Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco

I see the UK is selectively editing Tom & Jerry cartoons to remove smoking scenes. This should come as no surprise to people here in the States. After all, we said nothing when the “Aunt Jemima”-like character that was occasionally Tom’s owner had her voice edited from what some viewed as stereotypical and offensive to a more neutral broadcast tone. There’s nothing like taking the fun out of funny. I have heard, though, that the new voice is actually funny if you’re high. I don’t have the Zogby statistics on that, though.

Anyway, scenes that “glamorize or condone smoking” will be edited out. On a side note, I hear they’re going to be cutting out scenes from Roadrunner cartoons where the Coyote doesn’t realize he’s violating the laws of gravity by running off a cliff. We have to think of the children don’t you know. While I think it’s a bit retarded to assume kids will smoke because a cartoon cat smokes, usually right before something horrible happens to him, I suppose my voice is in the minority these days.

The British regulatory body, Ofcom, concluded with likely the best line of the story.

“However, while we appreciate the historic integrity of the animation, the level of editorial justification required for the inclusion of smoking in such cartoons is necessarily high”.

I hear the Bible is next on their list as they intend to edit out all those pesky God and Jesus references. After all, it’s “historic integrity” is certainly appreciated, but we’re talking editorial justification here. This sort of thing isn’t unique to the British Isles kids. There’s people right here in the U.S. who not only agreed with this article, but wondered why we didn’t do it first.

Shall We Write A Story?

Eerie to know there are computer programs out there writing news stories. All you have to do is plug a few facts in and the program spits out a fully functional news story, ready for print. It’s like MadLibs only with the odd “Mrs. Robinson you’re trying to seduce me” vibe.

So far it’s greatest success appears to be in writing financial stories, which admittedly are rather dry and boring. They’re using these things as minor-league forecasters, though. Would you want your market research decided by some frustrated, bored programmer who would have rather been designing his new SimGirl than writing adjectives and predictors into his news story code?

The justification, as always, writes its own joke.

“This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think.”

Think of all the labor this would have saved the likes of Jayson Blair from the New York Times. Why, if he’d had that, just think of it. He could have doubled or even tripled the rate of stories he fabricated. Consider me decidedly not impressed by automation in a field that really needs more supervision. News shouldn’t be churned out on a robotic assembly line. Next thing you know, they’ll be outsourcing news jobs to India and Pakistan and then there’s chaos.

I’m sure all bloggers and mainstream journalists will one day band together to combat the vile robojournalist. Until then, honestly, I thought that’s how a lot of news stories were already produced.