Pornflakes and other subliminal messages

I don't actually have any Pornflakes, but if I were trying to secretly woo the impressionable to a collection of dirty pictures I might do it under the guise of a fun breakfast cereal...with dirty pictures inside. And I'd justify it by saying that the pictures might not be the worst thing in the box. Maybe the sugar and other "processing" chemicals are worse.

See how a twisted mind works? Good, 'cause this is where I make a hypocrite out of myself.

This morning I saw a news report about British authorities banning smoking scenes from popular cartoons.

And I have to confess their argument that smoking was being made attractive under the guise of a cutesy cartoon made me angry.

We all know what smoking can do to your health - make you sick, kill you, yadda, yadda. But I want to see some evidence that Tom or Jerry taking the occasional drag has made large numbers of kids start smoking.

With the climate of criminal violence we live in today I'm more worried about my neighbor's kid adopting some other cartoon behavior and beating my brains out with a baseball bat, convinced all the while I have nine lives and will get up and shake it off.

Watching the cat and the mouse smoke when I was a kid never made me want to smoke. But watching Wile E. Coyote try to slaughter the Road Runner did make me wonder if dropping an anvil on my sister's head was feasible.