Smokers must stop taking themselves so seriously

TO THE EDITOR:

I've got to be honest"" some of the quotes in the article ""Social Smoking Endures"" are just too silly to ignore.

Smoking as one of the last vestiges of our civil liberties?"" Smokers are ""free-thinking"" heady intellectuals?"" And ""less shallow?""

Listen" let's be real: You smoke. That's it. Smoking doesn't make you a heady intellectual. Smoking doesn't make you a champion of civil liberties. Even if you do smoke American Spirit.

Smoking doesn't make you Kant smoking doesn't make you Derrida and no smoking doesn't make you Barack Obama.

I mean if you really want to" you can call the smokers around the flag pole ""an open protest where people can freely express themselves"" though, I've got to say, that's meeting you way more than halfway. I would more accurately call it, a bunch of college students smoking."" Not as poetic" I know but at least it's free of the ridiculous pretensions that apparently hover in the air in the middle of Polk Place.

Smoking doesn't offend me at all. It definitely offends me less than ridiculous pronouncements about the nature of all smokers everywhere. I'm just saying if you really want to be less shallow I would recommend avoiding huge character generalizations about people based on habits like — let's just pick something at random oh I don't know — smoking.

If you want to celebrate the last vestiges of our civil liberties I understand there is some sort of election coming up. If you want to be a free-thinking" heady intellectual (a fine aspiration though God forbid you ever describe yourself as ""heady"")" then I understand that apparently there are opportunities to intellectually grow and explore on this campus and in your classes. That's just what I heard though you're the one who has to find it.

Hell have a cigarette while you go looking. Just don't be so smug and self-righteous about it.



Kellen Carpenter

Class of 2008