Lopez is right, of course, but that doesn't make Linda Ortman any less ridiculous. Ortman's scolding letter appeared in the Dallas Morning News Thursday (third letter):
"Are there no photos of nonsmoking soldiers in Iraq?
We are all aware of how important it is to help people stop smoking because of health risks.
Please, Dallas Morning News, be more sensitive. Youth are easily influenced. Let's stop reinforcing the smoking habit. Stop publishing photos like the one on the front page Wednesday."
The WSJ also posts this lovely quote from the always wonderful G.K. Chesterton, circa 1917, about some chap - a clergyman in Bromley, England - who was upset about Brits sending ciggies to the troops in World War I:
There is the lack of imaginative proportion, which rises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live young men are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever and hunger and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword blades and bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (I think that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found in the deserts of Bromley.
There's also this awful bit:
If cigarette-smoking Marines aren't outrageous enough for you, check out this letter to the editor of the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald from one Florence White (last letter):
"Am I the only one who finds the idea of sending candy to Iraqi children not only not brilliant but insensitive, offensive and stupid ("Kids offered sweet deal on candy," Oct. 29)?
The candy is not good for our children's teeth but OK for kids who probably have no access to dentistry?
"Can you catch just a glimmer of why Americans are so hated in other parts of the world?"
Maybe the Iraqis would like us if we forced them all to go to the dentist.
LOL! If I were an Iraqi child, I would focus my hatred on the nasty PC types who were trying to come between me, the nice Marine, and his candy.
And, heh heh. I love the Wall Street Journal and especially Best of the Web. They are as sarcastic as I am.
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