I’ve been looking forward to reading this book since I watched the movie a couple of years ago. Thank You For Smoking is one of the most cynical, devilishly funny satires I’ve ever read. It was written over a decade ago, when anti-smoking legislation–banning smoking in restaurants, etc.–rolled through after studies started to definitively prove the link between smoking and a host of physical ailments. The story is narrated by Nick Naylor, a spokesman for the tobacco lobby, as he tries to delay the inevitable.
This book is full of dark humor, and I loved all the meetings between the members of the Mod Squad (Merchants of Death) and when Nick bending facts and half-truths until they scream when he debates with anti-smoking types. The movie was pretty terrific, too. I recommend it to the cynical types out there.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book is the way that Nick tries to fight his battles. He keeps framing the debate as personal freedom fighters versus neo-Puritans. To be honest, I kind of see the point. How much can you really protect people from themselves? No matter how many warning labels you put on things or how much you tax them, people will still do things that are bad for their health. And that’s part of what I think this book is about: the power of words and ethics. If you have the gift of gab, you can use your powers for good or evil. Nick takes the third route, I think. He does it for the challenge of it. Like he says, “If you can do tobacco [meaning if you can lobby for tobacco], you can do anything.”
Another thing that struck me about this book was how much Washington, D.C. is its own little world, spinning around the twenty-four hour news cycle. And apart from the laws that end up being enforced across the country, I don’t really pay attention to what happens over there. Maybe I should, considering that the laws that end up affecting me are made by a relatively small bunch of legislators and talking heads. Kind of scary once you get a glimpse of all the wheeling and dealing that goes on.