Nature’s Thurible

[This gallery goes out to all those who, having once lit up, subsequently failed to repent abjectly, groveling in the dust, as required by the stifling climate of political correctness that has been spreading across the planet like an oil slick.]

India isn't so much concerned about its periodic mob attacks  on Muslims, or “Eve-teasing” (the smug Indian euphemism for sexual pestering), or gang-rape involving metal instruments, or dowsing wives with fire or acid for failing to increase the dowry, but there is one place they draw the line:    smoking.

India’s tough censorship policy has cost its people a wide range of visual pleasures, but even so, its latest blow would have been difficult to anticipate. Last Thursday, film fans in India woke up to the news that the next day’s planned release of “Blue Jasmine,” the latest film from the writer and director Woody Allen, had been canceled. Apparently, Mr. Allen was unwilling to follow the local guidelines for showing people smoking on film.

According to the new rules, the theaters must also run a 30-second advertisement provided by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare detailing the ill effects of tobacco before the film begins and again at intermission. If Mr. Allen had let the Indian government have its way, “Blue Jasmine” would have been preceded, and interrupted, by an advertisement that starts with gory close-ups of mouth tumors in a variety of men and women and ends with the last words from a real person lying on a hospital bed with a swollen jaw and emaciated frame.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/why-woody-allens-blue-jasmine-wasnt-released-in-india/?_r=0

[As one canny reader comments:

The Indian concern here stems all the way back to 1988 when the distrubutors of The Accused forgot to superimpose "do not do this, fellow Indians" on screen during the gang rape scene.  ]

The bluenose hypocrisies of the anti-smoking brigade in America  are bad enough;  but to be out-PC’d by a place like India, is truly astonishing.

(Note:  France has likewise surpased us in smarmy self-righteousness on this issue.)

Moi je chie sur ces puritains immondes

For our posts promoting the glorious wonders of the magnificent and healthy habit of enjoying the benefits of nature’s very own tobacco leaf (which, had Saint Francis been acquainted with it, he would surely have blessed), try these:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/smoking

[Disclaimer:  Owing to the evils of corporate agribusiness, with their poisons and pesticides and whatnot, we cannot actually, at present, in a strictly empirical as opposed to transcendental sense, recommend smoking the products commercially available today.  However, we heartily endorse the clean fresh taste of original unfiltered Camels (a satisfied blend of domestic and Ottoman tobaccos), as manufactured during the New Deal,

which refreshed the senses of a generation of farmers and railroad men, my own grandpappy among them.  May you enjoy deep and satisfying drags, O men of labor, in that One Big Union beyond the grave.]

Note:  For a poem on the matter by our friend Murphy, the wise-cracking two-fisted private detective (gat in one hand, gasper in the other) check this out:

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-praise-of-camels.html

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For the smoke-filled adventures

of our pistol-packing pre-Conciliar private eye,

check these out:

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount.

BAM !

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[Afterthought]    The silver screen in India threatens to becomes quite cluttered.   Supposing an actor were imprudently to chow down on a cheeseburger, the action must needs be interrupted by warnings never to harm the sacred cows, accompanied with explicit images and roaring soundtrack  of scenes from the abattoir.  Accompanied perhaps (in a bid to attract Israeli investment) by admonishments that such a combination of milchig and fleischig is strictly treyf.

Banned in India

More, for your viewing pleasure:

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