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As you know, all civil comments that relate to the day’s topic are welcome on this blog. But in the last few days, some folks have wandered far from the subject under discussion.

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Hotels now routinely offer in-room pornography. Hollywood and TV producers are racing to see who can reach the cultural basement first.

Until recently, airlines have been left behind in the rush to serve up more groping and gore to the public.

But airline executives are changing their old-fashioned ways, according to the New York Times. In the last two years, they have begun to feature graphic in-flight R-rated movies.

Last month, for example, Continental, Delta, US Air, and United all showed “Fracture.” In the film, a husband shoots his wife in the face and bloods pools around her head. In other in-flight films, a car crushes a 12-year-old boy against a fence, and a teenager zips up her jeans after sex in a bathroom.

Parents are starting to object:

“˜You don’t have to have “˜Leave it to Beaver’ on, but for Pete’s sake, you don’t have to have Eva Longoria seducing the high school kid on the dining room table, either,’ said Timothy Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, which offers parents advice on program selections.

Mr. Winter said he received weekly complaints about airline movies from parents, whereas last year he received none.

Airlines do some editing of the most offensive films. But “if we take all the good things out, there’s not going to be a lot left to play,” says Nina Plotner, who reviews and acquires films for airlines. “If you get a complaint, you get a complaint. You can’t please everybody.”

Airline big-wigs use two tired arguments to defend their new entertainment standards.

First, they insist on embracing the cinematic lowest common denominator. “Our approach is consistent with where society is going with this,” says Eric Kleiman, Continental’s director of product marketing. Kleiman should remember Mom’s sage advice: “Just because others are doing something doesn’t make it right.”

Second, airlines invoke the tried-and-true “parents are responsible” defense. In Kleiman’s words, “Parents have to be responsible for the actions of their kids — whether they shouldn’t look at the screen or look away.”

Give me a break. Airplane passengers are a captive audience. Are we parents expected to hold our kids’ heads down on the tray table for two hours? Use a blindfold? Travel only in cars and buses in the future?

As a nation, we need to rethink the notion that — since parents are responsible for their kids — the rest of society has no corollary responsibilities. Parents find it very difficult to teach morality when the larger culture is at war with the lessons they’re struggling to teach.

Finally, what about the claim that “it’s just a movie” and kids will get over what they see? According to the Times,

Researchers who study child psychology said graphic images could stay with small children well into adulthood. Children can have nightmares from seeing literally a few seconds of a scene from a horrible movie, said Joanne Cantor, who taught communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Young children don’t have the cognitive ability to put the visual aside and say, “˜That’s just a movie.’