LONDON (Reuters) - They chase each other at high speed wielding axes and hammers. But the famous cartoon duo of Tom and Jerry are in trouble in Britain for smoking on screen.

A channel airing the cartoons has agreed to cut scenes that glamorise smoking after British media regulator Ofcom received a complaint from a viewer who took offence at two episodes.

In the first, “Texas Tom”, the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, “Tennis Chumps”, Tom’s opponent in a match smokes a large cigar.

In a bulletin posted online, Ofcom noted “concerns that smoking on television may normalise smoking”, and said that the Turner company, licensee for Boomerang which aired the cartoons, had agreed to edit some smoking scenes out of “Tom and Jerry”.

“The licensee has … proposed editing any scenes or references in the series where smoking appeared to be condoned, acceptable, glamorised or where it might encourage imitation”, Ofcom said, adding that “Texas Tom” was one such example.

But it would not cut all smoking scenes, it added.

Ofcom said it recognized smoking was more generally accepted when cartoons were produced in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, but noted that the threshold for including such scenes when the audience is predominately young should be high.

First off, if you’re a kid and you use Tom & Jerry as role models… you should be using something that will kill you much quicker, like a gun. Second, these cartoons were originally made by adults, for adults. The wisdom of TV execs decades ago brought the adult humor to kids’ living rooms across the country.

So, we have a smoking, drinking, murderous cat running ’round on the screens of Britain’s youth. Is this any worse than the praying, holy, murderous Muslim terrorists running ’round the streets of London? I think not.

Since this development is so stupid, I can’t even think of anything to say to counter their argument. My silence speaks volumes.

This article was written by Bryan Los on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 6:17 PM and is filed under In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.