Old Man River

[malthaussen]

41. I've often thought the anti-smoking movement instructive.

We are old enough to remember when everyone smoked cigarettes, when they were even included in military rations. And needless to say, there was a huge corporate lobby owning many important politicians, with a vested interest in seeing to it that smoking not only continued, but expanded. And there were radicals of ill-courtesy, doing things like throwing water on guests who smoked on talk shows, and those who labored far from the headlines, slowly but surely changing the perception of the nation to where now, smoking is almost universally considered a vice, and often a crime.

One might contrast this with, say, the gay marriage movement, which labored in obscurity and frustration for decades, yet virtually overnight gained success. On the surface, an entirely different process, yet one knows that again, there were the quiet ones in the background, filing suits and calmly striving to alter perceptions.

One is reminded of the old saw, "Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come." The trick, of course, is figuring out when the time has come. For some of us, the time has always been there. Whether or not that is generally true is something that will be determined this year.

-- Mal