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The anti-tobacco crowd is still trying to drive home the point that Joe Camel targeted children in an effort to get them to start smoking. I guess if a kid saw a Joe Camel billboard, the kid was going to figure out a way to overcome several laws already in place and demand a pack of Camels at the nearest convenience store. Such thinking suggests that we have living among us unsupervised children, like Peter Pan's Lost Boys, who roam around lighting up Camels.

If you think that the corporate world is out to manipulate you, then I suppose you can make yourself believe anything, even that a scuzzy-looking dromedary was really a comforting symbol to children, right up there with Bert and Ernie.

I distinctly remember a fellow trying to convince me a couple of years ago at the height of Joycelyn Elders' trying to bring down old Joe that Joe Camel was essentially phallic. Yes, that's right, phallic. This fellow was convinced that Joe Camel was an example of subliminal machismo and that the evil corporate enemy had purposely made Joe Camel an example of youthful sexual urgency.

That was certainly news to me. And the fellow stated his belief with such conviction that I thought I missed something, an article in the marketing section of the Wall Street Journal, maybe, or a Barbara Walters special in which she interviewed Joe Camel and asked him point-blank if his true symbolism wasn't sexual in nature.

Well, I went out and found myself a Joe Camel billboard and looked at it. In fact, I stared at it. I could not make myself see anything phallic to save my life. It looked like a camel to me. I could only deduce that my mind's eye was as pure as a mountain stream compared to wackos who saw something sexual.

Yes, he presumably was supposed to be a smooth character. He wore sunglasses and hung out at nightclubs and the like, but I always thought it was part of the bargain of living in the United States that you give advertisers their grain of salt while also ignoring them. Years ago, when I was a curmudgeon in training, the Hamm's bear did not make me drink beer and the Hamm's bear did cute, youthful things like go to ballgames, water ski and pitch his tent in nifty forest campgrounds. By the logic of the Hubert Humphrey faction, frogs chirping out its name will force children against their will to drink Budweiser.

Long, drawn-out scams, I mean trials, compel me to make Soucherisms: I would rather continue to enjoy the right not to be persuaded than have agents of the government safeguard my decision-making.

There is a new Camel advertising billboard, incidentally. It features a rather conventional looking camel with a larger camel, its silhouette, in the background. In order to be hip and fit in with other Minnesotans who are cheering Mike Ciresi and his band of gritty lawyers, I am desperate to understand the subliminal message of the silhouetted camel.

It must mean something. There aren't even any words, just the camel and its silhouette. Very intriguing. It will probably come up at a cocktail party, while they are still legal, that the silhouetted camel represents, uh, weight loss. That's it. If you smoke Camels you will be only a shadow of your former self. Why, the pounds will melt away and you will be sleek and trim.

That's what it means, you know. There are documents, too, but they are hidden from us as company secrets.