Even though the makers of Expelled are trying to push their product to high school students, and insisting that it is acceptable viewing for young skulls full of mush, the MPAA thinks otherwise. They have given Expelled a PG rating, the reasons being:

thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking.

Mm-hmm. I guess Ben Stein shouldn’t be fretting about getting a PG rating for smoking, given that it’s his good buddy Rob Reiner who has helped agitate for that idiotic new MPAA criteria.  But does blatant plagiarism really count as a disturbing image?  Oh, wait, they probably meant the footage of Nazi and communist atrocities-or, rather, the disgusting and disgraceful exploitation of them to make an absurd point.  That’s every bit as loathsome as the attempts by the far left to smear Bush and anyone else they happen to disagree with with the Nazi label (I’m just flaming out of the political closet, aren’t I?).  As for the supposed “thematic material” in the film which is “supposedly” so objectionable, the MPAA should just come out and say it: this movie is a fountain of fibs and fallacies, is completely immoral at a time when we need to be improving scientific literacy instead of diminishing it, and your kids will be all the dumber for watching it.  In a world where parents let their kids watch The Doodlebops, however, I’m not so sure that valuing a child’s mental health is paramount among parental values nowadays.