The Children We're Raising

Before last Christmas, I was sitting on a bench at a mall. Across from me, on another bench, a kid, maybe 6, was playing some variety of hand-held video game. I was impressed by the quality of the sound and asked the kid what game he was playing. He looked up at me with a look on his face like I was a grizzly bear with a meat cleaver. He was crying as ran away, presumably to some unseen parent.

Sheesh, what kind of bedtime stories are mom and dad(?) telling this kid to have him freak out so completely over one person out of 10,000 at this mall making verbal contact. Yea, it's a big scary world, but I think we are really beating the fear into the next generation. To wit:

So much for God and country, at least during some in-flight showings of the Oscar-nominated movie "The Queen." All mentions of God were bleeped out of a version distributed to Delta and some other airlines.

Airline passengers watching the movie hear "[Bleep] bless you, ma'am," as one character speaks to the queen. In all, the word "God" is bleeped seven times.

A spokesman for Miramax, which produced the movie, had no comment on the episode. The editor responsible for the mistake is still working in the Jaguar editing lab, he said.

Notice the headline referred to the editor as 'vigilant.' That's too charitable. I think 'terrified,' 'confused,' 'stupid' or 'shell-shocked' would be more appropriate.