Thank You for Smoking

wanly.

'The reason we asked him to be on this show with us is that he started smoking Camel cigarettes when he was fifteen. Because, he told me, he wanted to be quote cool like Old Joe. He also tells me he's quit smoking Camels since learning about the cancer. And that he no longer thinks smoking is quote cool.' Thunderous applause.

Nick yearned for a cyanide capsule. But now Oprah turned to face Nick.

'Nick Naylor is a vice president of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. You might think with a name like that that they're some sort of scientific institution. But they are the tobacco industry's main lobby in Washington, D.C., and Mr. Naylor is their chief spokesman. Thank you for coming, Mr. Naylor.'

'Pleasure,' Nick croaked, though what he was experiencing was far from pleasure. The audience glared hatefully at him. So this is how the Nazis felt on opening day at the Nuremberg trials. And Nick unable to avail himself of their defense. No, it fell to him to declare with a straight face that ze Fuhrer had never invaded Poland. Vere are ze data?

'Who'd like to start?' Oprah said.

Nick raised his hand. Oprah and his fellow panelists looked at him uncertainly. 'Is it all right,' he said, 'if I smoke?' The audience gasped. Even Oprah was taken aback.

'You want to smoke?'

'Well, it's traditional at firing squads to offer the condemned a last cigarette.'

There was a stunned silence for a few seconds, and then someone in the audience laughed. Then other people laughed. Pretty soon the whole audience was laughing.

'I'm sorry, but I don't think that's funny,' Mrs. Maclean said.

'No,' said the National Teachers' Association lady. 'I don't either. I think it's in extremely poor taste.'

'I have to agree,' Goode said. 'I don't see the humor in it. And I suspect Mr. Williger doesn't either.' But Cancer Kid was laughing. God bless him, he was laughing! Nick was seized with love. He wanted to adopt this young man, take him back to Washington, cure him of his cancer, give him a high-paying job, a car — a luxury car — a house, a pool, a big one so he could keep up with his swimming. Nick would buy him a wig, too, and get him eyebrow hair transplants. Anything he wanted. He felt so badly about the cancer. Maybe, with radiation…

Forget the kid! He's history! Press the attack! Attack! Attack!

'Oh why don't you leave him alone,' Nick wheeled on Goode. 'And stop trying to tell him how he ought to feel.' He turned to Oprah. 'If I may say so, Oprah, that is typical of the attitude of the federal government. 'We know how you should feel.' It's this same attitude that brought us Prohibition, Vietnam, and fifty years of living on the brink of nuclear destruction.' Where was this going? And how had nuclear deterrence gotten in? Never mind! Attack! 'If Mr. Goode wants to score cheap points off this young man's suffering just so he can get his budget increased so he can tell more people what to do, well I just think that's really, really sad. But for a member of the federal government to come on this show and lecture about cancer, when that same government for nearly fifty years has been producing atomic bombs, twenty-five thousand of them, as long as we're throwing numbers around, Mister Statistics, bombs capable of giving every single person on this planet, man, woman, and child, cancers so awful, so ghastly and untreatable, so, so, so incurable, that medical science doesn't even have a name for them yet… is' — Quick, get to the point! What is the point?—'. is just beneath contempt. And frankly, Oprah, I'd like to know how a man like. this comes to occupy a position of such power within the federal bureaucracy. The answer is — he doesn't have to get elected. Oh no. He doesn't have to participate in democracy. He's above all that. Elections? Consent of the governed? Pah! Of the very people who pay his salary? Oh no. Not for Ron Goode. He just wants to cash in on people like poor Robin Williger. Well, let me tell you something, Oprah, and let me share something with the fine, concerned people in the audience today. It's not pleasant, but you, and they, need to hear it. The Ron Goodes of this world want the Robin Willigers to die. Awful, but true. I'm sorry, but it's a fact. And do you know why? I'll tell you why. So that their . budgets' — he spat out the distasteful word—'will go up. This is nothing less than trafficking in human misery, and you, sir, ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

Ron Goode never recovered. For the next hour, he could only scream at Nick, in violation of every McLuhanesque injunction against putting out heat in a cool medium. Even Oprah strained to calm him down.

For his part, Nick assumed a serene mask of righteous serenity and merely nodded or shook his head, more in sadness than in anger, as if to say that his outburst only validated everything he had said. 'All well and fine, Ron, but you haven't answered the question,' or, 'Come on, Ron, why don't you stop pretending you didn't hear me,' or, 'And what about all those people you irradiated during those nuclear test blasts in New Mexico? Want to talk about their cancers?'

During one of the commercials Ron Goode had to be physically restrained by a technician.

The head of NOMAS and the representative of the teachers' organization did what they could to come to the aid of their federal benefactor, but every time they ventured a comment, Nick cut them off with 'Look, we're all on the same side, here,' a statement so dazzling that it left them mute. When they finally rejoined that they could not find one square inch of common ground between their humanitarianism and the fiendish endeavors of the tobacco industry, Nick saw his opening and pounced. No one, he said, was more concerned about the problem of underage smoking than the tobacco companies. Not, of course, that there was a shred of scientific evidence linking smoking with disease, but the companies, being socially responsible members of the community, certainly did not condone underage smoking — or drinking and driving, for that matter — for the simple reason that it was against the law. Here was the ideal moment to unveil their new anti-underage smoking campaign.

'As a matter of fact, we're about to launch a five-million-dollar campaign aimed at persuading kids not to smoke,' Nick said, 'so I think our money is on the table.'

6

Nick heard the urgent chirruping on his cellular telephone inside his briefcase when he retrieved it from the greenroom in Oprah's studio, but ignored it. He continued to ignore it on the drive to the airport. The cab driver, half-curious, half-annoyed, finally asked him if he was going to answer it. It pleased Nick to know that BR was going through significant agonies on the other end, so he did not pick up. In the waiting lounge at O'Hare, he did, more because people were staring than because he wanted to put BR out of his misery.

'Five million dollars?' It was BR, all right. Nick put his blood pressure at about 180 over 120. 'Are you out of your mind?'

'Probably. It's been a very stressful period for me. But I'm feeling much better now.'

'Where in the name of God are we supposed to get five million for, for anti-smoking ads?'

'It's not all that much when you think about it. RJR is spending seventy-five million a year on those stupid dick-nosed camels. You'll probably get a lot of good press out of this.'

BR was fulminating, making legal threats, saying they were going to put out the story that he was having a nervous breakdown. On and on. It was very satisfying. In the middle of it, Nick heard BR say to someone, 'Who? Oh, Jesus.' Then he said to Nick, 'It's the Captain on line two.'

'Give him my regards.'

'Stay on the line.' Nick stayed on, not because BR had asked him,but to see what the reaction would be from the most powerful man in Tobacco to the news that an upstart executive VP had just committed his industry to spending some serious money to alienate potential customers.

He waited for over ten minutes. They called his flight, but the people at the gate wouldn't let him on while he was using his cellular telephone.

BR came back on. His voice had changed from open bellowing to ice water squirted through clenched teeth. 'He wants to see you.'

'He does?' Nick said. 'What about?'