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.
Tax-man, oh yeah I'm the tax-man....
If 5% appears too small TAX-MAN!
be thankful I don't take it all...TAX-MAN
I'M THE TAX-MAN, OH YEAH, I'M THE TAAAAXXXMAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN
Our lovely evening theme, courtesy of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.......aka The Beatles
Sent out by request to our vey own Raycpa!!! We love you Ray!!!!!!!
We made ashtrays in art class, and I also made a big stein.
I made a muzzle loading Hawken rifle in shop class. Imagine doing THAT today. They'd have a coronary.
"Yet another of their freedoms is being critically examined by the state"
Another of those spine-tingling statements. Pretty soon, there will be no freedoms to "critically examine".
The office at my kid's school is the old student smoking lounge. I mentioned that at a Parent-teacher meeting, and the libs fainted.
I'm surprised you didn't get decked for daring to mention something so un-PC..........
so was I. LOL.
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