I Read Phillyblog So You Don’t Have To: Smoking Ban

With Mayor Street’s sudden enforcement of the smoking ban earlier this week, the Phillyblog forums predictably exploded in a cloud of nicotine, tar, tobacco and Surgeon General’s warnings. (Joe Camel, sadly, did not make it.)

For this week’s second installment of I Read Phillyblog So You Don’t Have To, it’s going to be an all smoking ban edition! (If you really enjoyed The Press Releases I Get In My Inbox — and, really, who didn’t enjoy that earth-shattering event — I just moved it to Friday, in honor of it being an info dump, and Friday not ever having anything going on.) After the jump, an attempt to parse just what PB is thinking about the smoking ban. (I didn’t even include the photos people were posting of George Burns, Einstein and FDR smoking to prove that smoking is great.) There’ll also be a non-smoking ban related Thread! Of! The! Week!

• Smoking Ban Nothing But A Smokescreen: Yes, we’ll just start with the one that, if you read Phillyblog, you’ve probably already seen:

All the naysaying against smoking, and attempts to ban it as much as possible, is ultimately none other than a campaign to weaken American farmers even further. When living in the city it’s not always easy to see that reality, but ultimately that’s what it all comes down to. That and nothing more. And I think they’ve pushed it much too far as it is, really. That is, time for the pendulum to swing the other way now. Or, if not now, then when?

For when I look at Philly and all the ways it could be greatly improved upon, cracking down on smoking is as far removed as it gets in terms of a step in the right direction. A productive direction would be to get Philly off its gasoline dependency and onto hydrogen. So I would suggest how about we all defy the smoking bans and light up for hydrogen so to speak?

I’m not quite sure if this is a joke or not — but if it is, it’s a pretty damn convincing one. However, I am glad to realize that changing all the city’s automobiles to hydrogen is as simple as banning smoking in bars. (Okay, that ended up being pretty complicated.)

That’s not all for this thread, though! Other critical points made by various posters were:

• “I used to have to sit in the passenger seat of my family station wagon in the 1970s and 1980s, with the windows rolled up and my mom chain smoking. Where was *my* rights? Hmm?” Indeed, where was they?
• “To argue that a little benzene exposure once every few weeks that you might be in a bar is ludicrously worse than getting full blown AIDS or having liver failure from veneral disease (but we aren’t banning these people because of their rights—even though their diseases put US in danger?)” Yeah, one time I got AIDS from sitting next some dude with it in a bar.
• “I hope a bunch of bars close and those bar workers we were so worried about who used to get beucamp tips are now forced to work for shift differential at the Blockbuster to make up for it.” Yuk, yuk! Is there anything more fun than hoping people lose their jobs?
• “This almost reeks of Stalinism.”

Just kidding! Those were all from the same poster.

• Petition to ban fat and ugly people from bars and restaurants: Get it! Because being fat and ugly is legal, and so is smoking, so we should ban that from bars and restaurants! OMG ROFL!

Fat people also force other patron to eat larger portions and take up more room. Think how many more people we could fit in a bar if we banned the fatties. ¶ Ugly people also ruin Philadelphia’s bars and restaurants keeping us from being a world class city. We should follow Paris, London, and California by making it socially unacceptabel to be ugly.

I’ll pause here so you can hold your sides from all the hilarity contained within that post.

• Ok you Anti-Smoking Zealots, Explain This One: This is a very short post:

Read here.

Care to explain to me the hypocrisy?

In case you don’t want to click on the link, here’s what it says: After DC City Council passed a smoking ban, Congress exempted themselves from it. Because… federal lawmakers… have… a lot… to do… with… Philadelphia… City… oh, sorry, my head just exploded.

Here’s a look at my favorite reply, though:

Just a thought. They think their poo-poo smells like roses, to quote Andre and Big Boi!

• Let’s not be too hard on the smokers, though. Some smoking ban advocates got into the act as well:

• “Do you poor little whiney smokers hear that???? No?…….. That is because that is the sound of no one giving a sh*t about your ‘rights’ to smoke. HAHAHAHAHAH give it a year or two and the smoking ban will be all of PA. Then I will laugh at the smokers who have to stand outside during the winter in -20 degree weather when I walk into the bar. AHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHHAHHAAHHAHAHA.” AHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHHAHHAAHHAHAHA, indeed.
• “I loved being out yesterday. I have that smoking ban number on my cell now. Ready for when I see someone light up. When I was out I caught I one person sneaking a smoke in a bar but they “forgot” and ran back outside. Hell I even walked by some bars just to see if anyone was lighting up so I can rat them out.” Thank you, Cindy Brady.

• Thread! Of! The! Week! It was no contest this week. It goes to superstar Phillyblog poster/Mayor of the Internet State Rep. Mark B. Cohen, who took time out from buying books on the taxpayer dime to write a thread announcing Phillyblog was almost at 10,000 members and this thread when the 10,000th member joined:

CeeCee Becomes 10,000th Phillyblog Member Around 5:35 P.M.

CeeCee became the 10,000th person to join the Phillyblog community sometime between 5:32 p.m. today and 5:35 p.m. today. Of the 10,000 to join Phillyblog, 9,930 are current members. By the end of September 30, 2006–and likely earlier–we will have our 10,000th current member as well.

Congratulations, Mr. Cohen! I’d like to give out a prize to whoever wins thread of the week, specified to fit their needs. For Mr. Cohen, I have a special prize. Since he is such an avid reader, he gets… the… first book I can find on my desk… lesse… ahh, here we go: Eagles Essential, by Thom Loverro. This 187-page trove is full of facts about the city’s most beloved team. It’ll be in the mail shortly.

Thanks to 14th Windiest State for help with this week’s edition and for the “Mayor of the Internet” joke.