Pine For Pistachio, Porky, And Piglet.

When every act that a culture makes communicates weakness and loss of self-belief, eventually you'll be taken at your word. - Mark Steyn.

I'd be interested to know what my friends/readership thinks of this article. In England, several children's cartoon characters and a type of ice cream packaging is being banned and discontinued because a handful - and by handful I mean about 2 - Muslims were offended for varying reasons. For a practical example of why this sort of thing bothers me look at it this way - future generations of children now get to grow up without Charlotte's Web.

My take is thus: everything is offensive to someone. No matter how flexible and tolerant one may want to be, it has to be a two-way street. I'm offended at the offense taken by others - and that fact will offend someone else all over again. If that last sentence seemed a little ridiculous to you, it's because it was. And that's my whole point.

I hope Julia Roberts opted for a paycheck and not back-end points. This is one movie that is now doomed to fail internationally. Pick your battles, people. This is getting truly awful.