A strange warm fuzzy feeling

I woke up one morning after spending the night at my parents house and walked into the living room. Since I was barely awake and the world was terribly bright, I wasn't really paying attention to much through my squinty bloodshot eyes. I grabbed a spot on the couch next to my little brother who was watching the regular saturday morning cartoons and we just zoned out for a while. A few shows in, the original Bugs Bunny and Tweety show came on and it opened with a skit that was the Big dog and little dog in the construction yard having a conversation; I was immediately overcome with a warm fuzzy feeling that lingered on childhood memories. It puzzled me because I never really watched these shows as a child, until I suddenly realized what it was that triggered these feelings;

The dog was smoking.

It seems so easy to overlook, or ignore, or even misunderstand this small detail until i pose this question: How many cartoons for kids today have characters that smoke? I don't mean are literally smoking, but have a cigar or a cigarette. It just isn't done anymore because its considered a positive reenforcement of smoking since the child's hero(es) are doing it so openly but I never noticed the small shifts towards this point until this "old school" cartoon came on and evoked this response.

At first I was thinking maybe asian characters don't smoke (since more and more of north american cartoons are done through a foreign influence because of the "anime" influence) then dismissed this as silly because quite of a few of the popular characters in asian comics and shows smoke; it is just our culture as a whole, apparently. We seem to slowly be evolving to a place where we want the kids to be kids, but safe and responsible as adults as well. This is just one of many things I've started to notice that change without bringing any attention to itself as the people in charge make decisions they deem to be the best for todays youth, our children and younger siblings, without any consideration of what it is we want or think.

Its terrible when you stop and think that a cartoon dog smoking is what gave me a sense of connection to my childhood happiness because stuff today is so far removed from what we enjoyed as children and young adults. Violence, Media Desensitization, Drugs and Alcohol... nothing is the same as it once was and I don't know if I'm totally okay with this. I think the part that actually upsets me over this whole thing is that nobody noticed this change, nobody fights the change, and nobody realizes this change is a subtle form of censorship and controlling the media.

Just to spite them I'm giving my kids cigarettes and Jager-bombs.

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-Groove Sucka Groove