Death As A PR Opportunity

Yesterday I wrote about a tobacco control industry lie - created by false accounting - finally being comprehensively nailed five years later.

On the same day, serial maths failure Simon Chapman was employing his own creative means to defend himself against accusations of dancing on Joe Cocker's grave. You see, on the day of Cocker's death, the Aussie career obsessive had posted a respectful tweet celebrating the singer's extraordinary talent in life a tweet that may as well have said "the filthy smoker got what he deserved" - it wasn't very well received.

You can tell when Chapman is miffed at being caught out because he tends to fire off blustering articles which serve to further highlight his embarrassment. Just as he did in this case.

Dying at 70, [Joe] Cocker effectively lost one day in eight off the life expectancy the average Englishman has today (80 years).

The link takes you to a database listing life expectancy ... at birth.

Except Joe Cocker wasn't born today, he was born in 1940. At that time, life expectancy for males at birth was 60, there's a reason why the state pitched pensionable age back then as 65 you know.

We will of course all die. But the sad part of Joe Cocker’s death is how early it occurred. Like Cocker, the 50% of long-term smokers who die from tobacco-caused disease lose an average of ten years of life.

Whereas Cocker outlived his average birth cohort by ten years. Now, wouldn't saying that he gained an extra ten years by quitting smoking 23 years ago be a much more positive message for Chapman to promote than pissing on the guy's memory using manipulated stats? Isn't this guy meant to be in the smoking cessation business? On this showing, he seems to be saying you're dead if you smoke anyway, so you may as well carry on.

But then, I reckon Frank Davis described this attitude very well the other day.

[D]espite supposedly being designed to improve “public health” and “help” smokers, all antismoking measures invariably attack smokers. Smoking bans, for example, “exile smokers to the outdoors” (Deborah Arnott), and exclude them from ordinary social interaction. At the same time punitive taxation robs smokers. And hiding tobacco products from public display obstructs smokers. And so-called “plain packaging” is really just a way of sending hate messages to smokers, by printing them on cigarettes packets. For while the actual message might be “smoking causes lung cancer”, the true message is: “We hope that smoking causes you lung cancer.”

Because death by lung cancer is seen as a perfect marketing tool for tobacco controllers, they just can't help themselves. What's more, Cocker was not only someone who achieved global adulation, success and riches while being that most disgusting of people to Chappers, a smoker, but also a stratospherically  more talented musician than wannabe rocker Chapman could ever be even in his dreams (see here for an example if you're not squeamish).  The temptation to get a jibe in on the day Cocker died was therefore just too irresistible and no amount of damage limitation wriggling can hide that.

Confused calls for a cone of “respectful” silence about smoking’s role in cancer and other tobacco-caused disease and for euphemisms about deaths following “a long illness” are forged by the same mentality that thinks tobacco packs should not have graphic health warnings because they might remind people too well about what smoking can do.

No, Chapman, they're forged by something called dignity, manners and human decency. Just more proof that we're on the side of the angels here. .