THE HYPOCRISY OF THE MEDIA

Last week, we came across a magazine published in the Vancouver's Lower Mainland, called Easy Living. While flipping through the most recent issue, the main feature of which concerned the local Molson Indy race and the fact that it may soon be no more because of recent legislation forbidding tobacco company sponsorship, we noticed an interesting column. "Opinions" offered a fierce, hate-spreading tantrum by Rafe Mair (former B.C. minister of health and popular radio talk show host) against smokers and tobacco companies. He called it "No Room for Hypocrites in the 'Smoking Wars' - A fire on one end, a fool on the other!"

Here was an hysterical spasm second to none, offered by one of the best-known media figures in this province. Example:

"... Now governments are nailing the tobacco industry head-on. These companies, long hiding behind the facade of respectability, are in the dock with other common miscreants. Companies which call themselves "The House of..." and masquerade behind meaningless but seemingly-respectable names like Philip Morris or Peter Stuyvesant, are now being treated as the drug dealers they really are."

Mr. Mair does of course know better. Smoking is not illegal, and if the tobacco companies are "common miscreants" which belong "in the docks", what about casino owners (profiteers of addictive gambling), manufacturers of alcoholic beverages (merchants of death on the highways and enablers of alcoholism and liver disease), etc. Mair even goes so far as to pose the dilemma this way: "tobacco either is or is or not evil." The world is a pitch-forks or halos proposition.

To which we can only respond: is gambling evil, or not evil? Is drinking evil, or not? When we're told that poor diet and a lack of excercise can be as great a risk for early death as smoking, what should we do about junkfood manufacturers who cater to children? Are these manufacturers "evil," and should cartoon characters on potato chip packages be banned? Should we take these manufacturers and put them "in the dock with other common miscreants" for crimes against the lifestyle education of young people? What about sex? What of unprotected sex -- is it reckless and irresponsible, or is it "evil?" And if it is evil, what should we do about the evil-doers? Should we jail kids found making out in parks for sex crimes? Who are the people or groups or companies or artists who promote or glamorize sex? How should they pay, and how long before we see "miscreants" "in the docks" for their health crimes? Tobacco is not evil. But people who spread puritanical hatred and lies, certainly are

It is surprising that tobacco companies do not go after this kind of low-league slander with everything they've got. It would set a good example and give courage to others who are undoubtedly next in line for the Rafe Mairs of this world. But that is the tobacco companies' problem, we guess.

Anxious to write a rebuttal to such an attack, we contacted "Easy Living" by phone.

We offered a free article -- or a letter to the editor -- offering an opposing point of view. The answer? "There is no room in our magazine for that kind of stuff". "No room at all?" we asked, "Not even a little corner in the last page?" "No room at all" was the answer.

So much for fair coverage. Obviously, this magazine believes that silencing dissenting opinion is the best way to render a good, patriarchal service to the community, which in the magazine's eyes is obviously not mature enough to make its own judgements. Once the theological verdict of "evil" is rendered, that is that. The antismoking cancer has indeed penetrated deep in the fabrics of society.

But get this. Easy Living, while wholeheartedly endorsing the rabid squealing of Mair against smokers and tobacco companies and silencing opposition, certainly does not refuse the dollars generated by the activities of "drug dealers" like the tobacco companies. The back of the magazine issue in question is a full-page ad for Vancouver's tobacco-sponsored Molson Indy, featuring the Player's Racing Team in full tobacco-company colours with the cigarette brand name prominently displayed! We kid you not.

Mair says tobacco sponsorship must disappear "to enforce the side of righteousness ... and there is no room for compromise." Easy Living won't hear anything to the contrary.

SEE THE FRONT PAGE OF THE MAGAZINE
SEE THE BACK PAGE OF THE MAGAZINE -- THE COMPROMISE

Question for Easy Living: how come gnawing off the hand that feeds you -- while you're being fed -- doesn't qualify as hypocrisy? May we suggest, that if you feel you are being morally raped by taking the money -- that you just don't take the money? Just a suggestion to help ease your angst as you gird your loins for battle against the Dark Side of the Force.

And while we're on the topic of good and evil, let's note that the top sponsor of the Molson Indy is Molson, the brewery. As in beer. Why do they choose to sponsor auto racing? Could this be a rapaciously and immoral plot to associate drinking ... with driving? Is something profoundly evil going on here that Rafe Mair missed?

"No Room for Hypocrites in the Smoking Wars"?

Hell, there's enough room for an entire army of anti-smoking zealots and all the ghosts of prohibitions past.

FORCES Canada

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