Christopher Buckley - Thank You for Smoking

"Frances Gyverson is executive director of the National Teachers' Association in Washington. She is in charge of the NTA's health issues program, which instructs teachers in how to relay the dangers of smoking to their students.

"Ron Goode is deputy director of the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. OSAP is the command center in the nation's war against cigarettes, so that would make you, what, Ron, a colonel?"

"Just a foot-soldier, Oprah."

Where, Nick wondered, was this gorgeous self-effacement coming from? Goode was one of the more pompous, self-important assholes in the entire federal government.

Oprah smiled. A warm and fuzzy murmur went through the studio audience. He has so much power, and yet look at him, he's so humble!

She turned toward Cancer Kid.

"Robin Williger is a high school senior from Racine, Wisconsin. He likes studying history and he is on the swimming team." Momentarily, Nick's heart leapt. Perhaps it had all been a dream. Perhaps he didn't have cancer. Weren't swimmers always shaving their heads for speed? And didn't the weird ones also shave their eyebrows?

"He was looking forward to continuing his education at college. But then something happened. Recently, Robin was diagnosed with cancer, a very tough kind of cancer. He is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment. We wish him all the luck in the world." The audience and other guests burst into applause. Nick joined in, wanly.

"The reason we asked him to be on this show with us is that he started smoking Camel cigarettes when he was fifteen. Because, he told me, he wanted to be quote cool like Old Joe. He also tells me he's quit smoking Camels since learning about the cancer. And that he no longer thinks smoking is quote cool." Thunderous applause.

Nick yearned for a cyanide capsule. But now Oprah turned to face Nick.

"Nick Naylor is a vice president of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. You might think with a name like that that they're some sort of scientific institution. But they are the tobacco industry's main lobby in Washington, D.C., and Mr. Naylor is their chief spokesman. Thank you for coming, Mr. Naylor."

"Pleasure," Nick croaked, though what he was experiencing was far from pleasure. The audience glared hatefully at him. So this is how the Nazis felt on opening day at the Nuremberg trials. And Nick unable to avail himself of their defense. No, it fell to him to declare with a straight face that ze Fuhrer had never invaded Poland. Vere are ze data?

"Who'd like to start?" Oprah said.

Nick raised his hand. Oprah and his fellow panelists looked at him uncertainly. "Is it all right," he said, "if I smoke?" The audience gasped. Even Oprah was taken aback. "You want to smoke?"

"Well, it's traditional at firing squads to offer the condemned a last cigarette."

There was a stunned silence for a few seconds, and then someone in the audience laughed. Then other people laughed. Pretty soon the whole audience was laughing.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that's funny," Mrs. Maclean said.

"No," said the National Teachers' Association lady. "I don't either. I think it's in extremely poor taste."

"I have to agree," Goode said. "I don't see the humor in it. And I suspect Mr. Williger doesn't either." But Cancer Kid was laughing. God bless him, he was laughing! Nick was seized with love. He wanted to adopt this young man, take him back to Washington, cure him of his cancer, give him a high-paying job, a car — a luxury car — a house, a pool, a big one so he could keep up with his swimming. Nick would buy him a wig, too, and get him eyebrow hair transplants. Anything he wanted. He felt so badly about the cancer. Maybe, with radiation…

Forget the kid! He's history! Press the attack! Attack! Attack!

"Oh why don't you leave him alone," Nick wheeled on Goode. "And stop trying to tell him how he ought to feel." He turned to Oprah. "If I may say so, Oprah, that is typical of the attitude of the federal government. 'We know how you should feel.' It's this same attitude that brought us Prohibition, Vietnam, and fifty years of living on the brink of nuclear destruction." Where was this going? And how had nuclear deterrence gotten in? Never mind! Attack! "If Mr. Goode wants to score cheap points off this young man's suffering just so he can get his budget increased so he can tell more people what to do, well I just think that's really, really sad. But for a member of the federal government to come on this show and lecture about cancer, when that same government for nearly fifty years has been producing atomic bombs, twenty-five thousand of them, as long as we're throwing numbers around, Mis-ter Sta-tistics, bombs capable of giving every single person on this planet, man, woman, and child, cancers so awful, so ghastly and untreatable, so, so, so incurable, that medical science doesn't even have a name for them yet. is" — Quick, get to the point! What is the point? —". is just beneath contempt. And frankly, Oprah, I'd like to know how a man like. this comes to occupy a position of such power within the federal bureaucracy. The answer is — he doesn't have to get elected. Oh no. He doesn't have to participate in democracy. He's above all that. Elections? Consent of the governed? Pah! Of the very people who pay his salary? Oh no. Not for Ron Goode. He just wants to cash in on people like poor Robin Williger. Well, let me tell you something, Oprah, and let me share something with the fine, concerned people in the audience today. It's not pleasant, but you, and they, need to hear it. The Ron Goodes of this world want the Robin Willigers to die. Awful, but true. I'm sorry, but it's a fact. And do you know why? I'll tell you why. So that their . budgets" — he spat out the distasteful word—"will go up. This is nothing less than trafficking in human misery, and you, sir, ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Ron Goode never recovered. For the next hour, he could only scream at Nick, in violation of every McLuhanesque injunction against putting out heat in a cool medium. Even Oprah strained to calm him down.

For his part, Nick assumed a serene mask of righteous serenity and merely nodded or shook his head, more in sadness than in anger, as if to say that his outburst only validated everything he had said. "All well and fine, Ron, but you haven't answered the question," or, "Come on, Ron, why don't you stop pretending you didn't hear me," or, "And what about all those people you irradiated during those nuclear test blasts in New Mexico? Want to talk about their cancers?"

During one of the commercials Ron Goode had to be physically restrained by a technician.

The head of NOMAS and the representative of the teachers' organization did what they could to come to the aid of their federal benefactor, but every time they ventured a comment, Nick cut them off with "Look, we're all on the same side, here," a statement so dazzling that it left them mute. When they finally rejoined that they could not find one square inch of common ground between their humanitarianism and the fiendish endeavors of the tobacco industry, Nick saw his opening and pounced. No one, he said, was more concerned about the problem of underage smoking than the tobacco companies. Not, of course, that there was a shred of scientific evidence linking smoking with disease, but the companies, being socially responsible members of the community, certainly did not condone underage smoking — or drinking and driving, for that matter — for the simple reason that it was against the law. Here was the ideal moment to unveil their new anti-underage smoking campaign.