The Nannification of America

By Paul M. Lacayo

Amazingly, Uncle Sam now that the “Soviet” Bear has been laid to rest and now has to deal with the Islamic Jihadists; has slowly and steadily in different ways, undergone a metamorphosis from an Uncle into a Nanny with its own citizens.

A nanny is caregiver who takes care of children in their parents’ stead. Yet, in our American Experience, the Nanny is telling the adults that basically, “you’re too stupid or ignorant to know what’s good for you so we’re going to tell you how to live so you can live longer and do as we say for that same period of time.”

Nowhere can I think of a better example of this Nannification of America, than over the issue of smoking bans imposed by state and local governments that have sprung up over the last decade.

Being a California Native, I’ll use my own Golden State as a reference where over the last couple of years banning smoking has gone beyond the state ordinance of no-lighting up the Marlboro inside of restaurants to outside! That’s right the great outdoors, where outside major cities it’s referred to as believe it or not – fresh air. If I remember correctly, in the fresh air, the wind blows the smoke away and dissipates it. Wow! Imagine that a natural filter so the smoke doesn’t get into the non-smoker’s lungs.

Honestly, I can say that I have never smoked. Well, there was a time when I was living in Nicaragua in the early 70’s when as a young kid, and celebrating local holidays there I didn’t have the patience to run to the gas stove to light up firecrackers or had the permission to strike a match to light a roman candle. Therefore I would go to one of my relatives who at the time meant most of them smoked and I could borrow an almost finished cigarette and use it to light up that explosive device.

You could say I got the most bang for the butt that I could.

However, unlike former President Clinton, I really didn’t inhale because the one time I accidentally did, I gagged for about 5-10 minutes.

Besides the fact that smoking is a disgusting habit, making its users smell like ashtrays and ultimately most of them will have their remains look like their used cigarette butts; there is one thing I will not fight them on. Their freedom to use it and enjoy it, after all it’s their choice.

Hmmm, there’s that word again choice. Pro-choice, gee, let’s think about this one for a minute. Pro-Abortionists use that argument all the time to justify and ultimately received legal protection for aborting a fetus. Pro-choice is used by Medical Marijuana proponents for alleviating chronic pain stemming from various ailments. So what is the difference?

If a woman has an abortion, she has control over her own body. Agreed, she does have that right. However if you don’t want to get pregnant, aren’t there about 20 different methods, products and ways to avoid getting pregnant? I’ll leave this issue alone for another time.

In pot’s case, certain states have legalized Medical Marijuana use but it has smashed up against Federal Law that prohibits it. Again, another issue we can discuss for another day.

I’ll agree that smoking in confined spaces while sharing a restaurant with those that don’t smoke is annoying and irritating to the bronchial spaces of the latter. However, there is one thing to consider here, what about air filters and air conditioning that could contain or prevent the smoke from reaching the non-ashtray users? Yet, I’ll concede this point to where, okay, a smoker can do without his or her cigarette for the duration of a meal or cocktail and light up when they get outside.

However, now you can’t smoke within a certain distance of restaurant and other public places.

Just this week, Beverly Hills joined nannies: Santa Monica, Burbank and Calabasas here in Southern California in banning smoking outside public places.

San Francisco, my birth city, prohibits smoking in all public places including parks! Let’s see, parks are outdoors, aren’t they? Outdoors, air blowing smoke away. How is that harmful to the non-smoker?

Well the nannies in these aforementioned communities in the name of public health have basically told their smoking “children”, that you’re no longer an adult in their eyes. See, what they’re telling you is: "You’re killing your self and we won’t allow you to take the rest of us with you with your dreaded second hand smoke!" Which by the way, I believe for you to die of second hand smoke you would have to be in a confined house living with a chain smoker for many years before succumbing to it.

Smoking, as much as I detest it, is a person’s choice.

Adults, once upon a time were children, and for the most part were brought up by adults and influenced mostly by adults. Generally speaking, if those influential adults were non-smokers, chances are their heirs won’t smoke. If they were smokers, they probably will smoke as well.

For the past 50 years we know what smoking can do for you. Armed with that information for the past 5 decades most of us do not smoke. We made that choice. Those that smoke, made the choice to smoke, armed with the very same information.

Point is, we made the choice, not Mary Poppins or Phoebe Figalilly(1) or Super Nanny.

In Mary’s case a spoonful of sugar can make the medicine go down smoother but stop ramming the utensil down the throats of the smokers. After all, they’ve got enough issues to deal with just by being smokers.

But there is something very wrong when you start dictating to people what they can and can’t do with personal habits. Because after they ban it in restaurants, public indoor and outdoor places, guess where the nannies are coming for you next?

That’s right inside your house and your car. As a matter of fact that’s already happened in the Maine City of Bangor, earlier this year, where you are now fined if the police catch you smoking a cigarette inside your car with a child inside. Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico also enacted similar bans, and at least three other states are considering them: California, Connecticut and Maine.

Seven other states with large number of smokers such as Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska prohibit smoking around foster children in homes, cars or both. Custody battles have been determined on the very fact of whether one or the other contending parents smoked(2).

Wouldn’t a better way to deal with this is to guilt trip adults into common sense with public service announcements and other ads around town about how incredibly stupid, asinine and wrong it is to slowly kill your child or at the very least handicap their health with second hand smoke inside a confined space such as a motor vehicle.

Believe me nothing works better than guilt on a person. Making otherwise law abiding citizens a criminal in their minds is just self esteem assassination. When a parent’s guilt overcomes their urge to light up, my thinking is that they’re going to think themselves a better parent when they stopped exposing their child to second hand smoke.

But of course that isn’t enough for the nannies; you’re now basically a criminal for doing something inside your own property.

Before long you’re going to look up and the next thing that you’ll be told what to do is what food you should eat.

Yes sir, it’s coming down the pipe and in some cases it’s already here. After smoking, the next thing people ingest just as much of if not more, is food.

In Putnam County, N.Y., Senior citizens protested a recent decision to eliminate donuts from being donated to Senior Citizens Centers food menus because the County Office for the Aging thought it’s bad for them!

Holy mackerel! Now we’re telling seniors what they can’t eat. Seniors, those that have lived the longest among us and have survived wars, sickness, alcohol, the Edsel, 8 Track Tapes, Howard the Duck, Michael Jackson and Boy Bands, as well as countless other full life impediments and have more wisdom than a million nannies, are being told that donuts are bad for them.

Apparently, the reasoning is because the sweets are attacked by grandpa and grandma like a corn field ravaged by locusts. Well, for God’s sakes let them! They’ve earned it. Why should they have to "walk down to the store" as one official put it when they can get it where they reside? Besides some of them can’t "walk down" to the corner store, you moron!

As one senior stated: "I'm 86, not 8!"(3)

Last but not least comes a September 10, 2007 article from the LA Times reporting on the LA City Council considering limiting new fast food restaurants in South L.A. for up to two years!(4)

Their reasoning besides the fact that much of the fast food menu can be unhealthy, and their is a high concentration of the eateries in this area, is as one Councilmember stated: "The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there,"(5)

What do you mean the people don't want them? If they didn't want them, most of them would have gone out of business by now! Pure, supply and demand at work.

Remember my friends, we better wake up to the fact that being told how to live your life as an adult by Nanny governments is not only insulting and degrading its dangerous. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around.

One day if we're not careful we'll be inserting new words in to the poem by Martin Niemöller:

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Now if you think that this idea is far fetched; that smoking bans will lead to the Nazification or Communism in this country remember that "the Road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

We’ll, got to get back to my plate of beef, slice of pie, whole milk and listen to some rock and roll with my good friend outside where he happens to be taking a drag!

As Dennis Miller says: “That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”.

Post Script: Belmont, CA City Council Votes in Nation's toughest anti-smoking law.


References:
(1) - Phoebe Figalilly was a fictional character played by Juliette Mills in the early 70's TV Show: Nanny and the Professor.
(2) - NY Times Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/us/19smoking.h
(3) - USA Today Article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-09-23-doughnut-seniors_N.htm
(4) & (5) - LA Times Article: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fastfood10sep10,0,4559964.story