I pull this stunt every spring on my show, and every spring I get outraged responses from clueless parents.
Toward the end of the show, I’ll make this little announcement:
“Ladies and gentlemen…especially you fathers of teenage girls. Before we go, I just wanted to give you a little reminder. Something you really need to know.
“Does your daughter smoke? Does she have a date for the prom this weekend? Well, if your teenage daughter smokes, I just want you to know that when she comes home from the prom on Friday night and gets into bed smelling like an ashtray…it’ll be the second time that night that her prom dress has come off.”
There’s the harsh truth for you, Dad. If your daughter smokes, she’s having sex. So you might as well stop by the CVS on the way home and get her a box of condoms or some birth control pills.
Insensitive? You bet. But flip back to the title of this book. You might as well know what every boy at your daughter’s school knows: If you want sex, date the girls who smoke.
The sociologists would have an easy time explaining this one: Any girl who shows a willingness, or even eagerness, to engage in one type of risky behavior is all the more likely to broaden her horizons into other risky behaviors—like sex.
But no male in high school needs a sociologist to explain it. He already knows.
Girls who smoke are a sure thing.
And if boys know that, why are parents always surprised—sometimes even shocked, and occasionally outraged—when I say that on the air?
Over the course of a career like mine, you develop a feeling for where the hot buttons are.
Smoking is one of the hottest.
Hey, we radio hosts have slow days just like everyone else. It’s not every day that a president of the United States enjoys a good cigar (there’s that smoking thing again) with a chubby intern while his wife and daughter are upstairs getting ready for church. In fact, it’s been a long time since anything nearly that interesting happened in the West Wing.
When a slow day hits, you go to your relief hitters in the hot-topic bullpen.
Number one on the list is smoking.
There are so many ways to get people wound up on this topic. For starters, you can state your opinion that smoking is an act of self-hatred, which it most definitely is. The people most likely to disagree with you, as you might suspect, are smokers.
As the denials start flowing, ask your friends how, with today’s wealth of knowledge on the dangers of tobacco, anyone who truly loves and respects himself would ever systematically poison himself that way?
I am a business traveler. I am on the road 3 to 4 days a week. I listen to talk radio morning and afternoon. I have listened to a couple of your rants about smokers. I am a pipe smoker (32 years) just so you will know (I am sure you don’t care) but I thought I would throw that in. You sit there and blast people who smoke, call them losers and sad. These are the people who pay your salary and put food on your table. I wanted to let you know that there will be one less smoker listening to you from now on. When you went on the first rant a few months ago, I just brushed it off and kept on tuning you in. Not this time. I just don’t have to listen to someone use their place on the airways to bite the hand that feeds them, in such a vile and hateful manner. So I guess you won’t miss me but I will say goodbye with a last few words of advice, you need to move to Air America.
Troy
Ah, the old “I’m never going to listen to you again” threat. Some adults have no idea how childish they sound. Awwww, poor wittle Troy. Did that mean old talk show host say something that made you feel bad?
Once you’re done acquainting your friends with their own self-hatred, move on.
Try this: Tell them that if you ever own a business, you’re going to make sure you don’t hire smokers. Remind them that smokers are generally less productive than nonsmokers, they take more breaks, they’re out of work with illness more often, and they just generally stink up the workplace. Not to mention the way they hike up the cost of your health insurance.
Sure, there are exceptions—but the general rule prevails. Why play the odds when you can just hire people who don’t smoke? If a person has so little pride in himself that he would destroy his health with tobacco, what makes you think that he’s going to treat his work with any real pride?
Subject: Neal-your wrong about the smoking thing
Name: tom reynolds
Smoking is a choice, albeit unhealthy. There are many things that are unhealthy for a pregnant woman (McDonalds, Alchohol, Potato Chips, Soda, etc). I think you’re drifting to the right of libertarian when you say there should be rules regarding smoking. It should be up to the owner of the land, car, child, etc.
Just my opionion.
Rules regarding smoking? Hey, all I said was that employers should be free to turn away job applicants who smoke. Since you’ve mentioned rules, however, I will say that I believe that pregnant women who have decided to carry their pregnancies to term should be prevented by law from smoking. There is no doubt that a smoking mother will harm her fetus. Low birthweights and reduced lung capacity are just two of the problems. Smoking while pregnant is child endangerment.
I would never miss the chance to embarrass a smoking pregnant woman I might encounter in a public venue. After all, I’m doing it for the children.
Subject: Boortz you boob
You say on the air that if a pregnant woman smokes it will harm the child. I would like to know what study you are referring to that says it is a fact that every woman that smokes harms their child. You look at one source, if it agrees with you it must be true. I agree with you that smoking is very bad for you but it is not a definite that every woman that smokes harms their child. So to go along with your argument, driving a car while pregnant should be illegal also, and anyone who rides a motorcycle is a fool.
Robert
Well, Robert, there is one stark difference between riding a car or a motorcycle and smoking while pregnant. Driving and riding may hurt your unborn baby…if you have a wreck. Smoking will hurt the fetus. No ifs about it.
In 2005, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives published a study showing that children exposed to secondhand smoke have lower test scores than children who don’t smoke and aren’t exposed to smoke. The research, which involved nearly 4,400 school kids, confirmed earlier studies showing that tobacco exposure is harmful to intellectual development.
It was old news to me. Consider this sampling of headlines from over the years:
Sorry, Robert.
There are some other startling facts that I’ve gleaned in my years of irritating smokers. For instance, smokers are more likely to vote Democrat.1 And smokers generally score lower on basic intelligence tests than nonsmokers.
No lie.
This affords another huge advantage to employers in the hiring mode. If an applicant smokes, you can expect two things: first, he or she will pester fellow workers incessantly with mindless drivel about Democrats this and Democrats that and Democrats are for the working man and Democrats want to take care of us, yakkity yakkity.
Second, they may very well not be bright enough to get the job done anyway.
Still not persuaded? Try this:
Eye care trade journals are reporting a strong link between smoking and development of an extremely serious eye disease called age-related macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is a leading cause of blindness. So, if you’re a smoker, you’d better turn these pages faster—your time may be running out.
Macular degeneration isn’t the only eye disease associated with smoking, either. Smoking damages the eye in a number of ways, including its effects upon capillaries—the tiny blood vessels that help carry oxygen and nutrients to the retina, lens, and optic nerve in the back of the eye.
Why do I care? Well, I don’t really. Not unless you’re indulging your filthy, loathsome habit in my presence.
If there is any chance that secondhand smoke can cause me health problems, you ought to have the decency to put the cigarettes away. I’m not interested in losing my eyesight just so you can get a fix. And that’s not even getting into the fact that your smoke makes me cough, hurts my eyes, and just plain stinks.
Besides…I certainly don’t want to smell like you.
I’d like to find something positive to say about smokers. I suppose I could point out that they’re quite possibly responsible for thousands of public sector jobs out there. I’m sure it takes an army of people to pick up all those cigarette butts smokers like to toss out of car windows. Is there a rule somewhere that butts aren’t litter?
Hold on. I have a great story for you.
When I was practicing law, my office looked directly out into a parking lot. I owned the building, so I was somewhat concerned with how people treated my property.
One afternoon, a woman pulled into a parking lot directly in front of my window. She couldn’t see me watching her through the one-way tinting.
As I sat there watching, she took an ashtray full of cigarette butts and dumped them on the ground. Then she went into the building for an appointment in some other office.
It was time for action.
I went into my junk drawer and retrieved a tube of Super Glue. I then went outside and proceeded to glue each and every one of those butts to her windshield.
I’m telling you, I was enjoying every minute of it.
I then went back inside, poured myself a cup of coffee, and waited.
After about forty minutes, that weed fiend came out and discovered the work of art I had produced. She stood there and literally shrieked at the top of her lungs for about three minutes. People started coming out of their offices, thinking some kind of assault was in progress. Finally, she started ripping the butts off her windshield and throwing them on the ground. Each butt left a little bit of paper firmly glued to the glass.
As she screeched out of the parking lot, her windshield wipers were going full tilt as she sprayed the car with cleaner.
I’m telling you, it was damn near orgasmic.
For sheer entertainment value, it’s hard to beat the smoker’s aquariums at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. These are glass-enclosed rooms on each concourse where these hopeless drug addicts go to satisfy their cravings.
I love standing outside the glass to gawk at these people. There they sit, in their cloud of smoke, gulping in every last bit of nicotine they can before they have to get on their flights.
Do you want another illustration of just how pathetic smokers can be?
Of course you do.
Many moons ago, when airlines were just starting to get on the no-smoking bandwagon, smoking was banned on domestic flights only. On a flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, you couldn’t smoke. On a flight from Atlanta to Mexico City, you could.
These pathetic drug addicts would actually book flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles through Mexico so that they could have their precious cigarette fixes on route.
I have enjoyed listening to your radio show for some time. Today’s broadcast will be the last. How dare you characterize tobacco smokers in such disparaging and hateful words? I respect your right to be so very mean-spirited, but such words place you solidly with the ultra liberal left, who use such tactics to “enlighten” those of us who disagree. “Vile,” “despicable,” “losers”…perhaps you should just round them all up and force them to spend the rest of their days in the “pleasant” confines of the Atlanta’s airport smoker’s lounge. Even better, just line them up against a wall and shoot’em all!
Stephen
Come on, Stephen. You think I want to shoot smokers? Talk about a wasted effort. You’re killing yourself with those cigarettes, Stephen. Why waste a bullet on you?
For three decades I’ve been ranting about smoking like this, and for three decades I’ve been taking the heat for it. But the wake of hurt feelings, angry listeners, and outraged parents is more than offset by the literally hundreds of letters I’ve received from people who told me they quit just so they wouldn’t have to hide under the bed when I went on my next tirade. Teenage girls included.
So I may be hurting feelings, but I’m also saving lives.
Sounds like a good tradeoff to me.