Thanks from this Iraq vet for exposing these partisan hacks.
The sheer arrogance of anyone naming their organization "(Blank) For Freedom" is enough to tick me off, but to dishonestly advocate for an open-ended policy of sacrificing young American lives for no good reason sickens me.
I guess I hate freedom.
First of all, yes, very few women smoked during that period. HOWEVER, flappers DID! Flapper women were the epitome of the counterculture female and if this person actually paid attention to the movie, the average woman/burgeoning feminist was represented by Mary Sunshine who wrote for a paper that encouraged young women to NOT drink, smoke, listen to jazz, etc. The main characters of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart were also in the vaudeville/burlesque entertainment industry and they were most definitely counterculture. They were most likely modeled after women Bob Fosse met while he was a child as his mother was a burlesque performer.
Flappers wore clothes, spoke and danced unlike any of their mainstream counterparts. Flappers were not well-received by mainstream society because they did not just want to get married, stay at home and pop out baby after baby. They drank hard 'manly' liquors, smoked, cussed, cut their hair far shorter than a 'proper' woman did, wore flimsy clothes, danced 'unladylike', stayed out all night, and experimented sexually. Hell, that's not even accepted TODAY! Flappers were the backlash against the Victorian Era which ended not too long before they first appeared. Remember that era when women were as conservative and asexual as possible?
Add to that most of the scenes took place while they were in jail. A lot of people pick up bad habits in jail, among them are smoking and doing drugs. I doubt it was different back then.
Second, I doubt thousands of girls started smoking because of that movie. I doubt that many young girls went to see the movie considering the only recognizable person under 30 was Mya and Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Orlando Bloom or any other teen heartthrob was nowhere in sight. Considering the overall theme was that of women killing their ne'er-do-well boyfriends and husbands, are girls going to start doing that too because of the movie? That's just stupidity of the highest order.
Thanks to the ALA campaigns against smoking and those insipid Philip-Morris anti-smoking ads, most young people view smoking as 'totally uncool'. Most likely if any young girl (and by that I mean under 18) went to see Chicago she was probably more likely to start taking jazz classes that taught the Fosse technique than smoke or more likely she is already a dancer and went to see the movie since Chicago is one of the most popular musicals in the world.
Third, if they eliminated the smoking from the movie it would not be true to the original musical (remember, Hollywood didn't come up with this, Glantz!) OR to the characters shaped by their particular subculture of the 1920s. The female characters were counterculture and the main male character, Billy Flynn, smoked a cigar like many men did in that era.
Lastly, I do not remember Catherine Zeta-Jones smoking while she was dancing. In the opening number she held a cigarette and gave it to the male dancer behind her then later during the Cell Block Tango the character Velma put out her cigarette before dancing while telling the story of why she 'justifiably' killed her husband and sister.
I remember hearing "haji" as far back as 1989 when I lived in Los Angeles. It seemed to apply to anyone from North Africa to Bangladesh. The derivation from the Haj didn't occur to me until more recently when someone pointed it out. Probably the people I heard using it in '89 weren't aware of it either.
Two days after I posted this article, the PR industry site the Holmes Report ran [http://www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=5893&typeid=2 an impassioned defense] of VNRs as "free speech," and attacked the Center for Media and Democracy as hypocritical censors:
<blockquote>It would certainly be nice to eliminate bad reporting and by all means the Center for Media and Democracy and others have the right to criticize bad reporting where they see it. But anyone who believes in the freedom of the press and the essential role of media in a democracy must surely shudder at the idea that the problem of bad reporting can be solved by government dictate. Given the choice between occasional—or even frequent—bad reporting and a regulatory system that allows the government to second-guess the editorial judgment of the media, is there any doubt which is the lesser of two evils?
Given its support for increased government oversight of the media, one has to question whether the Center for Media and Democracy believes in either—media or democracy.
The Center seems to find PR industry charges that this constitutes censorship either inaccurate or at the very least hyperbolic. But I don’t know what else you would call it. This is not about commercial speech, about restricting the free speech rights of companies—like the California law that sought to remove First Amendment protections from press releases and other corporate communications. I still believe that law was wrong, but this is a very different situation: this is not about regulating what companies can say; it is about regulating what and how journalists can report.</blockquote>
The problem with this argument (well, the major one) is that VNR disclosure does not equal "regulating what and how journalists can report." TV stations can air as many VNRs as they want. Bad journalism (fueled by under-resourced newsrooms and omnipresent PR flacks) can -- and will -- continue.
What VNR disclosure will do is tell viewers when the "report" they're watching on, say, the Medicare drug program or Pfizer's new drug, was actually funded by and scripted on behalf of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department or Pfizer's marketing team.
Coulter is a man. Wait til she finally comes out one day and you will finally understand the person.
First of all, yes, very few women smoked during that period. HOWEVER, flappers DID! Flapper women were the epitome of the counterculture female and if this person actually paid attention to the movie, the average woman/burgeoning feminist was represented by Mary Sunshine who wrote for a paper that encouraged young women to NOT drink, smoke, listen to jazz, etc. The main characters of Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart were also in the vaudeville/burlesque entertainment industry and they were most definitely counterculture. They were most likely modeled after women Bob Fosse met while he was a child as his mother was a burlesque performer.
Flappers wore clothes, spoke and danced unlike any of their mainstream counterparts. Flappers were not well-received by mainstream society because they did not just want to get married, stay at home and pop out baby after baby. They drank hard 'manly' liquors, smoked, cussed, cut their hair far shorter than a 'proper' woman did, wore flimsy clothes, danced 'unladylike', stayed out all night, and experimented sexually. Hell, that's not even accepted TODAY! Flappers were the backlash against the Victorian Era which ended not too long before they first appeared. Remember that era when women were as conservative and asexual as possible?
Add to that most of the scenes took place while they were in jail. A lot of people pick up bad habits in jail, among them are smoking and doing drugs. I doubt it was different back then.
Second, I doubt thousands of girls started smoking because of that movie. I doubt that many young girls went to see the movie considering the only recognizable person under 30 was Mya and Lindsay Lohan, Mischa Barton, Orlando Bloom or any other teen heartthrob was nowhere in sight. Considering the overall theme was that of women killing their ne'er-do-well boyfriends and husbands, are girls going to start doing that too because of the movie? That's just stupidity of the highest order.
Thanks to the ALA campaigns against smoking and those insipid Philip-Morris anti-smoking ads, most young people view smoking as 'totally uncool'. Most likely if any young girl (and by that I mean under 18) went to see Chicago she was probably more likely to start taking jazz classes that taught the Fosse technique than smoke or more likely she is already a dancer and went to see the movie since Chicago is one of the most popular musicals in the world.
Third, if they eliminated the smoking from the movie it would not be true to the original musical (remember, Hollywood didn't come up with this, Glantz!) OR to the characters shaped by their particular subculture of the 1920s. The female characters were counterculture and the main male character, Billy Flynn, smoked a cigar like many men did in that era.
Lastly, I do not remember Catherine Zeta-Jones smoking while she was dancing. In the opening number she held a cigarette and gave it to the male dancer behind her then later during the Cell Block Tango the character Velma put out her cigarette before dancing while telling the story of why she 'justifiably' killed her husband and sister.
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