Smoking on the big screen

Re: 'Smoking's sinful sensuality in movies' Meghan Daum 5-19-07

Meghan Daum's half-hearted attempt to defend smoking in movies for the sake of history in the art of movie-making doesn't address what is going on in real life. Indeed, in the end, she gives-in to the inevitability of surrender to the tyranny of anti-smoking zealots.

Even though smoking has been cut in half over the past 40 years, there are 50 or 60 million people who smoke. Smokers have been demonized as social outcasts, subjected to punishing taxes, and held up to public hatred and ridicule by the behavior police. Yet they still exist and fat people are being targeted for the same fate.

So what's the point in adding movies to the denial of reality? People from all walks of life smoke, some more than others. It would be a shame to make believe they don't, as it's depicted in most television programming. But it is still permissible to show alcohol use and drug abuse on a regular basis, even to extremes. No problem, as long as the great evil of smoking is going on somewhere out there behind the lens, with fat people.