But my dear autolycus, if people were educated, they would not buy faulty products, so we wouldn't need the Fair Trade Commission. If they were educated, they would not fall for snake oil salesmen, so we would not need the Pure Food and Drug Administration. If they were educated, they would not fall for various cons, and would not need the police. If they were educated, hey, the world would just be hunky dory, or however you spell that.

I don't live in the ideal world. I live in the real world, where young men see an anti-war piece like Apocalypse Now and enlist the following day because they saw a lot of things blown up in that movie and wanted to have fun blowing up more things. So much for the ability of audiences to always draw correct conclusions from "entertainment."

On another tack, I would maintain that several major wars have been waged because the perpetrators were force-fed a distorted view of history. Admittedly it's a long way from there to caring whether every historical detail in a given movie is accurate or not, but that's a continuum, and I would just as soon stop the distortion wherever it occurs, rather than trying to determine an aribtrary point at which it's OK to get it wrong in the name of entertainment.

Gladitorial games were also "entertainment," after all.

At least I don't have to come up with a reply to Jack the Sailor, who has a problem with "CC." I thought (briefly), "Ooops, someone has a problem with me. Oh, dear! How shall I make amends? How shall I correct my wicked, puerile, Philistine ways?" Then I realized--shrewd deducer of deductions that I am--that he meant Kevin Costner. I did have to look at a reference to see if it's Costner or Kostner, so I can't laugh at that confusion. But Cevin Costner? Now THAT is just pure entertainment.

KK