A reader writes,

Jay,
Your discussion of how the pipe was removed from “The Night Before Christmas” reminded me of another such instance. Norman Rockwell’s piece The Runaway shows a boy sitting on a stool at a diner next to a police officer. Behind the counter is a short-order cook who is smiling with a cigarette between his lips. I received a complimentary calendar of Rockwell paintings for 2010, and this particular painting is the one for February — except the cigarette is gone. It has been airbrushed out. It’s the strangest thing.

And we live in a strange society. On television, day after day, night after night, there is practically full-scale scrumping. But figures in Norman Rockwell paintings are deprived of their cigarettes. Americans are puritanical, but they are puritanical in different ways from before.

P.S. This is not an original point, but if we were allowed none but original points, what could we say?