The American Medical Association, which has nothing really important to do in this glorious age for American health care, is upset that the new Incredible Hulk film portrays the character General Thunderbolt Ross as a heavy cigar smoker. The physicians' group worries that children who empathize with the evil general and his sinister plot to destroy Bruce Banner's mutant alter-ego could very well develop a dangerous addiction to expensive, outsize cigars. Seriously:
Dianne Fenyk, president of the advocacy group, A.M.A. Alliance, is particularly infuriated because General Ross did not smoke in “Hulk,” the 2003 film directed by Ang Lee, though he always smoked in the comic books. …
“Hollywood studios should be especially embarrassed for using comic-book movies, which they market to children and know youth will want to see, to promote tobacco,” Ms. Fenyk said.
People who should also be "especially embarrassed" are parents who let their children get their hands on cigars in order to be more like insidious villains hellbent on catching giant green monsters.
Editor
Most comic-book readers I know (more than a few) are not kids.
Shorter AMA: "If we just pretend smoking doesn't exist, it'll disappear."
Watching Discovery channel's program, When We Left the Earth, about Apollo missions, I noticed several men in NASA control were smoking, as well as several of the astronauts' family members who anxiously watched on TV as their loved ones shot into the unknown. That's reality and that's what some people choose to do. God forbid any children watching should decide it's cool to smoke AND become an employee of NASA. I'm longing for the days when Americans were actually free to be whatever they wanted, and health care was actually an individual's choice.
Funny how cancer continues to eradicate millions of nonsmokers and dementia continues to ravage millions of otherwise healthy people, but smoking continues to be a prime target of the AMA. I'm about sick of being told what to do and how to live by government officials and the AMA.
I say that we just go balls out and wrap all our children in foam or bubble wrap and subject them only to B-52's music. Children are physically fragile, but a lot more mentally tough than we give them credit for. A simple explanition of what happens to people who smoke will do more than hiding it all together. It will only seem like forbidden fruit.