The Cynic Express(ed) 3.03: B-ing Un-Kool

     Before I begin my Generi-Rant for this week, I offer the following disclaimer: as a flaming libertarian, I must hold the position that part of America's greatness lies within the freedom its citizens have to do a lot of what they want, regardless of the potential damage they can do to themselves with it. Hence, although I think smoking is a slow and expensive form of suicide, rather like buying a high mileage Mustang, I think it should be legal even though it could leave smokers metaphorically out seven thousand dollars and proud new owners of a Geo Storm, the vehicular equivalent of an iron lung. As long as smokers don't blow directly in my face and do not become militant when a restaurant can't seat them in smoking right now, I say live and let develop emphysema.

     Now that I have taken steps to ensure that large numbers of smokers will not march on my house with pitchforks and Bics, I can jump right on this week's pea under my mattress. Kool Cigarettes' new B Kool campaign, which I abhor for more than the mere illiteracy the campaign invites.

     As a reader of an free alternative weekly (the Riverfront Times here in St. Louis) and a cheap monthly print television for men magazine (Maxim, you got a problem with that?), I have been saturated with these ads from periodicals already humid with ad money from vices of all kinds. I'm fine with it, though, as the ad-to-copy ratio keeps the prices of the magazines down. But this Kool campaign is another thing.

     Perhaps you've seen it. We're looking out from the hip of a young man clutching a pack of Kools. He's obviously paying attention to the attractive woman in the center of the ad, a woman smiling back at the anti-hero of the piece. And somewhere else in the frame is the man she's there with. He's filling the tank of the convertible she's a passenger in or leaning back into her on a park bench. Although she's got her arms warped around this guy, Kool guy's got something that draws her eyes to him. He's special.

     I'm not sure what some little up-and-comer in New York or Chicago pitched this whole thing as. I don't get it. Kool makes a weak man strong and a strong man invincible? Sorry, that's Mustangs again. I suppose a guy who enjoys the yummy menthol roof sealant in each package of Kool is empowered by the nicotine to steal someone else's woman. After all, in the Darwinian world of dating in the nineties, it's every man for someone else's woman.

     Let me offer a counterpoint to the Kool message in the advertisements. Listen, although you may think your brand of cigarettes or even the well-traveled tar road of smoking-as-rebellion has turned you into the Menthalator, an unstoppable devourer of maidens, let's get right to the point. You've got a pack of Kools in your right hand, buddy, but I sure hope you've got a chumbawamba size can of air freshener in your left hand. You probably smell like a brush fire. Let's not forget a nice tube of white Grumbacher oil paint for those ochre whites of yours. And even though you've got that little green pack of cigarettes, the guy she's with at the very least has that convertible and at the most has a set of lungs that will carry him through any marathon she'd like to see him in whereas you'd be lucky if you could even get up.

     But since this is a four color Utopia we're looking at, let's say for the sake of argument you have found a good, shallow woman who will ditch a guy she's with to go home with someone whose Kool attitude is a nicotine buzz. My taste doesn't run to shallow, but okay. You get the girl, have a good little fling, but suddenly, one day you're sitting with her at the club and don't even realize she's making eyes at the guy in the dark corner with the Winston 100s. Besides, a woman like that's not going wheel you to chemo, when your body drops to about sixty percent of your current weight and you pull your oxygen tank behind you like a puppy on a short leash. If ditch-the-current-beau-for-Kool-guy made it that far with you, she's probably taking solace from your young, BMWed oncologist or waiting for you to kick off for the wonderful lawsuit that will have been the sum of your life.

     Of course, I'm not one to go off here on you. I mean, you've got to be who or what the ads tell you to be. You and Gwendolyn Brooks' seven pool players at the Golden Shovel. You real cool, you lurk late, you Jazz June, you die soon. That, self-extincting target demographic, is Darwin for the nineties.