risk-factor in certain types of cancer, but then, so is going out into the sun.
This is of course a very American phenomena (which naturally dictates similar measures in it’s sphere of influence), and is part of a much larger problem of Moral Panic.

Why is American culture so susceptible to these things ? From Blood Libel to Reefer Madness to the McMartin Preschool Satanic Ritual Abuse, it seems every odd year American media sensationalizes some new horrible threat to the integrity of society and our children’s welfare.

What really gets to me? We all fail before it. All of us. Intellectuals and laymen alike. When I grew up, I was sure there were such things as snuff (‘white’) films. That horrible horrible people raped and murdered people and sold the taping of it to other sickos. Intellectuals like Prof. Asa Kasher would write a piece to a respected authoritative newspaper like Ha’aretz saying that people who watch such things are seriously disturbed. Nowhere did he say that such people exist, only that it is wrong. Then legislation takes action, and that just propgates belief in such things. Protection against something makes it real. And we are afraid, we really are. We enact zero tolerance against drug users. Why? Because a little tolerance would be oh-so-wrong? Because our moral fibre won’t handle any strays?

There are no snuff films. Every suspected snuff film ever has been refuted as a fake. There are no Satanic Ritual Abuses. FBI checked over 300 separate cases and found no evidence whatsoever. “Satanic Cults” are a joke. Smoking marijuana does not cause dementia, or ease the seduction of white women by blacks. In fact, it’s probably healthier than several legal narcotics, and not even as addictive as non-pharmaceutical “bad” habbits, like gambling. Alien doctor fetishist beings don’t abduct humans and perform sadomasochistic anal sex with them on their space ships. Not a shred of evidence, it just doesn’t happen.

And yet, most people I know, in some point or another, believed that there was at least some truth to some of these things.

This is simply an extreme case of irrationality, brought about by a faith-based culture. We should all stand up and put a stop to it. Put your trust back in science and rigorous journalism. Enough with the crap. Let’s get back to people being first and foremost free. Legalize cannabis. Ban reconstructed Memory based lawsuits. Let’s work, all of us, bottoms up, to keep truth from becoming obsolete.