Smoking is far out!
Sunday November 16, 2008
Categories: Culture
Why did we ever stop indulging?...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Why did we quit? Maybe something to do with lung cancer, emphysema, the smell, and the cost.
Shoot! I used to smoke Old Gold in college. I quit 9 years ago due to ever higher taxes and watching the states be two faced about the Tobacco Fund. Here they had been taking in tobacco taxes for years and then they go after the tobacco companies for more money which they have subsequently wasted
I'm trying to bring back tobacco pipe smoking. That's real independent mindedness.
If my guy could build a tree house like that, I might just overlook those negatives Larry cites.
Anybody else wonder when Everyman lost that carpentry instinct?
No matter what the product, that ad is instructive in how advertising has changed. For today, it's too slow, it has a contrived feel, and the camera shots are substandard.
There are much better uses of cigarettes on film. Hal Holbrook in "All the President's Men" comes to mind.
Some of us haven't stopped indulging..
I'm posting this in a garden outside a convent on Monte Mario in Rome, firing up a Gauloise Blonde as I type. I've been in Italy and France these last two months, and all the gorgeous girls smoking away (Trop chic, pour un pauvre garcon american comme moi- elles vont me tuer loin avant le tabac, je vous jure) did me in.. I had to join them.
Of course, most Europeans seem to prefer the American brands- Camel and Marlboro.. But I've been smoking French, with the occasional pack of Lucky Strikes ("They're Toasted!") to mix it up..
If you've ever seen footage of someone like Marlene Dietrich luxuriantly exhaling.. It's enough to knock anyone off the wagon.
I guess the reasons I quit were the morning coughing, before I could quiet my lungs' desire to be rid of the scum the inhaling left behind; the urgent lust for another ciggie; the knowledge that my parents died from emphysema, as a direct result of smoking and of lung cancer, another direct result of smoking; and the image of my darling baby daughter smoking, and the results I'd seen from tobacco addiction.
But pretty pictures! They're so much more important than reality!!
Maybe that has something to do with why you're not a liberal?
cx: But pretty pictures! They're so much more important than reality!! Maybe that has something to do with why you're not a liberal?
Wow. You can never go broke underestimating the ability of people to perceive sarcasm.
Quit after a heart attack-and I really loved Old Golds!
I'm well aware of all the downsides, with first hand knowledge of the heart aspect. But I really liked smoking, and sometimes I dream about the day I am old enough that the risks no longer outwiegh the pleasure. I might be the first 75 year old to fire on up after not touching them for 25+ years.
Wow. You can never go broke underestimating the ability of people to perceive sarcasm.
Agreed. And smoking is very glamourous.
Great ad, though.
Geez. Such angst. I am enjoying some nice, carefully rubbed out pressed cut Virginia tobacco from a century-old small company in an artisanally crafted Italian pipe.
I propose my lack of angst has a relationship to that.
This deserves mentioning, as largely lost in these types of conversations is how pleasurable smoking can be. Sure, it's dangerous. So's downhill skiing. What's your point?
karlub, let's start a club. I expect we'll fail, because a fad can never follow closely on something similar. Cigars are too recent in most people's memory.
As to Rod's point, I have on my desk a catalog from JR Cigar, which I received three weeks ago. It is too beautiful to throw away with the other junk mail. Even though I've no intention of ordering any cigars, I thumb through it on occasion. The exquisite imagery takes me for a flight of fancy into a lifestyle I am too parsimonious to lead.
Don't all the vices market themselves that way?
Sounds good to me, Michael. We'll have to avoid Michelle from the woodburning stove thread, though. She doesn't even like the smell of outdoor woodsmoke on a brisk winter day.
That sort of thing baffles me, but as the English say: It takes all kinds to make a world. And far be it for me to willingly impringe on such delicate sinuses.
You know, I guess I never smoked because I never really got sucked in by the glamour. I guess Marlene Dietrich couldn't compete with the image of my stepmother digging through ashtrays looking for long butts when stuck in the 'burbs without a car, and ran out of smokes.
Or maybe it was that guy we visited to sing Christmas carols to who'd have to take breaks on his own balcony (since smoking near an oxygen tent is a /bad/ thing) to puff on cigarettes through that hole in his neck.
Yeah, kinda loses its glamour right about then.
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