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The Gift That Keeps Giving
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Speaking of the Gipper…
A carton of cigarettes that doubles as a Christmas card. From back when America was free.
–Mary Q. Contrarian
33 Responses to “The Gift That Keeps Giving”
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Many on this forum will disagree, I’m sure, but seeing that man’s face made my day.
Disagree with what? The comment about “America being free”; that the Christmas carton was “beautiful”; or that Chesterfields made for the “merriest Christmas any smoker can have”?
I, for one, have never smoked, and I don’t see any reason to disagree with any of those comments…….
1951 America was free? I think anyone who wasn’t white, male, and straight would disagree with you…
Or … is this … sarcasm?
//updates facebook profile
Ah yes! 1952 America! Where everyone was free! Assuming, of course… you were White, Male, Straight, and Christian.
Dang it! Someone beat me to it! The time it took me to date the poster (It references the movie “Hong Kong” which came out in 1952) cost me the driving post! Darn it!
“Could I, uh, have one of those Chesterfields?”
- Dennis Hopper, True Romance
[...] Mad Men president Posted in Politics by Evan on August 26th, 2008 Via Mary Q. Contrarian at The Agitator, one of the coolest pictures [...]
I’d like to see you grin like that and keep your cigarette at that jaunty angle. That smoke is a complete afterthought, much like Reagan’s foreign policy.
ice
right. 1951. All women, non-whites, gays and non-Christians were all locked up in gulags and killed. Doubtfully I will be alive in 2051 where new improved versions of smug, jack-offs such as Tim and Bob can add their oh so sarcastic comments on the so called freedom of 2008.
Parasites also had less freedom in 1951. Not everyone deserves it.
I miss smoking
Just Say No!
Damned, folks, someone gotta light? ( I find this entire thread to be of the highest funny, as of late)
Buzz,
Let me get this straight - you define a lack of freedom as being locked in a gulag. So that means you’re free, because you’re not locked in a gulag? If your standard for freedom is that unbelievably low, don’t whine about the government, and anything it does, short of putting people into gulags.
You’re not alone, Tokin42. I miss smoking, too.
no no no. they were putting innocent american citizens into the gulag in the *40’s*.
the fifties was when everyone was clean-shaven and wore a shirt and tie, and adolf mccarthy tried to send the hollywood scriptwriters into the death camps.
[...] A carton of cigarettes that doubles as a Christmas card. From back when America was free. [...]
A carton of cigarettes that doubles as a Christmas card. From back when America was free and one in twenty Americans had lung cancer.
Yes, Mark Z, and for decades cigarettes were called various names like coffin nails. Folks got that lung cancer with free will. Those were the days when folks were responsible for their actions. The trend of blaming [insert "big [insert here]“] for one’s own actions had not yet taken hold.
Grizzly, I think there was plenty of doubt and ignorance regarding the health affects of tobacco in the 50’s, the Surgeon General report wasn’t issued until 1964. People had the free will to choose to smoke but not necessarily all the information needed for an informed choice.
Jesus fucking Christ, just enjoy the ludicrousness of the card and shut the fuck up about freedom.
Is everyone’s sarcasm detector get broken today?
That should say “Is everyone’s sarcasm detector broken today?”
Am I the only one to think of the “civil rights movement” largely as an oxymoron? Aside from the mandate that *government* must treat everyone equally (good), the only things to emerge from the destruction of private property rights and freedom of association have been bad, wrong, and horribly destructive.
Not that I endorse a lunch counter owner acting like a jackass towards people who differ in appearance from him - folks like that don’t get my money, and his customers tend to get an earful from me.
King James said in 1604 that smoking is “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
I don’t think that anyone (who wasn’t deluding themselves) needed the Surgeon General to tell them that smoking wasn’t healthy.
Well hell Matt, if the leader of a foreign nation said something 350 years earlier, how dare anybody not know of his pronouncement?
Also, wasn’t the King, in this case, a representative of a government issuing a warning about the danger of tobacco? Aren’t you against that sort of government meddling?
How does one translate the sound of something going over someone’s head again?
Oh, Sam, you’re so cute when you’re angry.
First, King James is not the head of my government. So his personal pronouncements on the subject of smoking don’t have any official weight. Same goes for the dude’s bible.
Second, the point was not that everyone should know or care what King James said. It was that nearly everyone realized that smoking was unhealthy — without labelling requirements and pronouncements from doctors in silly military uniforms — almost back to the day smoking was invented.
Just like they know that a baconator has a lot of calories.
Don’t get it yet? Explain to me again how markets thrive on information, so we have to tell everyone stuff they already know.
Please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em!
Matt,
But, of course, if one person benefits from the information being posted, your argument collapses, because you keep claiming that everybody knows that Baconators are dangerous food. So will you acknowledge that printing the calorie count might be a good idea if you’re wrong about EVERYBODY knowing?
For the record, there’s nothing wrong with believing in commerce as controlled by businesses that offer little information to consumers - just don’t call yourself supportive of markets, because you clearly only support the producer end of them.
Commerce isn’t “controlled” by businesses, ever. Consumers get what they want… otherwise they simply won’t pay for it.
Consumers most certainly do not get what they want when they don’t have all of the information about a particular product. How many people would have bought dangerously designed automobiles like the Corvair if they’d known that they were dangerously designed?