Thank You for Smoking

selected Nightline to try to explain why — on earth — he had blown his kingdom for a blow job.

'Thirty seconds,' Nick heard in his earpiece. He was nervous. He'd been on Nightline before but the stakes had never been this high. He could feel himself being watched, could sense on the other side of the lens the Captain, BR, Polly, Jeannette — watching in the greenroom, a few doors away — Heather, Lorne Lutch, Joey, his proud mother — my son, the tobacco spokesman — Jack Bein and maybe even Jeff Megall, who would be hoping that Nick would fail miserably, for the Lese majeste of having declined his meal of transparent raw fish.

Be cool, he told himself. In a hot medium, coolness is all, limpidity is better, and not picking your nose is key. He did his breathing exercise, a ten-second breath let out in twelve. He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. Somewhere he had read that it takes Japanese monks twenty years of silence, green tea, and brown rice to empty theirs. Tonight, however, he wasn't looking for enlightenment, just a reduced pulse rate.

Suddenly through the earpiece he heard — violent coughing. Was it the engineer?

Oh no, for up came the familiar voice-over: 'Cigarettes… some estimates are that as many as half a million Americans will die this year from smoking.'

Swell, Nick thought, we're off to a fine start: an image of a terminal cancer patient spitting up burst alveoli.

'Yet despite,' Koppel continued, 'the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 requiring stiff warning labels on cigarettes, people continue to smoke. Now, a U.S. senator. '

Nick did another breathing exercise.

'Good evening. From Washington, I'm Ted Koppel and this… is Nightline.'

That trademark pause reminded Nick of the beat that Edward R. Murrow used to insert in his famous wartime radio dispatches from London during the blitz. 'This… is London.' Dear old chain-smoking old Edward R. Murrow. Dear old, dead old Edward R. Murrow.

'… later, we'll be joined by Vermont Senator Ortolan K. Finisterre, author of the Senate bill, and by Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby. But first, this report from correspondent Chris Wallace… '

Wallace's wretchedly thorough report brought up the Lancet study predicting 250 million deaths worldwide from smoking by the end of the century — one in every five people in the industrialized nations. Bitch of a study, that one. Nick made a mental note to try, anyway, to cast aspersions on the world's most respected medical journal.

'Let me start with you, Senator. Cigarettes already carry explicit warnings. Why do you need this additional label?'

'Well, Ted, as you pointed out in your excellent introduction…'

Brown-nose. But — a miscalculation! Koppel was too proud to be blatantly sucked up to, especially by a politician.

'But surely the warning is already dramatic,' he riposted. Nick cheered him on. 'It states the risks. 'Lung cancer,' 'emphysema,' 'heart disease,' 'fetal asphyxiation.' Why do we need a skull and bones?'

'Unfortunately, Ted, many people in America can't read, or can't read English, so this measure is very specifically intended for their benefit. I think we have a responsibility to those people.'

'All right. Mr. Naylor, and I should point out that however people feel about smoking, you've certainly been a front-line warrior for your industry, by virtue of having been recently kidnapped and nearly killed by an apparently radical anti-smoking group—'

'Apparent to me,' Nick said.

'Perhaps I should start by asking you if you believe that cigarettes are harmful.' A softball.

'Well, Ted, I take what I'd call the scientific position, namely that a lot more research is needed before we come to any responsible conclusion on the matter.'

Good, excellent. In a single sentence he had allied himself with Responsible Science.

'Even though there have been to date more than sixty thousand studies showing a link between smoking and cancer alone?'

Nick gave a world-weary nod of the head to indicate that he was not surprised that this raggedy-ass canard had been dragged out. 'I think I recognize that figure you just cited, Ted. If I'm not mistaken, it comes from former Surgeon General Koop's book, the one he got a rather substantial advance for.'

'I'm not sure what you're suggesting.'

'Just that Mr. Koop, like many other political figures, is not without his own agenda.'

A bit tortured, perhaps, but he'd at least kicked a little putative dirt onto the shoes of a venerable doctor, a pediatric surgeon, at that. A man who saved the lives of… little children. Don't think about that! Thank God Koop looked like Captain Ahab with that scary beard of his.

He could sense Ortolan K. Finisterre frantically waving his arms in the air at Teacher. 'Ted, may I comment on that?'

Koppel, however, was not about to yield his conch shell to a brown-noser who owed his political career to some nut who'd blown up his president-uncle thirty years ago at Disney World.

'I'm not sure if I understand, Mr. Naylor. You're saying that after tens of thousands of studies and, frankly, an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that cigarettes are harmful, that it's still an open question as to whether or not they're harmful?'

'Ted, twenty years ago the scientists were telling us that we were all going to die of artificial sweeteners. Now they're telling us — we goofed, never mind. The more cyclamates, the better. So I think any scientist worth his or her salt — or in this case, sugar — would tell you that the first principle of science is — doubt.'

Koppel sounded amused, in a disgusted sort of way. 'All right, let's for the sake of argument suppose that it is still an open question. But would you agree that until such a time as there is conclusive evidence that smoking is harmful, that we ought to err on the side of prudence and protect society against the possibility — to use as neutral a term as I can — that it might be harmful, and therefore put Senator Finisterre's labels on cigarettes?'

Subtle bastard.

'Well,' Nick laughed softly, tolerantly, 'sure, but we're going to have to print up an awful lot of warning labels to cover all the things in fife that might not be a hundred percent safe.' But enough palaver. It was time to pull the pin on the hand grenade that the waitress had given him. 'But the irony in all this, Ted, is that the real, demonstrated number-one killer in America is cholesterol. I don't know any scientists who would disagree with that. And here comes Senator Finisterre, whose fine and beautiful state is, I regret to have to say, clogging the nation's arteries with Vermont cheddar cheese, with this proposal to plaster us with rat-poison labels.'

'That's absolutely absurd. Ted, may I—'

'if I might be allowed to finish?' Nick said, snatching back the mike. 'I was merely going to say that I'm sure that the tobacco industry would consent to having these labels put on our product, if he will acknowledge the tragic role that his product is playing, by putting the same warning labels on these deadly chunks of solid, low-density lipoprotein that go by the name of Vermont cheddar cheese.'

'Ted! — '

21

He picked up Jeannette in the greenroom after the show. There were other people milling around, mostly trying to get her phone number. She was looking very sleek tonight. With Nick she was the soul of cool professionalism, confining herself to complimenting him on having made 'some very important points.' Then when they were alone in the elevator, she grabbed him by the neck and put a kiss on him like a NASA air lock.