I hate trigger warnings — but these would actually be useful

Trigger Warning: This is a column about trigger warnings.

Our coddling culture of celebrating weakness is perilously close to letting the above sentence become a serious, totally real, non-satirical norm.

Take the latest label that was just added before Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel “Gone With The Wind.”

It says that the old book, which was made into a huge 1939 movie, amounts to a “romanticization of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery.” 

Um, duh! It’s a Civil War story that’s pro-Confederacy.

A more useful trigger warning I’d throw in front of “Gone With The Wind,” however, is: “This book is 1,472 pages long.” 

In fact, books, movies and TV shows almost never begin with a trigger warning that could actually help me make a decision. Here are some I’d like to see.

Trigger Warning: You will never be able to afford this beautiful home

Every flippin’ Nancy Meyers movie (“It’s Complicated,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” “The Holiday”) has a stunningly gorgeous Hamptons or California home where wealthy, relaxed Ina Garten-types drink red wine on beige couches that miraculously never stain. I won’t ever have one of these marvelous manses — and I am triggered!

The homes in Nancy Meyers’ films, like “Somethings Gotta Give,” are beautiful, expensive and appointed in mostly beige.
Columbia Pictures

Trigger Warning: This cruel film depicts an unrealistic number of days off

In “Dirty Dancing,” a family stays at a 1960s Catskills resort so long that their youngest daughter becomes a professional mambo dancer. How did Jerry Orbach land this Loch Ness Monster of vacation packages? Why do I envy a fictional doctor in a cabin?

Trigger Warning: Jar Jar Binks may enrage you

“Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” is a highly enjoyable movie … if you get up and leave the room whenever Jar Jar Binks is onscreen. The dumb face, that annoying voice. “Okie day”?!?


Jar Jar Binks
Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) was joined by annoying Gungan Jar Jar Binks in “The Phantom Menace.”
Lucasfilm Ltd.

Prince Harry's book Spare
Prince Harry’s bestselling memoir, “Spare,” had some shocking — and awkward — revelations.
Getty Images

Trigger Warning: Some parts of this book should have been snipped

Prince Harry’s unhinged memoir “Spare” was not just a barn-burning tome of off-the-charts entitlement and reckless family betrayal — it was also gross. The rogue royal decided to reveal that he’s circumcised and said that his boarding school pals knew each other’s privates status. “We called it Roundheads vs. Cavaliers,” he writes. Spare ME!

Trigger Warning: Tom Hanks does this weird thing with his voice

What the fresh hell was Tom Hanks doing with that loony Colonel Parker voice in Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis”?


Tom Hanks was widely mocked for his portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker in "Elvis."
Tom Hanks was widely mocked for his portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker in “Elvis.”
Warner Bros

Trigger Warning: This film is unbearably boring and you will have to pretend to love it at dinner parties

“Nomadland,” “Roma,” “The Power of the Dog” — so many hours could have been saved with a single helpful sentence.

Trigger Warning: These characters only eat in the hotel restaurant

A bunch of wealthy sex-obsessives schlep off to Sicily in Season 2 of “The White Lotus.” Do these lucky losers dine on frutti di mare by the sea? Do they hop around and cheat on their spouses at homey trattorias? Nah — they almost always eat at the damn resort restaurant. Triggered.


Marley & Me
“Marley & Me” is not just a nice movie about an adorable dog.
20th Century Fox

Trigger Warning: This film contains a dog death — whoops, sorry, spoiler alert!

When I go to an Owen Wilson comedy — he’s Dupree for, God’s sake! — the ending of “Marley & Me” is not what I am in the mood for.

Trigger Warning: You are about to commit six years of your life to a show with a horrible ending

If only this message had blazed across my screen before the incredible 2004 pilot of ABC’s “Lost.”

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