Posted on 05/04/2006 10:30:28 AM PDT by qam1
I KNOW I shouldn't say this but I feel sorry for smokers. Yet another of their freedoms is being critically examined by the state.
Earlier this year the NSW Minister for Health threw his weight behind calls for a study to examine whether smoking should be banned from private motor vehicles.
The noble intent of the proposed "state invasion" of the family car was to protect children from the harmful effects of passive smoking.
Smokers have a strategic problem. They have been wrong-footed by our shifting social mores.
Smokers - and especially the act of smoking, when done in a languid fashion - were once cool, chic and sexy. 60s hero James Bond smoked.
But his 90s spoof Austin Powers was clever enough not to smoke.
The sharing of a cigarette in bed was once synonymous with the warm afterglow of sizzling sex. "Got a light?" was a socially acceptable phrase for a woman to signal her interest in a man.
Much to the Quit Campaign's chagrin, "Like to share some tofu?" doesn't radiate the same coquettish appeal.
Who was the last Australian prime minister to be photographed in public, or private for that matter, smoking? Politicians were among the first to read our shifting social mores and they contorted their public persona accordingly.
Many Generation Xers, let alone Gen Ys, will find this hard to believe but it was once socially acceptable to light a cigarette in a restaurant between courses. Smokers once lit up in shops, in picture theatres and on aeroplanes without so much as a "do you mind?" to those in close proximity. It was their right to smoke wherever and whenever they pleased. Indeed it was the duty of non-smoking hosts to fetch, carry and empty ashtrays for smoking guests in a family home!
Not so today. Smokers are one group that our normally politically correct society happily, and without question, victimises. After all, theirs is a vile habit that is best performed between consenting adults in a darkened alley near large office buildings. No one dares to speak in a smoker's defence because how can you defend the indefensible? It's OK to limit the freedom of miscreants. They can have their freedom back when they repent their sins and quit.
Where did it all go wrong for smokers?
The problem is that smoking and other antisocial behaviour are the new social sins that were ushered in by the generations born after World War II. Not only is smoking offside, but so too is the excessive drinking of full-strength alcohol, speeding in a motor vehicle, and gambling (not so much high-roller gambling as addiction to poker machines).
What is the most offensive thing you could do at a polite middle-class dinner party? How about lighting a cigarette after the entree? Perhaps after sucking the smoke into your lungs and then exhaling through mouth and nostrils across the table you could gaily launch into a racist or sexist joke, just to cap off a truly offensive effort.
The offensiveness of this behaviour is not so much the act of smoking or the joke, it is the presumption that others at the gathering are like-minded: that they would accept your smoking and that they would find your racist/sexist jokes funny. Yet this was precisely the behaviour that would have been accepted amid polite circles in the 1960s.
A generation or two later and our values have shifted 180 degrees. New social sins have surfaced; our tattered old sins have been counselled, rehabilitated and in some instances fully domesticated.
What would have been the most offensive thing you could have done at that polite middle-class dinner party forty years ago? Surely not smoking; there would be an ashtray on the table. The telling of a racist or sexist joke, perhaps towards the end of the evening, would have been viewed as a little indelicate, perhaps, but everyone would have laughed nevertheless.
No, the most offensive thing you could have done at that polite 60s dinner party would have been to swear: perhaps to tell a joke in mixed company using the F word. Previous generations didn't mind smoking or sexist or racist overtones.
What they did care about was offending the "delicate ear" of women with "blue" language.
To be fair to women of that era, they would have been genuinely offended. Today we are offended by smoking, racism and sexism. Not to mention our most recent cause celebre, "disrespect for the environment". I also suspect that "disapproval of obesity" is just around the corner as the hot new sin for the next decade.
It is likely that we engage in behaviour that Australians of 2046 will find highly offensive.
Anyone, or any ethnic, social or interest group, could fall foul of our supposedly tolerant and politically correct society.
Getting out my crystal ball here:
Hard times will come again (as they always do).
Smoking will become chic again. People want a little comfort during hard times.
A pleasant plumpness will become fashionable as a sign of prosperity.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
NINNY NANNY STATE PING!!!!!!!!!!
It's obvious the worst of tax season is over - you're in foolish mode once again.
I just know he looks like Banzhaf or Glantz-or maybe Baldacci. He's sure limited on his photos-he keeps reposting the same ones over and over. The one with the smoker's kids being taken away will probably be next. LOL
Funny, I have always despised cigarette smoking.
I just started smoking cigars about a year ago. But only in the convertible, on the golf course or on my back patio - and only about one a month...
The smoking offended me since childhood. I could never understand the acceptance of someone having the audacity of blowing smoke at you - even when the culture in which I was brought up treated it like chewing gum.
I always took the old joke "if you don't smoke, I won't fart" as very poignant and directly to the point, and both activities are equally harmless, physically.
I am in a band and I love coming home from gigs now without smelly clothes thanks to the smoking ban in Washington state. That said, I say again that I am absolutely opposed to the government, via the power of the gun, forcing privately owned businesses to ban smoking in their establishments!
I'm libertarian on this one.
Your attitude and position is greatly appreciated.
A year or so ago I was talking to a guy, a non-smoker, with a band who no longer books gigs in Delaware. After the smoking ban went into effect, the places where they had been playing weren't getting the number of customers and couldn't/wouldn't pay what they used to pay. They now stick to playing in Maryland and Virginia.
The sharing of a cigarette in bed was once synonymous with the warm afterglow of sizzling sex. "Got a light?" was a socially acceptable phrase for a woman to signal her interest in a man.This GenXer finds it very easy to believe, it hasn't been that long, for goodness sake.[snip]
Many Generation Xers, let alone Gen Ys, will find this hard to believe but it was once socially acceptable to light a cigarette in a restaurant between courses. Smokers once lit up in shops, in picture theatres and on aeroplanes without so much as a "do you mind?" to those in close proximity. It was their right to smoke wherever and whenever they pleased. Indeed it was the duty of non-smoking hosts to fetch, carry and empty ashtrays for smoking guests in a family home!
Once upon a time, I remember the NON-smoking section was the little sealed-off room with no natural light.
Politics has made strange bedfellows. The smoking issue is 1 of them for me. I'm now finding myself sympathizing with smokers and considering taking it up just to rattle the PCers. ;-)
WWWWWWWWWHAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTZZZZZZZZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPP RRRRAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I WAS MISSIN YOU SOMETHIN' FIERCE LAST NIGHT!!!
Now, my thursday is complete!!!!!!!
DON'T YOU STOP NOW!!!! You keep on DELIVERIN' THE GOOOODDDDSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!
I LOVE that! Looks just like my Basset, Rufus, as a pup. New computer wallpaper, for sure.
Thanks for the chuckle! :)
Thanks for the ping! It's paarty time.
Needs to be repeated loudly and often!!
Me neither.
When I was in elementary school in the late 1970s, in art class we used to make ceramic ashtrays....And later my High school had a smoking lounge for students.
Hey Hey! 
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