The whole aim of practical politics," wrote H.L. Mencken in 1920, "is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Posted on 02/09/2007 6:33:28 AM PST by rellimpank
Some years ago, when I was freelancing at a mutual fund company, I took a break to go downstairs and smoke my pipe. On my way back upstairs, I found myself sharing the elevator with one of my co-workers in the corporate communications department.
"Ewww, smoke!" she exclaimed. "Let me out of here! I don't want you to give me cancer!"
Let's absorb this slowly. My fellow worker thought that: 1) Cancer was contagious. 2) She could "catch" cancer from the smell of tobacco smoke clinging to my clothes -- not from the smoke itself, which was long gone outdoors, but from the smell alone.
She was a dish, too. Pity.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Whatever. I think it's in your head. While it certainly smells of tobacco smoke (amongst other things), none of our non-smoking friends or relatives seems to find our house so stinky that it bothers them in any significant way. Or, if it does, they have the good manners not to say anything about it, which was my original point. Unless you know somebody very well (and even not then, usually), telling someone that they "stink", nevermind "smell", is very rude, offensive even. But I guess this is just a general part of the decline of civility in society, that people feel free to make offensive comments to total strangers.
LOL!
Presumably, so long as your raging hormonal needs remained unsatisfied, neither did it bother you!
Stating the obvious is such a waste of time, but it is necessary from time to time: foul smelling people are not limited to smokers...
Dayyyuuuum! Call hilary!
Universal Soap Care now!!
"Why do otherwise intelligent individuals form seething masses of idiocy when they engage in collective action?"
<>
"...the madness and confusion of crowds knows no limits, and has no temporal bounds."
This article post is about Global Warming!
To all the opportunists who hijacked this thread: Did you quit smoking? I catch a whiff of fascism in the air...
In the same vein:
"At the same time we have, ironically, come to fear the world around us as never before. In the absence of real risks, we invent new and often quite fanciful ones. The better off in our society, who have the least to really worry about, are most prone to this novel neurosis of our age – fearing instant death from the contents of their dinner plates, unless chosen with obsessive care, and 'unacceptable' physical decline from failure to follow every faddist trend recommended by their personal fitness trainers. We fear that our children are constantly in danger from strangers – despite the fact that the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family – and feel compelled to ensure their safe arrival at school by transporting them in people carriers – while at the same time decrying the depletion of fossil fuels and 'unacceptable' levels of environmental pollution – and we wonder why our children are getting fat. In this constant state of irrational fretfulness we start lose our faith in anything which looks like science – preferring to put our faith in the 'Emperor's Clothes' of homeopathic and other forms of 'complementary' medicine, while withdrawing children from rational and safe vaccination programs aimed at preventing an epidemic of measles following irresponsible scare mongering in our newspapers."
"Our flight from rationality is evidenced in other panics which currently preoccupy us. The development of biotechnology, for example, which holds real promise for the eradication of famine in much less fortunate parts of our planet, is resisted by the fit and well-fed for fear that we shall release Frankenstein's monster – despite the fact that Americans having been eating this stuff for over a decade without a single ill-effect. As the extremists among them plan their activist campaigns using mobile phones, they see no irony in trying to convince us all that the aerials and masts which facilitate such coordinated action will fry our brains – and particularly our children's brains – again despite the absence of any real evidence for such beliefs. They are the same people that once argued that steam trains would asphyxiate all their passengers if they travelled at more than thirty miles per hour, and that dangerous electricity could leak from uncovered light fittings. The trouble now is that people believe them."
"It is in the context of this post-rational era that the notion of 'lifestyle correctness', founded largely on narcissistic health ideals, has come to shape the direction of people's lives in ways which once characterised the power of formal religions. In place of faith in the creeds and tenets of the established church, we now follow slavishly the equally false promises of the health promotion professions – those who would have us believe that if we lead the 'good' life we will have unending life and beauty."
At least on those occasions you can ask them, "Is that a fire in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"
You noticed it when you kissed her on the lips, didn't you?
I think that's only in certain clubs in Tijuana and Bangkok.
The whole aim of practical politics," wrote H.L. Mencken in 1920, "is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Also, back in the days of Cro-Magnon Man and I. Magnin Woman.
The two smells that offend me most are from people who wipe themselves with their left hand instead of using toilet paper and smokers who fell it is their right to let everyone around them smell their stinky habit as they perform their ability to play with fire and burning cigarettes, cigars and pipes. As for your guessing of what happened to the point you thought you were trying to make, the drug test is on Monday, study hard over the weekend.
This is just a conversion neurosis, guilt of their excesses modified to fear. And fear that approaches paranoia.
Yes, I have been to Corning. Why do you ask? ;-)
Kind of the opposite of the "hotfoot."
He spent ten happy years pointing that fact out to people in elevators who believed that only tobacco and garlic annoyed others.
Maybe so, however:
"Money may be the mother's milk of politics, but self-righteous hysteria is its drug of choice."
Gets my vote for most memorable.
All that being said, the woman in the elevator was definitely rude.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.