Topic: Accuracy in Media
Not only is Accuracy in Media libeling Obama administration officials, it's trying to whitewash the tobacco industry.
A Dec. 9 AIM column by John W. Howard, in trying to warn that the federal government is after you cites previous examples of government interference:
Then they came for the tobacco companies. Knowing that seizure of the vocabulary will frame the terms of debate, they applied their favorite derisive sobriquet: Big Tobacco; as if "bigness" itself were somehow inherently discrediting. If I may indulge in a short digression, bigness does not come from failure but from success. It is the left's project to punish success wherever it is found. It is, after all, a fundamental element of their philosophy. Life to them is a zero sum game. Success for one can only be bought at the expense of the failure of another. Success, then, is the enemy, especially if it is economic success. Bigness, then, as the symbol of extreme success, must be disqualifying to claims to virtue. Indeed, that very bigness equates with evil (unless, of course, it is government bigness).
Whatever its shortcoming, tobacco is a product that is legal. Those of us who do not smoke often find its by-products offensive, but the truth is that millions of people around the globe find pleasure in its use and the only people it generally harms are those who voluntarily use it. (Some of us believe the film industry is significantly more destructive on a broader scale than any tobacco product could be.) "Big Tobacco" employs millions and has added billions to our economy. "Big Tobacco" has given hundreds of millions to support charitable organizations throughout the world, single-handedly saving a number of cultural institutions in the United States.
Howard never gets around to explicitly stating just what that "shortcoming" of tobacco is: it kills people.
Howard does aver that the tobacco industry is "a business that traffics in death, as the left's caricature would have it," albeit only to bash fellow businessmen for letting that unpleasant death stuff stand in the way of defending tobacco.
