The Joy of Hate (13 page)

That’s the crux of antismoking intolerance. People can rag on smokers because smoking is not in their life. Even if they know my smoking has no effect on them (and it doesn’t—anyone who spends an hour researching secondhand smoke or, now, “third-hand” smoke will find more holes in the data than in my mesh workout shorts), they still love getting their back up to express concern for families in the vicinity of my evil, evil smoke. It’s easy, fun outrage. Fact is, we have so few times in our lives to be justifiably outraged—to flex our “angry” muscles—that many leap at the opportunity to nail an easy target like some dude smoking Parliaments. It’s either that or join an “angry” gym to keep
the anger muscles in shape. If they don’t exist, perhaps someone should invent them.

And this stupid, phony outrage is even infecting campuses. As reported by CNN in the summer of 2011, a group of University of Kentucky students and faculty began going around the campus grounds looking for anyone who might be smoking. The Tobacco-free Take Action volunteers police the area, approaching smokers and asking them to stop. I wonder what I would do if an undergrad with purple hair in a PETA shirt told me to put out a cigarette. I’d light up and take a drag off an unfiltered Camel, if I had one. Then put it out on his forehead.

I think about this, now that Mayor Bloomberg has instituted a ban on smoking in Times Square (a few touristy blocks from my equally congested apartment, except Times Square has fewer sex workers). When asked how the ban would be enacted, his minions said it would be enforced by citizens—a recipe for fistfights if you ever saw one. In NYC? I can’t imagine some spindly Columbia grad students approaching a Russian tourist to ask him to put out his Sobranie. Their eyeballs would end up in the East River.

But the university hall monitors are far worse, in my opinion, for now we have colleges turning students into snitches—instead of encouraging them to do the things they are supposed to do in college (which are … I forget). Apparently, the University of Kentucky is one of more than five hundred campuses that have adopted a 100 percent no-tolerance policy, banning smoking on all grounds, including even campus parking lots. If you smoke, you have to go off campus to do it, which often means heading into areas that aren’t exactly safe. True, smoking can kill you, but that’s fifty or sixty years away. But you can get run over by a drunk at twenty because some policy forced you to smoke behind
the dumpster in an alley behind the tattoo joint. (You do meet interesting people there, however. Who really seem to know a lot about modern jurisprudence!) But were it up to me, I’d adhere wholeheartedly to this policy. The University of Kentucky wants me to smoke off campus? Fine, tell you what, guys: Is Ninth Avenue in NYC far enough away? Or should I move to fucking Portugal? Is the University of Kentucky kidding? Go back to mowing bluegrass and jerking off Secretariat and lay off the oppressive social conscience stuff for a while, will ya?

But it makes me wonder: Would campuses ever encourage this kind of intolerance police in the area of, say, unsafe sex? Yep, they do teach safe sex classes, but it’s untethered to the moralism you find attached to smoking. If you did that, imagine the outcry. What if a group was formed to police dorms. There would be protests, and cries for dismissal of all involved, followed by some sort of counseling sessions for the victims (because there are always victims).

Fact is, there are only two behaviors that are considered evil in this world—smoking and voting Republican. Wait—also being racist (which describes anyone who votes Republican). Since identifying racists can be hard (they rarely wear the hoods anymore), and Republicans are hiding in plain sight, it falls on smokers to assume the role of target for self-righteous, manufactured rage. You can’t hide that thing dangling from your mouth. It’s a smoking scarlet letter. I am Hester Prynne!

One last story: I am outside a bar having a cigarette in Los Angeles, standing by potted ferns away from people (in L.A., the two can be tough to tell apart). Within moments of lighting up, I hear a faint “Sir! sir!” from far away. I think it’s not directed at me. Despite my brilliant performances on television, my recognition
factor tracks somewhere below the likeable folks in the catheter commercials. But then other people start gesturing at me. I squint and I see an older woman and she says, “Could you put that out, please?” She is about 100 feet away. I yell back, “You can’t be serious!” She says it bothers her. I say, “Wait. Does the smoke bother you, or does it bother you that I’m smoking?” She looks really confused.

She should be. After all, she lives in a world where she assumes it’s okay to assail a stranger about his habits, even if that habit occurs so far away she’d have to hop a taxi to actually experience it. She needed a telescope to see it. But I don’t blame her for her assumptions. The world is changing, and thanks to questionable secondhand smoke research, rules are now being enforced that are entirely based on the pleasure of repressive tolerance. We’re generating an American caste system, with smokers at the bottom (just under hitmen and NAMBLA members). It’s all directed toward one pale sliver of society—a segment of the population who won’t fight back because (a) they know smoking is bad, and (b) they are too busy working at a tough job to protest for smokers’ rights. See nurses (I do—in my sleep).

Which reminds me: If you’re looking for a job these days, you’d better quit smoking. More and more employers (no surprise—a lot of them are hospitals or government agencies) are imposing bans on puffers. The new clichéd sign in the window is NSNA. But if it were up to me, if anyone deserves to smoke, it’s a nurse, who has to deal with our gross bodily functions every day. Frankly, any nurse who treats me deserves to smoke for six lifetimes.

But that’s just me—I don’t run the hospital (thank God—everyone would die). But now companies like the Hollywood Casino in Toledo, Ohio, won’t hire you if your pee tests positive for nicotine use—even if the nic comes from electric cigarettes
or from patches, or even chewing tobacco. Which I guess means they won’t be hiring anyone from major league baseball. Not for nothing, but: Hollywood Casino in Toledo, Ohio? They should be
handing out
cigarettes. And foot massages.

And according to
USA Today
, Idaho’s Central District Health Department also voted, in late 2011, to stop hiring smokers. Their reasoning, of course, is that this will reduce bad health practices, which may reduce insurance premiums. I get it. But why stop there? Why not test for cholesterol, or saturated fat, and stop hiring chubbies, who no doubt have higher blood pressure, diabetes risk, and a coating of Cheetos on their fingertips? Is there a blood test for Ho Hos?

At some point, this will happen, when some smart guy—on a government grant—discovers an insidious problem called “secondhand obesity,” which finds if you’re around a fat person, you’re three times more likely to become fat, too. (This research might already exist, but frankly I’m too lazy to look it up and my ice cream might melt in the process.)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking or “exposure to secondhand smoke” causes 443,000 deaths per year. See how they did that? I got that number from a
USA Today
article (January 3, 2012). By grouping smoker deaths and secondhand smoker deaths together, they combine the two into one huge number, to make you think the exhaled crap coming out of my mouth is every bit as deadly to you as it is to me (which it probably is—after a night out, my breath could split a tree). That’s not just a lie, it’s propaganda.

Look, I know what I’m doing is bad for me, but I also know it’s not bad for you. The only part that’s bad for you is that it is bad for me—and you’ll miss me when I’m gone.

You can pass judgment on what I’m doing to myself, but don’t
pretend I’m infringing on your boring, nonsmoking lifestyle. The fact is, smokers are necessary in order for a wussy culture to find something—anything—to blame. When you’ve made any and all behaviors perfectly tolerable, you need a scapegoat to spew all that pent-up venom at. So smokers are there to absorb all this nicotine and intolerance, to make a bunch of moral cowards feel good about themselves. We’re the tar and disapprobration receptacle. I swear, this secondhand venom has to be dangerous—I can smell it in my clothes. When I publish my study on this (“The Effects of Secondhand Intolerance on the Mental State of the Smoker”), you’ll see who has the last laugh. And it will be me. Although I may be coughing instead of laughing.

IT WAS LIKE THE OLYMPICS FOR DIRTBAGS
. I speak of that chaotic summer of 2011, as rioting in London spread like plaque on rotted teeth. I realized, however, that there was something more toxic than the crazy violence going on. It was the reaction to it, which stank of justification. Says one anarchist, while punks steal chocolate, “This is the uprising of the working class. We’re redistributing the wealth” (Fox Nation, August 9, 2011).

Yep, free Mars Bars—that’s a revolution.

I’m sure those folks fighting for their lives in Syria and Libya were inspired by your brave fight for a Toblerone.

I’d hate to be a British shopkeeper knowing that the man looting the store is viewed more romantically than the man stocking the shelves.

But you can find this idiocy anywhere: academia, TV, movies, music … the belief that despicable behavior is okay if you dress it up as a response to “the man.”

But what’s worse is the way the media now responds to this crap. It is the curse of political correctness: Our fear of demanding good behavior now allows for bad. And the media is too timid to call it what it is. Repressive tolerance means you can get your head kicked in and you probably had it coming (which you probably did, and don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Over the course of 2011, I watched this phenomenon called “flash mobs” erupt in various cities—in Philly, especially, but in other places, too, like Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. Every time I pitched the story in our meetings for my show, I knew the segment would always end up in the same place: Why isn’t the media covering this stuff?

It could be that maybe this isn’t a trend at all. That because of the spread of cell phones with cameras, we happen to catch more bad behavior than before. But it bothered me that I was witnessing something I felt was a direct cause of tolerance—and that somehow it mutated into an accepting mentality that is, at its basic level, inhuman, disgusting. How could we condemn corporate criminals for fleecing investors and not condemn teens doing the same to hardworking people? People who probably came to this country to escape this kind of loathsome behavior?

I realized no one was covering this for the same reason I didn’t want to cover it. Fear of being called a bigot.

Could it be that if you expect civilized behavior, you’re a racist? Is it better to just look the other way, and lock your doors?

Or move? Some place with a moat?

This was a first step toward something far worse. Letting kids get away with trashing a 7-Eleven and being thankful that they were “orderly” about it makes deviant behavior more acceptable.

Which you saw in the U.K. spread like a virus. A British virus. Like Russell Brand.

And so I must ask, why does looting occur? Well, it happens because you let it. Without fear of punishment, there is no need for the looter to stop, especially when he’s got apologists behind him (or her—don’t want to offend anyone!).

We know the rioting in England would never happen in Texas.
Personally, I’ve never met more tolerant people than Texans. They’ll let you do just about anything, provided you don’t do anything to them. Meaning, “Don’t mess with Texas” has an implicit second part to that saying: “and we won’t mess with you.”

Part of that equation is a threat of harm. You can have all the fun you want, but if you mess with me, I will shoot you in the asshole (that’s the Texas “warning shot”).

Guns, oddly enough, are the biggest force for real tolerance. If you’re a gay cross-dressing cowboy who likes to smoke jazz cigarettes (nothing but the most up-to-date references here, folks) in the privacy of your ranch, a shotgun will protect you from anyone who might find any one of those descriptors objectionable. A gun lets your freak flag fly—provided you don’t use that flag to stab someone in the face at a strip mall.

Which is why the U.K. is a mess. Not only are the law-abiding citizens unarmed, but so are the well-meaning cops—who, from my experience living in the place, felt more at home giving directions and taking pictures. Without protections or authority themselves, what’s the point of going after the rabble? Let me take a picture of these coeds from Gainesville instead. They have such great teeth (they have teeth).

During the riots, the authors of the smash hit book
Freakonomics
tweeted about a research paper linking recent budget cuts to social unrest in Europe. It claimed, “Once you cut expenditure by more than 2% of GDP, instability increases rapidly … especially in terms of riots and demonstrations.”

The conclusion: Governments fear austerity programs for this reason. It was, essentially, a threat (or what qualifies as a threat from guys who wear cardigans and tweed jackets).

Meaning riots. Bloodshed. Looting. Kids in ski masks who
aren’t skiing at all. And so on. One of the more hilarious outgrowths of tolerance: watching politicians debate whether or not they should be able to ask or force these thugs to remove their face masks as they roam the streets looking for flat screens, bags of cat food, and surgical supplies they have no use for. It was an attack on one’s freedom, and individuality, to have the audacity to question their garb. You can’t find a better consequence of repressive tolerance that endorses the destruction of decency. It’s like debating whether a rapist should wear a condom.

So you can’t save your city, because the citizens will riot. Which is a sad and scary point: What protects bloated government and entitlement is a visceral fear that if you take candy from the baby, the baby will trash your local supermarket.