Whining About Cartoon Torture

Not content to whine about the well-justified torture of terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, some are now upset about the fictional cartoon torture of fictional alien beings. Seriously. There is actually an article called, "Should your kids be watching cartoon torture?" Consider these amusing quotations from the piece. The author is worried about the Star Wars Clone Wars show.

I have not yet observed much in the way of debate or discussion about the show’s recent use of a ticking time bomb scenario like you see routinely on the Fox series, and whether it’s sending the wrong message to kids.

Why would there be much debate or discussion? And it isn't sending any message. It's fictional entertainment. Most people aren't obsessing over the implications of Star Wars television plots. 

The only being in the galaxy who knows how to stop the worms is an accused war criminal, Poggle, who led his planet Geonosis against the Republic and is now in the Jedi’s custody. Poggle refuses to talk, so Skywalker uses his Jedi powers to choke him. A Jedi mind trick to Skywalker, torture to you and me, and it works – Poggle confesses that if they can freeze the ship, the worms will be stopped.

Ok, so what, you might ask?

The message to kids watching the show, at least to me, is that torture works.

Well, considering that torture can and does sometimes work, that's about as much of a message as demonstrating that the right key opens a locked door. Oh yeah, and did I mention that it's fiction? 

Let's see, what other "messages" might the Clone Wars show be sending? I've noticed that it sends a message that a Jedi with a lightsaber, even a teenager, can wade through a battlefield, fight off hundreds of battle droids, and emerge unscathed -- no matter how much energy weapon fire is targeted at him or her. 

And what about the message that it's ok to slaughter droids in large numbers? These battledroids can communicate, seem to have rudimentary emotions, and show signs of at least limited sentience. Promoting and glorifying their destruction at the hands of Jedi and their allies seems like anti-droidism. Could the show be a form of hate speech directed at droids? Maybe someone should look into it.

And of course the author, apparently a typical leftist,  has a recommendation for what to do if the Clone Wars series fails to conform to his idea of the correct ideological depiction of torture. You guessed it. He wants to invoke the heavy hand of big government.

I hope that the show’s writers and producers, and the people at the Cartoon Network, will more carefully review what they screen to the kids who watch the show. If they don’t, the FCC really needs to raise the question of whether or not the show deserves a rating beyond the TV-PG it gets now.

Hopefully the writers will see this article and add in more torture scenes, just to make this idiot squirm and whine further.