I Don't Follow the Logic

A couple of years ago I used the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids website to send a fax to my Congressmen to ask him to vote against some issue that I thought was worthy. Of course I was put on their email list and continue to receive emails about their latest crusade to crush smoking and/or the advertising of cigarettes and smoking related items to young children. I usually don't pay them much attention, because the targets of their fury seem so strange and ill conceived. Like the email I received today:

Dear Brendan,

We know that almost all adults who smoke today took their first puff in their teens. Glamorous movie stars, role models for young women, smoked in 80% of the movies rated for young people produced by Sony Pictures® from 1999-2003.

100% of the G-rated movies featured smoking.

What? 100% of what G-rated films? Sony's G-rated films? Give me facts, not stats if you want to convince me of anything.

Plus, I think most kids today - at least the ones old enough to be watching live action films - are savvy enough to discern the actor from the character. People are not lemmings. We are not so enamored with the stars of television and screen that we are compelled to emulate everything that an actor's character does on the flickering screen. Even if an individual has a crushing attachment to an actor, they'll pattern themself after the actors real life behavior - not the behavior their character displays in a movie. The person wants to be like the actor, not some fictional person they portray.

In Mona Lisa Smile, a recent film starring actresses popular with teenagers, young women are shown smoking 21 times. Every four minutes, a young woman is shown smoking, talking about smoking or displaying a pack of Camel or Winston cigarettes.

Mona Lisa Smile is a film set back in the 1950's when smoking was not only more prevalent than it is today, it was practically encouraged. Would you have filmmakers completely disregard history to help your agenda? This is a horrible film to use in their argument.

There are hundreds of other examples. We must stop this and stop it now, which is why we're launching the Save Our Daughters campaign.

"Hundreds of other examples." Great, nothing like some nice broad generalizations to help hammer home an argument. Who buys into these types of rationalizations?