There has never been a victim these liberals didn’t use when convenient. Thus my emotions ran amok when I heard the lead-in during today’s episode of Democracy Now! Hostess Amy Goodman began the segment with a “leading cigarette expert†to discuss how “the tobacco industry helped kill Peter Jennings.â€
Now that’s meant to sound like because Jennings did so many stories on the tobacco industry and it’s dubious practices of hiding the deadly effects of it’s products on its customers, they in turn offed him with a mob payback hit.
While I thought Democracy Now! was going to do some selective retrospective on the ABC anchor, it turned into a blame-the-butts exercise and it was an opportunity to give some face time to more lefties.
Longtime ABC news anchor Peter Jennings died this week of lung cancer. 89% of people with lung cancer smoke cigarettes. Peter Jennings was a heavy smoker. He quit, but started smoking again after 9/11. We look at the industry behind Jennings’ untimely death.
He was one of five million people globally who die each year of smoking-related diseases. We speak with longtime tobacco industry critic Dr. Stan Glantz and Anna White of Essential Action.
Needless to say it was a tobacco industry bash and as I couldn’t listen to the whole segment (I work), I didn’t hear much about Jennings’ choice to smoke.
There was just the typical evil American tobacco companies making blood money on ignorant smokers in poor countries around the world lament.
STAN GLANTZ: Well, I haven’t seen all of the coverage, but none of the coverage I’ve seen really talked about the fact that he was killed by the tobacco industry and that he died a very premature and quite horrible death because he was addicted to nicotine, and one of the ironies in this is that Jennings, probably more than any other major mainstream reporter, covered the tobacco issue and did several very fine hour-long primetime documentaries on the tobacco industry and the politics of tobacco and also covered the issue probably more than any of the other major network newscasts.
Also absent was (as if I really thought they’d go there) the mention of all the liberal programs that are funded with… tobacco taxes. They would probably say that the money is being used to help the poor, educate children, and all that other mess.
I call those who confiscate money from people who buy a legal product and then demagogue them after getting their money whores.
As I’ve written and said many times before, if cigarettes are so deadly, BAN THEM! When it was found that asbestos was a carcinogen, it didn’t take long for legislators to outlaw its use. But these same lawmakers, mostly liberal Democrats, bash the legal use of tobacco products, send the people who use it legally outside like pariahs to consume them, put bar owners out of business when their customers can’t smoke while they drink so they go and drink cheaper at home, yet they place a tax on the very product they bash almost as bad as they do Republicans.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr Stan Glantz, do you think it would be medically accurate to say the tobacco industry killed Peter Jennings, for that to be a headline?
STAN GLANTZ: Oh yeah, sure. Sure.
What do you call a person who derives a monetary benefit from the death of others? Okay, besides a liberal…?
Peter Jennings was obviously an intelligent man who knew the consequences of his actions and chose to smoke anyway. Some people enjoy it. I stopped six months ago and still miss it. But if I’m ever diagnosed with lung cancer, I’ll say smoking was something I enjoyed; I won’t blame the tobacco industry as I knew the risks coming into the habit.
I’m not a victim. Neither is Jennings.
