I realized today that even though I'm approaching (too
rapidly) the end of my seventh decade on this planet, I am no closer to
understanding some aspects of human nature than I was at twelve. Then upon further reflection, I came to the
conclusion that some people and things make just as little sense and are just
as screwed up now as I thought they were
when I was twelve. Over the next as of
yet undetermined period, I will occasionally look closer at some of these
issues. I guess it's sort of channeling my inner Andy Rooney, and since he has
passed, maybe the mantle of curmudgeonry(?) has fallen to me. I will probably publish these in FaceBook as a
series of monographs and in my blog as well.
1. When I
was a kid, cigarettes were jokingly referred to as "coffin nails" and
we smoked them anyway, as did our fathers before us. If we had some sense of
cigarettes being harmful in some manner, why did so many bright people start and/or
continue smoking? A recent short film I saw sheds some light on what I already
knew to be the history of Tobacco.
During WWII American tobacco companies (and to be fair, the Coca Cola
Corporation) seized on GIs being away from home and overseas to cloak their
mercenary zeal in patriotism. "Lucky Strike Goes to War" was a popular
print ad, showing two smokes, packed in a small khaki cardboard box, that were actually put in every pack of
rations sent overseas. Citing a
patriotic motive, R.J. Reynolds and others used the opportunity to get a
generation of Americans (my dad's generation) addicted to cigarettes and it worked!
My
father and others, either pipe smokers
or nonsmokers, came home to a post war advertising frenzy aimed at selling
newly available consumer goods as well as, now in more demand than ever, cigarettes. Cigarettes were ubiquitous, in film, print
media, radio, and very soon in the new advertisers' midnight fantasy - television.
Any legitimate attempts to focus on health issues related to tobacco were blunted by the psuedo-
science Marshall Institute, retained by the tobacco industry to cast doubt on
the real hard truths emerging from the emphysema, lung cancer and heart disease
spikes seen in post war America. The Marshall institute's agenda was not to
disprove the harmful effects of tobacco, as that is impossible. Instead, men in white lab coats and movie
stars, John Wayne, who lost a lung to cancer among them, shilled for Big Tobacco, ballyhooing tobacco
as a nerve calmer, which would help you concentrate, and declaring that
"Four out of five doctors smoke Camels." What the Marshall Institute was paid huge
bucks to do was not to disprove real health claims, but to just cast doubt on
the hard science emerging in the 1960s and 70s regarding the real costs of smoking.
It must have worked, since I remember my dad sending me to the store for a pack
of Winstons and with the change left from the quarter, I could buy myself a
popsicle! Hell, if it was ok for dad, why not. I became a smoker at 12, as did
many baby boomers. Of course I smoked Winstons, just like Dad. (I quit at 30) For a brief period, The Marshall Institute was
also retained by big chemical companies in a losing cause trying to keep DDT
afloat as the wonder insecticide.
As we know now, the
smoke and mirrors only worked for so long, and the image of the sophisticated
smoker in films, print and TV is
essentially gone today, and curiously the bulk of the smoking population in
America is now made up of lower economic classes (who will now spend $300 per
month or more on their habit) and those hard case addicts who will smoke until
the last raspy breath is gone. Tobacco companies now are primarily pushers,
servicing a seedy market. Likewise Rachel Carson fought the good fight and DDT
is no longer sprayed over entire neighborhoods like sunscreen.
Why,
you say, am I rehashing this information? Well, the Marshall Institute is still
at work, now hired by America's giant energy companies, and their mandate is
still the same. Cast doubt in any way possible to blunt the thrust of the mass
of real scientific data on global warming. Their philosophy is the same, as
well "we don't have to disprove or prove anything, that's for real
scientists, we just have to plant the seeds of doubt." This approach also manifests itself in such
bizarre areas as "Creation Science and "Intelligent Design,"
neither of which is scientific or
intelligent. As long as we remain a
nation where superstition trumps data, we are hindered in our efforts to become
an educated and aware society. It's bad
enough that China, a major polluter, is aware but apparently doesn't care, but
at least they aren't in a religion induced coma of denial.
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