Bum a Smoke
Readers on the addictions and obsessions
Going for the Patch: Industry drives up your state's health care costs, corporation owns you. You win $246 million in compensatory and punitive damages from industry, then you own the corporation…that is until industry flirts with bankruptcy, triggered by a $12 billion bond, as outlined in Daniel Gross's moneybox article. Fraysters address the strange, co-dependent relationship between the Attorneys General who exacted huge judgments from the tobacco companies and the companies that are gasping for breath and facing potential extinction in the wake of these judgments. BernardYomtov makes a case against bankruptcy: What happens? The cigarette factories don't disappear; the tobacco growers don't switch to organic eggplant. Instead someone else buys the factories, buys the brand names, buys tobacco, and starts selling cigarettes. The only difference is that these new companies are rid of the liabilities of the bankrupt old ones. The money the companies are now paying to the states goes to the owners of the new tobacco cigarette companies instead.What has been gained, exactly? Teckels further illuminates the paradox, and takes a shot at the Attorneys General: Wasn't the purpose of suing them in the first place meant to hold them accountable for the health problems they have created, yet these AGs are perfectly willing and even eager to keep this company in business so it can sell more tobacco and kill more people just as long as PM can pay off their settlements. Who is the real criminal here, PM or the AGs trying to keep them in business? destructo thinks the problem is one larger than just smoke rings: The real culprit here are bloated state governments dependent on tax money, and short-sited politicians pandering to bleating do-goodnick anti-smoking weenies on the left who are accustomed to using government as the mechanism by which they impose their morals on the rest of us. Hoagywood aptly names the situation: "The Law of Unintended Consequenses." TexasSmoker challenges the Fray to "show me one penny of the setttlement that has been used for smokers health care." Journal Entry: kyosti initiates an active discussion on Ruth Franklin's culturebox, an article that picks apart the current issue of McSweeney's and the literary journal's momentary about face. Franklin sets off Fraysters by classifying, what she sees as, contrasting McSweeney's-New Yorker schools of short fiction. kyosti is a fan of the second novel by Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, that Franklin described as "horrendously disappointing—and noticeably McSweeney-esque." kyosti takes Franklin to task here, claiming that the novel "has much more to do with Martin Amis than with McSweeney's." Vidross keeps it going here: "But isn't Martin Amis a New Yorker writer too?" He concludes: So maybe we can think of a more accurate shorthand term for "New Yorker-esque"? Maybe "50's New Yorker Style", or "traditional domestic realism" or "John O'Harric", or "Dull", or "stuff the reviewer doesn't like but can't articulate precisely why". The_Shriv jumps in, bringing with him Nick Honby as a case study in the McSweeney's v. New Yorker taxonomic debate. Sort of reminds FrayEditor of the scene from Husbands and Wives when Judy Davis, while getting it on with Liam Neeson – in the heat of the moment – is busy mentally classifying everyone in her life as a "hedgehog" or "fox." Wordplay: Andy Bowers's catalog, "Words of War," opens with a reference to Blockbuster Video which, according to Bowers, was originally "a 4,000-pound World War II-era bomb." Bowers's claim prompts WVMicko to explore the handle's alternate origin: Au, contraire! Blockbuster Video is not necessarily "da bomb." The term also has a different and more modern meaning. Blockbuster: Black homebuyers seeking to break into prejudiced white neighborhoods during the sixties, often with the assistance of white agents who were acting for "undisclosed" clients. White homeowners were generally terrified of the blockbusters, claiming that, among other ills, property values would drop. Rebutting that claim was difficult, since property values DID drop as white flight afflicted the now-mixed neighborhoods and dozens of houses hit the market en masse. Seeing as how Blockbuster moved in on the territory of smaller video rental chains and drove down rental prices, the second meaning seems more likely, does it not?…KFA8:15 a.m.
Friday, Apr. 4, 2003
Academy of the Overrated: To Fred Kaplan's point that the Iraqi Republican Guard's weak out-of-conference schedule and swift disintegration reveal it as nothing more than a Trojan Horse, 1-2-Oscar remarks:
The Republican Guard was not overrated so much as the US military was undervalued. Opponents of the war, seeking any plausible grounds for criticism of US policies and performance, first focused upon the "slow progress" of the invading force, as if any failure to achieve total victory in one hundred hours or less was evidence of poor planning, poor leadership, and poor performance by the Americans. All of these shortcomings, they argued, could be laid at the doorstep of an incompetent, arrogant, overreaching administration.
Cicero concedes, with a harrumph, "now that the plan has been corrected and sound military tactics are in place, things are working correctly. What a shock!" He suggests that 1-2-Oscar has been shunning the Fray, waiting for the first "major battle victory."
It seems unlikely that the Iraqi leadership forgot that the Guard wasn't every good militarily. Maybe they wanted to make sure all its armor was destroyed or abandoned before the troops pulled back into the city so they wouldn't have to worry about the Guard turning on Saddam … Whatever the theory, it's getting a little late in the day for Plan B, or Plan Nine. I don't know whether to be relieved that nothing extremely weird has happened or worried about it.
In Protest: Best of the Fray hosts a steady debate on the boundaries of lawful protest, initiated by locdog with:
Here's something i've never quite got about these undemocratic, anti-american "peace" protesters. seems like every time they march some sort of mischief breaks out. when the protesters are asked to explain their hypocrisy, we are invariably treated to some starry-eyed blond who looks like her grasp on world affairs extends to what she's learned in her freshman poli-sci lectures, and her ruminations on the role of the modern american demonstrator: "since president bush won't listen to the people, we'll make him listen!"
Butterscotch_luv answers here that the mischievous represent only a fractional voice of the opposition. Deej, in reference to locdog's starry-eyed poli-sci blond, suggests, "What makes you think the other two thirds you speak of know more than that?" The thread continues as a veritable who's who of BOTF with rob_said_that positing that, "protesting against a government policy is still a guaranteed freedom under the 1st Amendment. What is undemocratic is trying to silence them." Historyguy maintains that the crimes of "secular, leftist, starry eyed blond protesters" pale in comparison to those they're challenging. Then there's J_Mann here: "The polls are lies. I was at the peace rally this weekend, and I can tell you for a fact, 70% of the people there didn't support the war." On the patriotism question, LT weighs in: "…Disagree strongly that they are being anti-American. While I think the more aggressive protesting is inefficient strategy, it just makes them law-breakers, not anti-American."
