Discover Politics

Rumor has it that President Barak Obama, a well-known and admitted tobacco addict in recovery, still sneaks two packs of cigarettes a day. My source for this little tidbit of information is unassailable. He is a Hollywood gossip-monger that has daily time on a morning FM radio show in Minneapolis.

Good enough for me.

And quite frankly, I know smokers. They never truly quit. They only pretend to quit.

I know smokers because I grew up in a haze of blue smoke. Both parents smoked like, well, 1960s smokers. That was when everybody had ash trays all over the house and people bragged about how much they smoked: “Four packs a day.” Really, some people smoked four packs a day in the groovy 60s and turbulent 70s. My old man was considered a light smoker for the time. He lit up only one pack of Camels a day.

I wonder what brand the President favors? He has to be a Marlborough Man. Laura Bush, another famous political party puffer (most people are surprised when they find out she smokes), was a Newport Lady. I know this because of all the photographs posted on the internet of her relaxing with a heater, and because I stood right behind her during a speech once for 30 minutes so close that I could reach out and flip the pages of her well-written text for her. You could verily see the nicotine on her nice green suit; smelling the menthol was no problem. It was bonded molecularly into her Aquanet hairspray producing a rather unpleasant odor, but the menthol was there. She tried like crazy to quit; came close once but after back surgery she started up again. Good excuse as far as I’m concerned, and heck being married to G2 was no picnic so she deserves this little pleasure.

Obama smoking is no problem for me. This imperfect part of him is a nice contrast. He is too perfect. His perfect suit. The perfect way he tilts his head as he gives another perfect speech. The perfect way he cleaned McCain’s political clock in the election. Too much perfect. Smoking humanizes him. I like this human side of him. That and I like smokers. They are great people to be around. What I like most about them is the fact that they have no illusions about living forever. It’s clear, because the well-founded consequences of their bad habit that they aren’t even going to try. They’re going to live life to the end; trailing an oxygen tank right behind them.

Damn the torpedoes!

Let’s stipulate that President Obama is a good man, whether or not you agree with his politics. He clearly loves his wife, is a very good father (even though he has a job that takes him away from the kids now and then), likes dogs (even though he has one that chews up the White House furniture), loves his country, and can smoothly sink a 15 foot jump shot.

He is, however, a good man with a bad habit.

The only thing the president and I have in common is that we both smoke; he cigarettes and I cigars. I started smoking at the relatively advanced age of 35. A corn lobbyist in Washington DC took me out for dinner one night. After the superb meal and incredible bottle of wine he called for the cigar menu (They have menus for cigars)? Since I had no idea what to do I ordered the most expensive one on the list. It was fabulous! Why hadn’t I been smoking for all these years? I had a good deal of making up to do.

I haven’t looked back since.

It is my fondest goal in life to expire from this world sitting in an overstuffed wing-back chair with a still-lit stogie between my lifeless fingers.

Winston Churchill is a famous cigar smoker; so famous that a cigar is now named in his honor. It’s called, you guessed it: “The Churchill.” Seven inches long and fortyeight ring around of pure smoking pleasure. It’s so big it takes about two hours to finish, and the Prime Minister smoked an average of ten per day. You do the math, he puffed down an estimated 250,000 in his iconic life (he lived to the ripe old age of ninety). Back then people still smoked in bed, especially Sir Winston. He smoked so much that his wife sewed a smoking bib for him as a protection against burning holes in his silk pajamas. Now that’s a wife. She didn’t make him stop the bad habit, she found a way for him to continue. She enabled his bad habit!

I love that woman.

One time I was in an outside restaurant bar overlooking a wonderful river. Having finished my meal, I legally lit up a Partagas Esplendido. As I gazed into the eyes of my loving wife while I puffed, she developed a concerned look on her face. She kept looking behind me with genuine fear. I was perplexed but continued my enjoyment. A minute later the table server rushed over to ask me to put out the stogie. I finally looked behind me and saw a rabid customer being held back by his dinner guests. Honest, they were holding him back. If he could have broken free from their grip, I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t be here writing. I would be dust in an urn on the mantle piece over the fire place. He would certainly have killed me.

I put the cigar out.

The thought comes to mind; would this man have attacked the Winston who saved England and probably Europe from Nazi domination? Would this man have attacked President Obama (assuming the Secret Service took the day off)? Would this man have attacked FDR who smoked with the use of a fancy cigarette holder?

I think he would have!

He would have been wrong.

Good people have bad habits. That’s no reason to attack them or even to really think less of them.

It is probably better to just live and let live.

Mr. President, I light this Churchill in your honor.

Until later.

Winston Smith.

Winston Smith observes life, or as he puts it “The Slow Parade of Lemmings, ” with a 12-year old single malt scotch in hand, and a Fuente Fuente Opus X in the ash tray.  He scratches out his thoughts on parchment with a well-dipped fountain pen.

In his spare time, Winston enjoys swimming the English Channel, and tinkering in his basement medical device and pharmaceutical shop.  He is currently working on a cure to help the millions suffering from the scourge of political indifference.