Returning fire!!! (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Saturday, June 14, 2008, 18:15 (1799 days ago) @ TonySee

Tony,

Thanks for all of that. I'll respond in a moment. I was in the middle of a response to Ynot, acknowledging that the photo may have been a fake when the phone call came through from Zoltan that the songs were ready. Needless to say, in my fluster when I returned to the computer to press "post" I lost the flaming lot. I can't tell you how pissed off I was as normally I have trained myself well to do the Control 'A'-Control 'C' trick but this time in my impatience I didn't do it. And, as is usually the case, it was one of my better posts that I lost. Now that I have calmed down let me try and pick up the threads of my argument.

There were two themes I was developing in the post: serendipity and some further arguments re the smoking issue.

Curiously enough I have a second reason now to take up the serendipity theme. I can't tell you how friggin' angry I was with losing that post. I even made a mental note to myself as I answered the phone to remember to save what I'd written yet I still forgot. I didn't quite chuck the computer off the edge of the balcony in my rage but I came bloody close to it I can tell you. Then, call this serendipity, I opened the first song that Zoli had sent through, Holy Spirit Come. Man, was that just what I needed at that moment.

Now back to the earlier serendipity I was writing about…

What I was trying to say is that I didn't know whether the photo was a fake or otherwise. I've been working with digital manipulation programs since 1986 or 1987, from even before the invention of Photoshop. I know how easy it is to manipulate photos and for it to be virtually undetectable. I was sceptical of the authenticity of the photo simply on account of the source. An authentic photo like that would be worth a motza to the tabloid press around the world and had it been published in some mainstream news media there might have been a tad more authenticity but, even then, not absolute certainty. Even Rupert Murdoch got taken for an enormous ride a decade or two ago over the fake Hitler Diaries. But fake or not, there was enormous serendipity for me personally in what happened in the early hours of this morning when I came to do the layout for Vince's contribution. Amanda calls all this serendipity stuff, "God-incidence" and I like the notion. There seems to be a heck of a lot of it happening around here these days. Vince had sent me that article about ten days ago. I wasn't familiar at all with the subject matter and had forgotten what it was about until I opened his word file. A few hours earlier though I'd come across that photo on another Catholic email list. And again acknowledging whether it is fake or otherwise what an accompaniment to any commentary dealing with "Addiction and Grace". If any headline graphic was gunna get an audience hooked that would have to be it. No journalist, editor or graphic designer can "manufacture" this sort of stuff.

What I also went on to say, and this takes us into the realms of the argument on smoking itself again, is that the photo was not entirely unbelievable either. I know of many priests who have been smokers, even bishops as anyone might testify and a couple have in this string. I know a number who are still what you'd call heavy smokers as well as a few who are social smokers. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a person in a high stress occuption like Benedict who had the occasional puff. I have to stress that I honestly don't know whether he does or not. Self-evidently what I posted on the discussion board last night and as the headline to the commentary today had an air of scepticism about it all. As an editor I am forever trying to get as many people as possible to actually click on the links in the emails, or on the webpage, and within certain moral limits any "trick in the book" that I can utilise to cause that to happen I am open to using those communication tricks.

Let me now digress from my original train of thought to answer your criticisms. Basically I reject them. They have been directed at me in fairly brutal fashion in the past when some of my stuff on this subject was published in the secular press. I think it is your argument that is tired. I appreciate that a lot of non-smokers do not like smelly ashtrays and even the odour that hangs around regular smokers. I think there is a large element of that which drives the current debate and it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "science" of any description. Non-smokers really do get upset in restaurants and hotels and I can understand their upset.

While I think I am on an absolute "hiding to nothing" in this particular debate I do honestly believe the arguments I have put forward. And, yes, I have given long consideration over the years as to whether this is purely something that is driven by my "addiction" and some self-justification for not going through the painful process of withdrawal. Earlier in my life I did give up for significant and lenthy periods. Particularly since I have met Amanda though I have come to a far better appreciation of this mental side of the whole endeavour. She is a heavy smoker. Far heavier than me although she does smoke lighter weight cigarettes. She also works in a — it's not so much "high stress" — but an occupation where there is far more volatility in one's highs and lows. She has experienced "highs" like few of us ever get to experience performing before large audiences and, on the down side, she has also been to places in the psyche that none of the rest of us would ever want to go to and few of us ever do get taken there. I know in her case that nicotine, or whatever it is chemical or otherwise, in cigarette smoking that plays some fairly critical factor in regulating one's internal "emotional/mental or whatever it is" balance. I am the same. I know many journalists and others who are occupied in creative endeavours — Zoli is another who is a fairly heavy smoker, so is Cliff Baxter — and it seems to play a critical role in self-regulation of one's "internal balance".

I do believe more research needs to be done about this. As a result of my articles which were published in The West Australian some years ago some researchers did go off and did research that showed that patients in mental hospitals include a far higher proportion of smokers than are found in the general population. None of this research is funded today though. The entire "culture" at the moment has been captured by the "health lobby", who do have a big vested interest in this whole endeavour in terms of extracting money out of government and the general community for their research projects. It is always very useful to have "public opinion" on your side to extract funding for popular causes and Quitting is a very popular "cause" these days particularly as smokers feel the enormous cost involved in smoking and there is a very real non-medical and pure economic incentive to give up. There is a very real incentive to give up simply because smoking literally can drive a person on average weekly earnings almost broke.

The media also have a huge, huge "vested interest" in this whole matter. Today a lot of our "free-to-air" television and media is paid for by government advertising. There was no "government advertising" twenty or twenty-five years ago on anywhere near the sort of scale that is seen today. Now the original "thin end of the wedge" for the release of this huge amount of government largesse to the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer (at least up until he sold his media interests and chosen gambling instead) was the tobacco debate.

The tobacco multi-nationals have been successfully denigrated as the "big bad bogeymen" of modern life, bad corporate citizens and engaged in all sorts of rigged research to justify their nefarious profit-making endeavours that were killing humanity and poisoning our atmosphere. The incentive the media companies extracted out of government for giving up the lucrative revenue they used to derive from the tobacco multinationals was government advertising to replace the lost revenue. Today government advertising far exceeds anything simply confined to Quit Campaigns. Murdoch and Co have been in clover for decades largely thanks to revenue that ultimately comes from taxpayers and the public purse. (One curious tidbit to add to Murdoch's "Papal Knighthood" is that for a time after they started receiving this new source of revenue, Murdoch became a director of Phillip Morris, one of the largest tobacco conglomerates in the world. It's another of those paradoxes, like the Papal Knighthood, that I have never really understood. He still retains his papal Knighthood but as far as I know he gave up his directorship of Phillip Morris many moons ago.)

I'd also like to take you to task on your comments regarding the poor. There are two grounds. Firstly, and flowing from the association with mental health, it is fairly generally recognised that the poor are over-represented in mental health statistics. Sure no one is society is immune from mental illness but the reality is that the poor are over-represented in the patient statistics compared to the normal population. Figures I've seen in the past but can't put my hands on readily at the moment suggest this over-representation is increasing. I do not know if there is a direct relationship between this and the pricing and taxation policies that have put smoking increasingly beyond the reach of people on low to middle incomes. I do think it is a question that requires serious research though. Similarly, I do not know for sure if there is a statistical link between the rising rates of suicide and the gradual impediments that have been placed on access to the cheap drugs associated with tobacco, or if there are other factors involved. I do suggest seriously that it is an important question that diligent researchers ought be following up. I am not optimistic in the current "mob mentality" that rules contemporary society that such "objective research" will be funded or encouraged. Doing that sort of research is decidely "uncool" in the present political and social atmosphere which, I would suggest, is actually encouraged by the sort of argument you have put forward.

My second ground is annecdotal but again I believe it is annecdotal-type evidence that needs to be researched objectively and in some depth. One of the my first trips over to Sydney immediately before I made the permanent move was to attend the 50th Birthday of Amanda's sister down in country NSW. I was gobsmacked at that party to find that at least 85% of the people there were smokers. It is simply not a phenomenon one experience these days in city life attending parties. This was a big party of more than 100 people in attendance. Subsequent amateur research suggests to me that this is fairly common in rural communities. There is a much higher proportion of smokers in rural communities and, interestingly, the average income in rural communities (aside from mining-type communities) is way below the national average. Again, I think that is a link that does require serious and non-emotional, objective analysis and research.

Continued...

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]