Family Guy has featured abortion. The Simpsons regularly features child abuse. But liberals are pretty cool with those shows. But could you imagine a liberal seeing this on a cartoon nowadays. There would be screaming, howling and gnashing of teeth. You’d have to pull a Clockwork Orange thing with the toothpicks just to get them to sit through it. The FCC would be sued, Bam-Bam and Pebbles would be taken away by Child Services, Betty and Wilma would be crying on Oprah, Joe Camel would be murdered in the street, and cigarette factories would be burned to the ground.
February 20, 2010 at 4:07 am
Hitler would have hated it, too. He was a dedicated nonsmoker. It's a perverse world where people who approve of the most ghastly acts of abortion, euthanasia, and degenerate sexual compulsions can get all upset and start sputtering about the evils of smoking and tobacco.
February 20, 2010 at 7:11 am
WHAT??? You are way off your rocker here. You don't think liberals smoke (anything that is the slightest bit incendiary)? You don't think the tabacco lobby has the southern Democrats in their back pocket? Frankly, I think liberals would be just fine with this cartoon.
I personally support any adult's right to polute their body any way they want. But that doesn't mean I want such vices at eye-level to my four-year-old, much less coming from one of his favorite cartoon characters. That doesn't make me a conservative or liberal. It just makes me a good parent.
When JP II was alive he offered a plenary indulgence for anyone who stopped smoking. I guess he's "just like Hitler" too.
February 20, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Ahh tobacco. The "demon rum" of the 21st century.
February 20, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I miss my pipe. If tobacco weren't a health risk I'd smoke all the time partly because I LIKE tobacco and partly to annoy all the prissies.
— Mack
February 20, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Ahem. I think Early Riser has something of a point. Although I like the line, "I hate to see them working so hard. Let's go around back where we can't see 'em," it is troubling to see Fred and Barney pull packs of Winstons out of their bearskins. Both my parents died of lung cancer in their early 80s after years of heavy smoking. I can't help thinking that if they'd never started, or at least quit earlier than they did, they might still be alive today. Because of their experience, I've never had the least desire to smoke.
February 20, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Fred's lighter is all wrong! The flip top should reveal a little dragon that coughs flame. Otherwise, the ad is great.
And besides, the girls are rewarded for their "hard work" by joining the men in smoke afterward, so what's the brontosaurus, -er- beef?
February 20, 2010 at 10:11 pm
"WHAT??? You are way off your rocker here."
–Early Riser
Thanks for making my point about sputtering. Besides, Pope John Paul II and I are both ex-smokers. However, I don't compare his virtues with my vices.
February 21, 2010 at 1:57 am
Yeah, you need to get a dictionary and look up the verb "to sputter". An extreme interrogative to display confounded questioning at the utter cluelessness and lack of sanity or intellect in someone's post is not "sputtering". Then again, nor am I a liberal. Either way, you're really not that smart, are you?