“To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.”
DC smokers, will you accept the Great American Smokeout Challenge, sponsored by the American Cancer Society? If you're feeling up to the task--which involves abstaining for one day (today)--check out the society's guide to quitting and staying that way (sadly, the guide was unavailable to one Mark Twain, the speaker of this post's title. Perhaps with it, he would've quit only once, but I doubt it.)
For those of you who are too cool to quit, join me in asking Michael Kinsley to extend to us his blessing of President-Elect Barack Obama's addiction.
Kinsley's opening graf is great:
It is still okay to discriminate against one group of Americans. This discrimination is not only legal, it is encouraged. You see members of this oppressed minority huddled outside in rain and snow, forbidden to seek refuge. No one feels sorry for them. And yet we may have just elected one of these pariahs as president.
As is his reasoning for leaving Obama be:
Obama's steely calm is now one of our country's major assets. If he needs an occasional cigarette to preserve it, let's hand him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way.
Everything in between those two points, which come at the beginning and end of Kinsley's essay, is tsk-tsk white noise. (If I may be so bold, Why do talking heads refrain from haranguing overeaters with the same ferociousness that they attack smokers? I know the answer, but it's worth pointing out--at every available opportunity--that public health nuts are inconsistent with their bullying.)
I did a quick poll of two of Washington City Paper's former smokers, and neither believes that smoking is the only means of preserving Obama's "steely calm" (though one of them suggested that it would be a rough week in the country if Obama decided to quit cold turkey). The argument is bunk for another reason: "whether to meddle" shouldn't be decided on a sliding scale of importance. If the president is important enough to be left alone, we all are. And if he's not, we're all fucking doomed.
In honor of the day, I've unearthed a delightful rebuttal to the "those things will kill you" crowd, and it comes courtesy of the poet Graham Lee Hemminger:
Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.
I like it, so I do it.
Good luck to all you quitters. Today, I'll smoke your 'baccy for ya.
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5:07 am
Mike, you might be happy to learn that even Mark Twain was one of us. That quote of his? A myth. Mark Twain hijacked as a spokesperson by the anti-smoker crowd. A lie but what's new for them?
According to Snopes.com (that myth-buster site):
Mark Twain uttered a great many memorable lines during his lifetime, but he has also had many a saying attributed to him that he never gave voice to. Other apocryphal Twainisms include: "To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did. I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times." http://www.snopes.com/quotes/twain.asp
In fact, Twain found the anti-smoker as utterly annoying as many other people who want to be left alone to smoke. From Mark Twain in The Californian, June 17, 1865,Answers to Correspondents:
"MORAL STATISTICIAN. - I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc..."
The rest here: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/paine/index.html
Twain must roll over in his grave everytime an anti mutters his name in their war on smokers.
Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment
(C.L.A.S.H.)
7:47 am
Wait, are you suggesting that society doesn't make pariahs out of fat people? Are you kidding me?
The day 8 decades worth of movies equate being fat with being cool, that's the day you can say that society makes it harder on smokers than on fat peeps.
Also, I don't see how that fake-Twain quote is even anti-smoking. It seems to be belittling the very idea that you ought to quit permanently.
9:39 am
Reid, "Pariahs"? Sure. But public health people openly condone scorning smokers in a way that they don't condone attacking the obese. After all, how often do you witness a thin person tell a fat person eating an eclair, "Those things will kill you, y'know"?
Audrey, I'm sorry to learn that the Twain quote is apocryphal--I interpreted it as a pro-smoking quote. After all, quitting 1,000 times comes out to once every two weeks or so, which isn't quitting at all!
1:21 pm
He said “apocryphal”. This is a job for Ernest.
1:36 pm
Ernest's work is never done.
1:48 pm
"apocryphal", for phuck's sake... Ern, unleash your fury.
2:08 pm
It's easy to make that mistake, Mike, but indeed the anti-smokers are the ones who use it for their purposes and even put it up on their own web sites. To them, it means Twain would have quit if only tobacco, as they imply he agrees (with them), weren't so addicting.
I believe in backing up my statements so here is just one example: http://www.smokefreemv.com/quit.html
2:25 pm
Whether or not the quote is Twain's, aying that tobacco is addictive is neither pro-smoker or anti-smoker. It's just largely true. You can admit that smoking is addictive and not be against it. You can also be against smoking without scorning smokers.
2:48 pm
Ernest's silence on this thread is deafening.
2:52 pm
Dave, did Cherkis ever get back to you on that song title?
3:09 pm
Amanda, thank you for making it sound so nice and sparkling clear. I also think it a bit amusing that the smoke exhaled from smokers' nostrils esembles a pair of tusks.
“apocryphal” ? Hmm. Riggs, this won't do.
4:49 pm
Amanda's point of view regarding the Twain (mis)quote is why the anti-smokers have gotten as far as they have. The general public has little understanding over how their propaganda campaign works. The Twain issue is just one symptom (a clue) of the whole disease.
It doesn't matter that YOU don't think it's neither smokers' rights or anti-smoker. The ANTI-SMOKERS have taken ownership of it to USE for their stop smoking material. THEY think it's theirs (anti-smoker). The "addict" has been one of their stongest weapons to intervene in people's choices through legislation and taxation: "They (smokers) wouldn't smoke if they weren't addicted and not thinking straight because of it. Therefore we must 'help' them." They DO use it against us.
And don't ignore the fact that Twain NEVER said it. Yet the anti-smokers use it to shore up support for themselves. Just like using any other celebrity to enhance their "product."
Amanda, you are not an ANTI-smoker obviously. It's possible you smoke but I'm guessing you don't. So then, that would make you a NON-smoker -- a different animal from the antis who are rabidly for scorning smokers. They try to lay claim to you (the non-smoker) too and say they speak for you.
What makes it difficult for the smokers' rights people to combat the anti-smokers hate campaign -- that DOES seek to scorn (and that's putting it mildly) smokers -- is the naivete over what's going by the non-smokers.
That's why I was attracted by Mike's piece in the first place. It's a welcomed rare voice.
5:14 pm
Thanks for asking Ted. No he did not. I am still unawares as to the title of the song. Little help?
2:24 pm
this is a bit after the fact, but you all do realize that 'peggy', 'bobby' and 'ernest' are, in fact, the same person, right? admins check the ip from which this idiot posts. he has MPD.
good luck quitting smoking, smokers.
that is all. good day.
10:06 am
Why you little dirty piece of poo, eddie. How dared you. Someone should learn you a lesson.