~claps with glee~
Oh, looky, I started a serious post!
~then pushes glasses up on nose~
I think I am close to being in agreement with you, PornoDoggy. I think. I'll have to cipher on it some more to be sure.
MorganGrayson, I think that if you are a parent, and you are reading your child this book (I can nearly recite this particular one by heart) then you point out the picture, and you say "look at the man that could draw these lovely pictures. Poor thing, he smoked. He didn't know all the bad things about smoking that we do now."
I think them being told that....followed up by countless other times of an anti smoking perspective being offered up...will do far more good than any potential harm being done by a pic of a man holding a smoke.
Especially since we are talking about a book that is written for small children. Both my boys had outgrown it by roughly age 2.5.
I wouldn't go march in the streets to put the cigarette back in the picture, but I'm not 100% comfortable with the notion of just making something go away because it is no longer a good thing to do.
Wait a minute...
I just changed my mind. I have an ex I want to revise out of history.
