An old cliche` goes something like this,"A picture is worth a 1,000 words."
It is a well known fact that, small children relate to pictures, forming
opinions at a very tender age, opinions that last a lifetime.  Do you
remember your Mother reading your favorite bedtime story (mine was Black
Beauty)?  Your eye's would follow her finger as she would point out the
corresponding pictures to match the words she read to you aloud.  There
were some bedtime stories that weren't very pleasant BUT, they were
composed with a moral in mind i.e.; The Three Little Pigs and Little Red
Riding Hood.  " They (the characters) aren't real honey," Mother would
comfort her very frightened child at the stories end.  These stories, were
written by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm well over a century ago and although,
they had what was to have been, "A Happy Ending" the mental images of a
wolf, boiling to death or being hacked to pieces by a woodsman, was enough
to create their own set of nightmares for any child that harbored even an
ounce of compassion.  The illustrations served only to heighten that
horror.  What I'm trying to say is, Yes!  We are all supposed to be
rational adults, who should be able to differentiate between what is real
and what is fantasy but, what impression would a child of three form if
he/she were to view MF #24's issue containing a very human hand wielding a
butcher knife to the throat of a ferret?  What of the wayward teen or the
emotionally disturbed adult who has access to a ferret?  I shudder to think
of the consequences.  Society as we know it is fraught with violence and
inhumanities.  Don't you think, it's time to pause and reflect about the
role each of us has, and continue to play in perpetuating the insanity?
 
As for my sense of humor?  There isn't a day that goes by that, we as a
family don't end the day with (at the very least) one belly splitting joke
shared among us.  So you see, it isn't a matter of humor, it's a matter of
taste.
 
I would like to think that the majority of the FML body has a champagne
palate in contrast to the moonshine served up from time to time.  I propose
that we enter into our new millennium with a renewed spirit in what was
once, responsible journalism?
 
It all boils down to this, choices, choices that can either set us apart
from all the rest or to lump us all into a macabre ball of sensationalists
and I hear that, that ball is rapidly loosing it's bounce.  And I Like
That!
 
[MA]
[Posted in FML issue 2779]