This morning Kitty did a story about David Zucker creating some tourism ads for Wisconsin. Zucker is one of the guys who created the classic comedy movie Airplane back in 1980. I was about 12 years old when the movie came out and I remember seeing it with my parents. I also remember my mom laughing so hard, she was almost crying. I also loved that movie and still quote from it.
Sadly, there's one part of the movie that is now quite offensive. The scene is in the cockpit where Kareem AbduI-Jabbar and Peter Graves are flying the plane. A young passenger comes up to visit them. The part that still remains funny is the kid recognizing Abdul-Jabbar. Everyone else thinks the legendary basketball player is a co-pilot, but once the kid starts tellling Abdul-Jabbar that he doesn't play defense, Kareem loses his cool. Totally funny.
However, the other part of that scene is now very disturbing. Peter Graves keeps talking to the little boy and asking him things like, "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" or "Do you like movies with gladiators?"
Peter Graves is a child molestor in the movie. Why is that funny? I remember quoting those lines time and time again with my friends. We knew the joke. Graves' character wanted to have sex with the little boy. Why didn't anyone find it offensive back then? We should have!
I'm not saying Airplane should be boycotted. I still like the movie, but in the wake of the problems at Penn State and Syracuse jokes about men hitting on little boys is not a joke.
Here's the scene again if you haven't seen it lately.
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Happy birthday to the Cute Beatle, SIr Paul McCartney! He turns 71 today.
One of the rules for Beatles fans is that you must memorize tidbits of Beatle trivia to try and impress other Beatle fans. This is not that easy to do....as things like...
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This week we're doing story songs on the World's Worst iPod. We start with the story of Billy who really wanted to be a hero. He was a hero, but didn't live to see it and his girlfriend was pretty angry. The song was originally done by...
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