For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for April 18, 2010

It IS worth making! Now make the point that if more people didn’t do it, he could find his own trash!

I’ve been to several parts of Canada numerous times, and quite frankly, Canada is clean, and I have never seen any trash there. That’s one of the things ABOUT Canada.

Here however, it’s only in the inner cities that you ever see anyone throw trash out the window of their cars. That’s why nobody wants to live there.

Where’s that crying “Indian” when you need him?

He was really an Italian guy named Frank something, but we all know him as well as we know Smokey The Bear.

You don’t litter, especially where you live! There are trash cans EVERYWHERE. There’s no excuse.

Agreed, Mrs. Luke Skywalker. John’s got nothing to feel guilty about, and all he has to do now is say to Michael, “See? THAT’S why we don’t just throw trash out onto the highway, or anywhere else!”

I’m glad my mother taught me that lesson. To this day, it annoys me to no end to see other people just leaving their trash behind instead of walking maybe five feet to the nearest trash can, as any civilized ape would do.

Well said!!

@ Mrs. Luke Skywalker

That “crying Indian” was NOT some Italian named Frank. He was Iron Eyes Cody. He was of Italian descent, not NA, but his wife was NA and they adopted 3 NA children. And it’s not just in the inner city that people throw trash out of the car windows. I live in the country and the roadsides are a trash heap.

Oh yes, it sure is worth making! I can never understand why people do this!

Sadly, people do still throw trash out their windows. I live on a large piece of land near a US highway, and every day I find trash in our yard, compliments of the passing cars.

I think John’s point is well made, and maybe the best thing he and Michael could do is get a garbage bag and do a little highway cleanup.

BTW, my son’s scout troop did highway cleanup yesterday, which felt pretty good.

In Michigan with a bottle depost law, at least people retreive the bottles……but leave everything else. That is in the country too, not inner city.

Guess the kids are going to be busy - Happy Almost Earth Day!!

Vermonters will go out on May 1st to pick up trash, this we call Green Up Day, a day to clean up a winters worth of trash. If we were to keep our trash and dispose of it in the right way we wouldn’t need a Green Up Day. But the day dose get communities together to make a difference. I have no idea who the weeping First American is, but I believe he should be brought back.

Earth Day Green Up Day We can do it.

\\//_

In the inner city there is not much owner occupancy. A tenant is much less likely to pick up someone else’s garbage in front than an owner. Also there is the attitude, “oh, they pay someone to pick it up.”When you don’t pay taxes, municipal workers are servants, not a revenue drain. When your car is the biggest investment you will ever make, Heaven forbid you should keep your own garbage in it.

We live in a rural area, on a relatively busy road. Lots of trash to pick up :( John should make the point of “THIS is why you shouldn’t do it!” and then he and the family should clean it up (with proper PPE…). Set a good example with your children and they will (eventually) learn it. Had our then 3 year old daughter scold a man for stepping off a marked trail (to take a close up photo of a blooming plant…) “You’re killing all the pretty plants, and then we can’t see them again” Smart girl. We were proud of her!

OK here is the wiki on the crying “Indian”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IronEyesCody

Iron Eyes Cody it was, but his original name wasn’t Frank. It was Espera Oscar DeCorti. He was born in Louisiana to Italian parents.

Youtube version of commercial here: http://bit.ly/QzHu1

You beat me to it, Gigantor. That’s the one I found also.

To bad they don’t show that anymore.

There is a $100 fine here for littering, (if you’re caught!), but it doesn’t seem to deter people, unfortunately. Bears, raccoons, and skunks can also spread a lot of trash out here in the backwoods! :-(

Screeching to a halt while your head is turned and your hollering at your kid, maybe as bad as littering. LIghten up Dad.

Spammers… the internet version of “throwing trash out the window”… (grumble)

I’m with you, eric cook. That was my first reaction too. Everyone is quick to jump on Elly for being angry, but no one really mentions John’s reaction in this strip. Pretty scary, and Elly is smiling in the first panel. That makes me think that all you constant Elly bashers are hypocritical or you just like picking on everything she does. I think in most families the mother is viewed as being more angry because she has to deal with the daily cr*p more often so she gets upset more. It just means she’s human. Having said that, John does need to make the point of picking up trash and that it doesn’t matter if it’s not your own.

Boo to etootoo. Flagged you. :-(

The correct link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody

It won’t accept underscores. There are underscores between Iron eyes cody.

I found it. Put a backslash \ before the underscore _.

The pendulum is swinging. People today have forgotten just how bad litter used to be. It took a lot of time and effort to get things cleaned up. Because it is so clean now, people don’t see a problem with tossing a little trash.

Will it have to get like it was for people to come to their senses?

I’m an American Indian and that commercial came out when I was in third grade. The only impact it seemed to make was all my friends, acquaintances and people I did not even know came up to me and asked: “Do Indians really cry when people litter?”

Did anyone else recognize William Conrad’s voice as the narrator of the Iron Eyes Cody commercial?

I, for one, am grateful that there is more awareness in today’s world than there was in 1970. There are still insensitive jerks who throw out their trash, cigarettes, etc. along the highway, but nowhere near as bad as 40 years ago.

I hate the people who throw their lit cigarettes out of their car as if the world is their ashtray. When I’m at a stoplight and see this happening, I daydream about picking it up and throwing it back in their car saying, “Oops, you dropped this, thought you might want it back.” :)

One more thing to add. It’s not “Smokey THE Bear”, it’s “Smokey Bear” ! The NFS had many spots on TV a few years back to correct that !

John doesn’t feel guilty, and he doesn’t actually wonder if he should teach his children to dispose of garbage appropriately. He *is* discouraged, and in that moment feels as though his efforts won’t make any difference, when there are so many people who don’t care. Looks like Michael got the point, though.

I agree with all too bad Ms. Johnston didn’t add old Iron Eyes Cody to the strip but then the family would not see him only the ones reading the strip.

By the way I flagged and I agree also when will the nonsense quite.

HareBall and W6BXQ:

Neither one of those addresses for Iron Eyes Cody worked for me. Here’s where I found it on wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crying_Indian

We live in a throwaway society - everything is disposable. It can be linked to the McDonald’s syndrome - everyone want to have it now and their way; up to and including disposing of things no longer desired anywhere it is convenient to do so.

The real Smokey Bear lived for many years in the National Zoo in Washington DC. He was a bear cub rescued found in a forest fire burned area. His story prompted the Smokey Bear image used by the US Dept of Agriculture’s Forest Service. Before television, it was mass-marketed on posters and through education campaigns at schools. The success of those campaigns led indirectly to campaigns like the “crying Indian” ads and to McGruff, the crime dog.

I am with Mirthiful - I hate seeing people through cigarette butts out of car windows. They should keep their own mess in their own ashtrays. There is something to be said for property owners keeping their property clean, but you don’t have to live in the city or rural areas to find litter. It happens on suburban streets, too. You have to educate your own children and sometimes your neighbors children, too. We live in a very multi-cultural neighborhood. Some of our neighbors are first generation Americans who think nothing of throwing trash in the gutter. Perhaps where they came from, it didn’t matter, or there were city street sweepers. The best fix is education.

Canadians litter too unfortunately. I work with Mentally Challenged adults, and they pick up litter as a paid job. It’s amazing and disgusting how much trash we find AND alot is around the trash cans. LAZY people!

Regarding Iron Eyes Cody, you can also look it up on Snopes.com.

Folks of different cultures and nationality have always been stepping in to portray other cultures or ethnic groups. Herb Jeffries, who played with Duke Ellington, had a hit with FLAMINGO, and went on to become the Bronze Buckaroo was not Black, but Italian. Japanese actor Mako Iwamatsu portrayed the Chinese character Po-Han in The Sand Pebbles.

The real issue is whether the message is true. Littering shows a lack of respect for one’s self and for others. Even those cigarette butts out the window are disgusting. They have also been shown to cause cancer in animals that ingest them.

Why don’t car makers design a car with an area for a small waste can? I designed a console for our Montana that was part trashcan which I kept lined, and part tissue box, CD area, and general storage. Plastic company made it for me for $90.

PS: Montana was wrecked, replaced with Chevy Equinox. Absolutely NO place to hang a trash receptacle!

This is a severely dysfunctional family with extreme rage issues. I see an uxoricide in the future.

Catlady, I saw him on TV before he died. He said his real name was Frank, and he said he was Italian. Does “of Italian descent” mean something different? You set out to argue or prove me wrong but you reiterated exactly what I said, making me correct. I am 100% Italian, of Italian descent, which is why I remembered it. Before that, who would have guessed he was anything other than an American Indian.

Lightenup, did I not sufficiently bash John? I think I did, and so did plenty of others. He’s just not too swift. He’s not the one raving like a loon and refusing to stop it. I think just about everyone said that they were both wrong. Elly’s behavior adds layers to her level of wrong though.

If everyone pitched in then there would not be any trash on the road sides . It’s like no one knows what trash can are for.

Mrs Luke:

Check out: http://www.bbhq.us/nlfiles/indian-psa.htm

Oddly when I was a child, we were not only not allowed to toss trash out a window, but when we camped we picked up ALL the trash, not our own, if there was any to pick up.

Maybe we should go back to the archaic practise of parents raising children, rather than the government(s) raising children.

What a concept …

I couldn’t agree more Hawthorne.

He is making a point. He’s making the point that this is what happens when everyone throws their trash out the window.

When my inlaws came to visit me here in Quebec City, their comment was, “It’s just like Europe; except clean!”

GretchensMom Your link has an underscore. The other link should have two underscores, one between Iron and Eyes and the other between Eyes and Cody. I have gone back and tried to edit, but no luck. When I click on edit comment now, the edit box has the underscores but they won’t appear in the comment when I’m done. I tried both FireFox and IE but no luck. How did you do yours so the underscore is there? Any ideas?

I found it. Put a backslash \ before the underscore _.

This is a test

Iron Eyes Cody

Ah yes, this works.

Here is a link to some cool stuff you can do in the comments. It is where I found out how to do the link in the above comment and discovered using the backslash \ to make the underscore _ display instead of making the following characters italics and allow asterisks * and other control symbols to display instead of control.

http://home.comcast.net/~ccdesan/Pibgorn/StyleGuide.html

Really bad when one of those lit cigarette butts lands comes in your window while you are driving. Happened to a friend of mine & burned a hole in her back seat.

The kids won’t die from getting yelled at (by either parent) for the naughty things they do. It’s other forms of discipline that they can and do die from – I know I was a child protection worker in a former life (and we got to spend our Saturdays as some of those “volunteers” picking up roadside trash).

Interesting that my mother used to throw her trash out the window which just infuriated me – and I never do it – so we learn from other places than just our parents (not sure where I learned my lesson about it).

Marilyn Kincannon - I have the same gripe. If the two front seats are buckets with armrests, and aren’t too far apart, I hang a plastic shopping bag on the armrests. This worked well in our SUV & min-van, but the cars are more difficult to find a place.

A friend of mine has a large pickup truck he uses for work. One day while driving down the expressway, a lit cigarette butt landed in the back and started a fire and did a lot of damage to the equipment there. Throwing anything out of a vehicle is bad, but a burning butt is the worst.

I once got a flyer from a campground that stated that a cigarette filter takes 50 years to biodegrade. They were trying to get campers (who are usually a little cleaner than the rest of us) to stop scattering their used butts around the campground.

W6BXQ, John:

Regarding your previous question (before you found another way to do it), I didn’t do anything special regarding my wiki link in order to get it to work (at least, work for me anyhow).

I put my cursor in the address line, right clicked, chose “copy”, then I “pasted” the website address in my comment box. And it just … worked.