Don't Hold Yesterday's Adults to Today's Standards

On MLK Day this past Monday someone mentioned the flaws of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The author prefaced it by stating his significance and accomplishments.

A man is as faithful as his options. If you want someone who won't cheat- date me. One of the negative marks against Dr. King was that he smoked cigarettes. Like almost everyone in the fifties and sixties.

In The Beatles: Get Back there is a disclaimer the documentary contains Foul Language and Smoking. Cigarettes were everywhere then. There were cigarette commercials on television, bus ads, The Kool Jazz Festival, The Winston Cup and people were allowed to smoke almost everywhere.

Restaurants, airplanes- the smokiest room I was ever in was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a church basement. Why my father took his entire family to AA meetings remains a mystery.

Parents can make strange decisions. Both parents smoked. A lot of parents smoked in the car. Nowadays that is considered child endangerment. It was standard operating procedure when I was your age.

Len Dawson smoked on the sidelines at Chiefs game. Could you imagine what would happen if Patrick Mahomes bummed a smoke when the defense was on the field?

Some things fall out of fashion. Having cigarette butts everywhere is not good. At my apartment complex there were many smokers. Management set up ashtrays and that did not cause too many cigarette butts from ending up everywhere.

Language can change. American Gigolo has some disparaging remarks. That does not mean the movie should be altered. No one ever took offense that John Wayne's character in The Quiet Man refused to fight anymore and had no problem beating his wife.

I turned off The Getaway when Steve McQueen started beating Ali McGraw. Was that what the character did or was that endemic of their relationship? Some of the James Bond movies are starting to have disclaimers.

The swearing in License To Kill was distracting. There were a lot of cigarettes smoked in those films. It never inspired me to take up a filthy habit. I have never ordered a vodka martini nor driven an Aston-Martin, either.

Media is temporal. When Head of State was released in 2003 the ides of a Black President seemed absurd. It happened five years later. The comedy can be enjoyed now if you want to enjoy it. Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles was always stereotypical. It did not become "Offensive" with the creation of Twitter.

College made everything offensive. Except antisemitism- go figure. Don't hold previous works to today's standards. Have "Social Justice Warriors" accomplished anything positive?

Dictionaries are being removed from schools because they include dirty words. In second grade there were people who looked up cuss words. They were there and after the definition it said "Usually considered vulgar." We knew that. Let people find what interests them. Suppressing ideas and censoring them only makes them more popular.

Maus had a renaissance because a school system banned it. They were more offended that a character had her breasts exposed than the fact she was taking her life in a bathtub. Was she supposed to wear a bikini in the bathtub?

And who is being aroused by a cartoon mouse? This is not Fritz the Cat. A Congressman was offended that an unedited version of Schindler's List was shown on NBC.

He said nothing about people shot in the head at point blank range. Parading the unclothed hostages- this was done to dehumanize them, not to showcase naked bodies.

People are offended by the wrong things. Don't do these acts in the present. In a different era it might have been acceptable to refer to someone you didn't like as the word for a bundle of sticks. It was not meant as a gay epithet. It is now.

Adults called us the pejorative for the mentally challenged quite often. Not anymore. Some things that are forbidden now were normal then. You cannot change history. You can lead a better life in the present to build a better future.