Tuesday 6 January 2015

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. .


10 comments:

DrMA said...

Brilliant beyond words. One of your best posts, IMO!

Dioclese said...

So Cocker's death was entirely down to smoking then? The Bourbon and drugs had nothing to do with it...

jude said...

Thank you DP, excellent post.

What the.... said...

It’s worth taking a closer look at some of the “paragons” of Public Health, these petty dictators standing in judgment of all. We know that
medically-monopolized Public Health places no value on mental and social
health. That’s how it can rationalize the constant fear and hate-mongering. Its fixation is purely with physical health and the abuse of low-level statistical
odds of questionable causal basis in its pursuit.

A few misocapnists/capnophobes have been highlighted in the past. For example, Stantonitis Glands, Marty McPee. We know that, in terms of mental health, these people are a mess. Considering that these
pontificating weasels have spent a lifetime depicting those who smoke as a
disgrace to the human race, they don’t come up looking too good in the physical health stakes themselves. Look at Glands and McPee; their pants are stretched to “popping point”. Even Crapman is “blowing out”.

In their younger days, these misfits thought they had it all "figured out": Disease and death only happens to those terrible smokers. Well, their royal highnarses are finding out that rabid antismokers age, lose shape, go into decline, and eventually cark it. These dolts probably haven’t spent one
moment honestly scrutinizing what goes on in their addled minds. Even as they preach the “perils of smoking” and as their pants are being stretched some more, it probably doesn’t even dawn on these dullards that they’re throwing stones in their own glass houses.

What the.... said...

But the rabid antismoking nut case I’d like to highlight today is John Banz½ the ⅓. The ⅓ has been with the current antismoking crusade since the very beginning in the late-1960s, at which time he also founded the American version of Action on Smoking & Health. The ⅓ is a top-shelf misocapnist. It would be difficult to find a greater hater of smoke/smoking/smokers than Banz½. His ASH website was an incitement to hatred. He had advice on how to get smoking banned in apartment complexes; how to get custody of children in divorce proceedings when the spouse was a smoker; the
immediate perils of thirdhand smoke; how to circumvent anti-discrimination laws in refusing to hire smokers; how smokers are costing employers money; etc. His website provided pages and pages of terribly misrepresenting interpretations of already agenda-driven “research” that depicted even momentary exposure to tobacco smoke as akin to a blast of sarin gas.

Banz½ the ⅓ has been an all around obnoxious, arrogant, ambulance-chasing, greedy, neurotic, bigoted liar. Here’s how the narcissistic shyster
described himself:
http://banzhaf.net/

And here is Banz½ the ⅓ NOW. The pillar of “health promotion”, demonstrating the benefits of having lived a life free of tobacco smoke, has had an encounter with actuality:
http://www.gwhatchet.com/2014/08/21/forty-years-after-watergate-law-professor-reflects-on-his-role-in-nixons-resignation/

psok said...

glantz's real name is glans - 'cause he is a fucking knobend! ;>)

SteveW said...

Utterly disgusting.
That being said, is anyone surprised that the little shitweasel has neither scruples, nor a working moral compass.

truckerlyn said...

What about 'Quality is more important than Quantity'? After all, what is the point in living decades longer if you are downright miserable. being banned to outside only in whatever the weather throws at you and being made the scourge of the planet by these little hitlers who are no more than one trick ponies!


Just because they are sad and joyless does not mean they have to make the rest of us feel the same!

James Dunworth said...

"Because death by lung cancer is seen as a perfect marketing tool for tobacco controllers..."

Despite the fact they appear not to work. Advertising guru Martin Lindstrom analysed the brains of smokers who were being shown cigarette warnings. He found that:

“Cigarette warnings… stimulated an area of the smoker’s brain called the nucleus accumbens, otherwise known as “the craving spot”… when stimulated, the nucleus accumbens requires higher and higher doses to get its fix.”

His conclusion was:

“…those same cigarette warning labels intended to curb smoking, reduce cancer and save lives had instead become a killer marketing tool for the tobacco industry.”

John M said...

I can't imagine the hilarious taunting Chapman will receive if he - younger and a non smoker - should be unfortunate enough to get cancer (preferably lung variety) and die well before Joe Cocker did.

Chapman is an unspeakable c**t. The world will be a better place without his ignorant and nasty trolling.