bummer
Posted on 12/16/2008 10:04:21 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I feel sort of cheated - like discovering that your spouse has been sneaking out the back door with a pack of Pall Malls.
It doesn't fit the character type either. McCain, yes.
The guy was a two-pack-a-day smoker for 25 years and looks like a man desperately in need of a fix. But Obama? Mr. Coolunderfire?
I guess part of it is the way we characterize smokers and smoking in this day and age. What was once accepted, if not encouraged - the Flintstones did a commercial for Winstons in the old black-and-white days of television - is now thought of as a dirty vice and feared, rightfully so, as a brutal killer.
We boomers saw both sides - a young Johnny Carson smoking on the set of "The Tonight Show;" a reclusive, dying Carson, years later, battling emphysema. We embraced the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel as pop culture icons, even as another icon and former chain smoker warned us in a posthumous public service ad, "My name is Yul Brynner, and by the time you see this, I will be dead."
I never smoked, thankfully, but my dad did, as did half the newsroom when I got into this business 30-some years ago.
An old managing editor of mine was hooked on Lucky Strikes, manically stoking one after another with his yellow, nicotine-stained fingers. Cigarettes were so essential to his existence that he sometimes forgot he had a lighted one in his hand. We'd make bets on how long the ash trail would grow before breaking apart, singeing his skin and sparking a yelp that made the whole experience worthwhile.
He's still alive and in his 80s. My dad turns 80 next year.
Luck of the draw.
An estimated 440,000 Americans die each year from smoking-related causes. In Europe, where smoking is accepted far more than it is here, related deaths number well over 1 million a year.
That someone with the extraordinary intelligence and drive of a Barack Obama admits he has fallen off the wagon since quitting to run for president shows how horribly addictive smoking is. The man who would stare down wartime adversaries can't tame the beast inside himself without the help of Nicorette gum.
As for the message it sends kids, well there's that, too.
He is the president, though, and I'm sure the Secret Service will keep a lid on those midnight runs to the Circle K or any flicking of cigarette butts on the Back Lawn.
When it comes to presidents, we're used to being cheated on.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
shite, his smoking is all I like about our new Massa
Well said!
Smoking is probably Obama’s only redeemeing quality.
lol
hmmm I don’t want Biden either...
Just because it is not the main worry, it doesn’t mean it is not a worry.
Obama can’t even kick a deadly addiction, how can he be able to handle far greater pressure?
They weren't worried about the message Bill Clinton was sending to children. Proof positive that to Liberals smoking is the worst of all sins.
bummer
the voters should have known but didn’t really care
My comment to the writer:
“You should feel cheated simply because he was elected President of the United States of America....not because he smokes!”
Yeah!
Maybe he’ll repeal all the hypocritical anti-smoking laws that are killing businesses all over America!
[not]
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Unconfirmed list of POTUS smokers:
The Smokers:
2. John Adams, 1797-1801 A cigar man
4. James Madison, 1809-17 Also a stogie-lover
6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-29 Yet another cigar man
7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-37 Liked a cigar, but more so chewing tobacco
8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-41 All about the pipe
9. William Henry Harrison, 1841 Pipe guy too
10. John Tyler, 1841-45 Cigars
12. Zachary Taylor, 1849-50 Cigars too
17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-69 Liked cigars
18. Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1869-77 Cigar fiend, rumored to smoke 20 stogies a day
21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-85 Cigars
22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-89 Chew
23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-93 Cigar
24. Grover Cleveland, 1893-97 Continued to chew
25. William McKinley, 1897-1901 Obsessive secret smoker of cigars behind closed doors
27. William Howard Taft, 1909-13 At 300 hundred pounds he quit cigar smoking when he reached office, which may have resulted in even further weight gain
29. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-23 Cigars
30. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29 Liked to use cigars as a prop to punctuate political discussions
31. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-33 Incessant smoker of high-end cigars
32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-45 Finally, a cigarette guy and our first chain smoker president
34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-61 Cigarettes
35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-63 Cigars and cigarettes (loved Cubans) and it’s reported Jackie O went through 3 packs of Salems a day
36. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-69 Cigars and the occasional rolled cigarette
37. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-74 The occasional cigar
38. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr , 1974-77 Nonstop pipe smoker
42. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993- 2001 Yeah, you know it
did it. lol
Carson was born in 1925. At the time, his life expectancy was 57. If he reached 65, his life expectancy was 13 more years.
He died a biscuit short of 80.
The smoking lamp is lit !
I don’t believe he ever did quit smoking. Everyone I know who quit, including me, gained weight. He never did gain any weight.
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