12
Dec 08Smoke ‘em if you got the highest office in America.
Slate‘s Ron Rosenbaum wonders if we should just let Obama keep his cowboy killers:
I also wonder—and this will seem wildly heretical to virtue-crats, so hide the children—whether some of Obama’s finer qualities aren’t bound up in his alleged nicotine sins. That contemplative self-possession that so many admire him for. It might come from Obama’s ability to sit back, inhale a puff or two, slow down and think—meditate, cogitate—before acting. Sure it’s a trade-off. Lung cancer later in life: the percentage grows grim. But isn’t it possible that, without the mediating thoughtfulness of a nicotine break, Obama would still be a “community organizer”? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
[...]
Give Obama a break … a smoking break. No president has come into office facing the massive problems he does. And now he’s got Chicago politics, like another monkey on his back, following him there. Let him enjoy a few contemplative moments as he works a problem. Let him have his down time. We’ll probably be better off for it.
As a former smoker who still occasionally steals a puff or two, I second that motion.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
as another former smoker, thirded.