Monday, November 9, 2009

Nation & World

Washington Whispers by Paul Bedard

Movie Stars and Cigarettes: Enough Already

September 05, 2008 04:29 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

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regardless

of if there are bigger issus concerning the economy. such as dying babies, these are still important things to consider.

I myself do not smoke, and i feel that the movie screen doesn't affect me and entice me to begin.

Smoking in movies

Murder, rape, kidnapping, foul language, bestiality, pedophilia not one of those as used in a movie has raised as much dust in this country as smoking.

That's just weird.

How bad smoking is

They should go after Obama. He still smokes. He tried to quit early in the year, but started again. It will be hard to get that smell out of the white house.

Crazy old MPAA

I recommend everyone to watch "This Film is Not Yet Rated". It will open your eyes to how ridiculous the MPAA ratings have become and how out of touch they are with current cultural values.

The MPAA should not bend the ratings because some anti-smoking groups pressured them to. Most people are not offended by smoking and as a result it shouldn't be an issue in the rating system.

How things change...

I was watching "Ghostbusters" on TV with my kids the other day and was surprised at how much the main characters all smoke throughout the movie. Watch it sometime and see.

I'm glad to see the amount of cigarette use declining in movies. Not sure that a ratings penalty is necessary, but I'm not opposed to it either.

Get a life...

Don't you people have anything else to worry about? Get real there are babies being beaten to death and starving to death. The elderly are freezing to death and can't afford their medication. People are having to sleep in the streets for gods sakes. I think theses are a few issues that people need to worry about, not who smoked a stupid cigarette while making a movie.

People get a life!!!!

What goes around....

Lucky Strike green has gone to war!

WWII was great for cigarette manufactures.

The government gave them a huge helping hand behind the scenes.

"Smoke 'em if you've got 'em" was the "take 5" most welcome command by the platoon leaders.

But they were neat and environmentally conscious as the next command was "field strip the butts".

Yes, everybody in all the movies were required to smoke all through the movies (whether or not they actually did smoke off screen).

Every dying soldier was given a cigarette to help him draw his last breath.

Cigarettes, and not the atom bomb, won the war.

Or, so the message went.

But then we did not have the surgeon general's conclusion that they were killing us slowly if we survived the battlefield.

Now we do know and it is outrageous that films are back to promoting smoking again (because cigarette sales have declined dramatically as more and more hard core smokers die horrible deaths caused by cigarettes).

Yes, a few of us seem to beat the odds. After 50 years of chain smoking I finally managed to come to my senses.

But just imagine what I could have done with all that money that went up in smoke for all those years.

Wow, maybe even a cure for the cancer caused by smoking could have been funded by people like me?

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