Bette Davis is missing something...

Roger Ebert blogged yesterday on the new Bette Davis stamp, which is sans her ubiquitous cigarette (although her fingers remain extended around the missing cylinder). And, as Ebert points out, stamp collecting is clearly a gateway to hard-core smoking for the impressionable youth.

Now my paternal grandmother died all to young from lung cancer--ten years on my three other grandparents are all healthy octogenarians--so I'm no fan of smoking. If all cigarettes disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't mind in the slightest. (Although the occasional cigar is fun in an oooh-I'm-a-50s-sophisticate kind of way.)

But give me a break: Screwing with the historic record so as not to offend modern sensibilities is ridiculous. My mother owns a children's book store, and many (probably most or all) classic books which featured authors smoking in their jacket photos have been cropped, switched, or digitally edited to have the smoking removed. Goodnight Moon's Clemont Hurd has been digitally de-smoked. Shel Silverstein not only smoked, he was pot-smoking hippie Playboy cartoonist--it'd probably be safest to ban him altogether. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Mark Twain smoked, as did most heroic baseballers from the golden age; characters (titular or secondary) smoke in Curious George, Babar, Tintin, and many, many others.

Finally, Santa Clause smokes, according to Clement Moore. Plus, he's unhealthily overweight. Guess we'd better change

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh'd, like a bowl full of jelly:
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh'd when I saw him in spite of myself;

to

The stump of a candy cane he held tight in his teeth,
And the scent of it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and some tight little abs
That stayed firmly in place when he laugh'd, like an iron-hard slab:
He was fit and trim, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh'd when I saw him in spite of myself;