Thank You for Smoking

Nick said he would need something to show the grown-ups by Friday because they were already getting heat from the Advertising Council, which was getting heat from the gasper groups, who sniffed a large, hairy rat.

He called Sammy Najeeb. The secretary of Health and Human Services was calling for Nick's resignation. "I'm always the last to know," Nick said. Larry wanted him on the show tomorrow. As soon as Nick hung up, Jeannette stuck her head in his office to tell him that Secretary Furioso of Helpless, Hopeless, and Stupid (above) was calling for his resignation, and Nick was able to say that he'd just heard this from Larry King's executive producer. When you're hot, you're hot.

BR called him five minutes later. Talk about an attitude implant. His whole tone had changed. He'd heard about the Larry King invite.

A definite score, nice going. Now this Furioso thing, how should they play it? Tobacco Fighting Back, that was good, that was fine. Nick was definitely earning his two-oh-oh. But she's a cabinet secretary and we don't want you too out-front. Right?

Right. They agreed. Nick would be unyielding on the points, but respectful. He'd push the theme of we're-on-the-same-side-here, to the extent that was possible. Furioso was a tough old buzzardess. BR paid him a compliment. Amazing. He said, "You better put your five-million-dollar baby on display. May turn out to be the best money we ever spent." We! Team Tobacco!

The planets were in harmonious alignment. Polly was having a good day, a really good day. In fact, it was possible that she might never ever have such a day again. For several years now, the Neo-Prohibitionists within the federal government had been using a phrase that drove the liquor, beer, and wine lobbies crazy: "alcohol and other drugs." The Moderation Council had spent millions in trying to get Uncle Sam's roundheads to stop using it in all their communications. To no avail. And now the pope had publicly said that wine should not be considered a drug. True, he was talking about sacramental wine, and wine used in moderation, at the family dinner table, preferably while working up to a little connubial and reproductive sex. Nonetheless, Polly was running with His Holiness's pontification in a big way, issuing a blizzard of paper. Her wine people were beside themselves. Her beer people were passing peach pits. The head of Gutmeister-Melch had spent thirty minutes reaming her out for not having "gotten him" to say the same thing about beer.

"I told him it wasn't us who did it. It was the Italian producers. They saw the plummeting U.S. consumption figures and worked it through one of the cardinals."

"It's hard to see what the pope could say good about beer,"

Bobby Jay said. "It's not like the Good Lord changed water into beer at Cana. And they weren't hardly drinking beer in the upper room at the Last Supper."

"Then my distilled spirits people called to bitch."

"What do they expect," Nick said, "that he's going to come out for scotch?"

"No, they just — it's a zero-sum game. We're in declining volumetrics, and they're all totally paranoid. They see anything good happen to wine or beer and they think, Less for us. I spend over half my time keeping them from killing each other, when they should be protecting each other's backs."

"Well, cheers anyway," Nick said, raising his glass. "Nicely done, even if you didn't have anything to do with it. Say, do either of you guys know a Heather Holloway, works for the Moon?

She wants to do a piece on me."

"Heather Holloway? Oh yeah," Bobby Jay said. "Irish type, reddish hair, big green eyes, great skin. Amazing tits."

"Tits?" Polly said. "Why are her tits relevant?"

"Humh," Bobby Jay said through his food. "World-class honkers on a reporter interviewing a male of the species are relevant, believe you me."

"I thought Jesus freaks didn't talk locker-room."

"I am not a 'Jesus freak.' I do not accost strangers on street corners. I do not play the guitar. I am a born-again Christian. And I shoot," Bobby Jay said, "to kill."

"You're going to end up just like that guy in Waco. Praising the Lord, passing the ammo, and shooting ATF agents. I get very nervous around guns and religion."

Nick said, "Is there anything else you can tell me about her, aside from what size bra she wears?"

Bobby Jay said that Heather Holloway had come to one of SAFETY's press conferences, in which Mr. Drum called for building more jails. It was part of SAFETY's offensive strategy: instead of sitting still and being a punching bag for liberals who didn't want criminals to have guns, they went after liberals for releasing people who had shot people in the first place. Heather had charmed the socks off Drum, and had written a more or less antigun-control piece — the Moon being a conservative paper — but she had taken issue with Drum for insisting that a prior history of mental illness ought not to disqualify a person from buying a handgun. So Drum suspected her of liberal tendencies.