Nurse the Hate: Hate The Anti Smoking Ad

So I’m relaxing, watching my beloved San Francisco Giants handle the Dodgers.  I couldn’t be happier really.  Baseball has returned, which means my life has meaning again.  Since the games go off so late, West Coast feed and all, I often struggle to stay up for the whole game while in bed.  It becomes like training for overnight drives on the highway.  If I can stay up while Angel Pagan fouls off 17 pitches in a row, I can probably stay awake driving the van at 4:15 am and not make us all plummet off a cliff.

This is when I saw a very disturbing Public Service Announcement.  In the spot a woman with a gravely voice complains that cigarette companies never let her know that nicotine is addictive.  I could argue that it was probably pretty evident because long before she probably had her first smoke, she undoubtedly heard people talk about how much difficulty they had while attempting to quit.  No matter, she can play it that way if she wants.  Hey!  No one told me inhaling smoke into my body was harmful.  I had NO IDEA.  I got duped by The Cigarette Company. It’s their fault, not mine. 

It was then I noticed the hole in the woman’s throat.  Oh no.  She isn’t going to do what I think she is going to do, is she?  Ye Gods.  She is.  She really is…  The woman in the commercial says, “No one told me nicotine was addictive.  How addictive?”.  The she takes a cigarette and smokes it out of the hole in her throat.

Look man, I’m just trying to watch a baseball game here.  I don’t smoke.  I never have.  I haven’t even took a hit off of a cigarette.  I never wanted to as the stench of the Marlboro Reds my mother smoked bothered me so much I hate even the faintest smell of them to this day.  So why do I have to watch some leathery woman smoke out of her tracheotomy hole?  Is there a waiver I can sign so I don’t have to see that again?  Ever?

I appreciate the fact they want to scare people straight.  However, isn’t the commercial itself confirming that if you are smoking now, you are pretty much locked in to your own future blowhole?  And let’s be honest here, kids aren’t watching these games.  Baseball is for old suburban white dudes like me.  We are all either all in or all out on this cigarette thing.  No matter what, smokers or not, none of us want to relax after a day at work and see that blowhole stunt.  

If I have to watch the Smoking Blowhole Lady, I firmly believe that women watching The View need to see a “Leaking Sexually Transmitted Vaginal Infection” PSA.  Kids watching cartoons need to see “Bleeding Eye Socket Running With Scissors” commercial.  If I have to take medicine I don’t want or need during my leisure time, everyone else does too.  I’ll bet the Smoking Blowhole Lady isn’t on ABC during The Bachelor.  Oh no.  Just during my beloved Giants games.

My fear is that the Blowhole Lady commercial is a season long sponsorship.  That’s’s how they sell this shit you know.  There will be no way I can avoid it.  I do feel confident that if I watch it every game, by mid August on game 113, I will get used to seeing her.  Hell, I might look forward to it.  I had a roommate that used to take out his glass eye, and that became no big deal.  Maybe I’m overreacting.

Oh fuck.  I just saw it again.  I’m not overreacting.  Everyone stop smoking.  Right now.  Put out your cigarettes you addicted fools.  Make this stop.