Dateline: Great Britain.

The British government agency responsible for monitoring television content has banned smoking scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons played on British television. Prompted by “an anonymous complaint,” the ban covers all scenes “deemed to glamorise or condone smoking.”

Depite the stylized nature of smoking appearing in the cartoons (e.g., the big cigar-smoking bulldog who frequently appears just in time to save mouse Jerry from large, bat-wielding tomcat Tom) the British government has decided the works lack the “editorial justification” required to demonstrate smoking on television.

Crushing your enemy with an anvil, blowing him up with dynamite, squishing him under a large book, placing him a frying pan over “high” with a couple of fried eggs and beating him to a pulp with a baseball bat, however, are still permitted. (And justifiably so…after all, dynamite is dangerous, but smoking can kill you…)

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