Marlboro
11:19 am February 9th, 2010
Pocahontas lives on in the imagination of most Americans even though the overwhelming majority of us have absolutely no real understanding of her historical standing other than what we've learned from the Disney musical animated film or other fictionalized representations of her legend. Pocahontas has become like Johnny Appleseed to most; more fictional than real. One of the most fascinating historical episodes in the life of Pocahontas was what happened after she met John Smith and achieved fame. In a way, Pocahontas was the first Marlboro Man. Or Joe Camel.
The settlement of Virginia was pretty much based on a foundation of tobacco. And the settlers wanted more than anything to introduce tobacco back home in Europe. As part of an advertising blitz not totally dissimilar from some of the events that Duffman has been involved with on various episodes of the Simpsons, Pocahontas and some other native Indians were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to sell the cancerous and toxic substance still inexplicably legal today to unsuspecting Brits. It's a true wonder why England hasn't sued America for the right to Virginia. Not a totally bad idea, really, considering the politicians they've elected recently.
Anyway, Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe and the others were welcomed as celebrities and even invited to the royal court. Well, Rolfe was not invited since he was a mere commoner. The plan was not only to sell the idea of tobacco, but to introduced something that would knock the king right out of his socks to the point where he would reduce the tax burden he'd been levying on Virginia. Pocahontas turned out to be a tremendous hit. She was especially embraced by Queen Anne. While the other Indians accompanying her wore traditional tribal garb, Pocahontas herself cut quite a figure attired in a high-necked dress with the same kind of frilly collar made famous by Queen Elizabeth. The fact that spoke English perfectly did not hurt either.
King James was another matter entirely. He was not a big fan of the Indian tribes and used to greet news of their devastation in huge numbers with absolute glee. Far less impressed with Pocahontas' ability to prove that the savages could be civilized than his wife and the rest of the court, King James did not exactly appear to be a likely candidate to change his mind about taxes and tobacco. And, in fact, it took the creation of the world's first tobacco lobby in the form of public demand for greater access to Virginia's death crop before he relaxed the rules and allowed greater import. Over the next few years the sale of Virginia's cancerous leaves in England exploded from 20,000 pounds to 40,000 pounds.
Back for another year of reviewing American Idol. Since this is Simon's last it's probably mine too. Maybe next year I'll focus on House Husbands of Hollywood 2.
Season 9 of Idol began with an acknowledgment of all the changes. Paula left the series to pursue obscurity. We were told nine guest judges would appear on the audition rounds vying for Paula's spot and they must've all done fantastic since Ellen DeGeneres got the job.
First up guest-judge wise was the painfully thin Victoria Beckham. My droll daughter Annie, who watched with me, shouted out, “Give her a sandwich! You'd think David Beckham could provide!“
Victoria's musical credentials are impeccable. She was Posh in the Spice Girls. And now Ryan refers to her as a “Fashion Icon”. Oh really? I don't think those doily-laced headbands are going to catch on other than for tying your garbage bags. Here's an example of her expert assessment of a singer's performance: “I love the jeans, the shirt.“
Posh offered nothing in the way of insight or personality, which still made her better than Kara. How the hell is she back for another year? Kara Dioguardi and Jeff Zucker - the two people who can't get fired. I'm reminded of that great line — “Who do you have to fuck to get off this picture?”
Randy Jackson is also back - wearing more make-up than Kara, Victoria, and even Ryan. And what was with the Playskool watch? Did “Fashion Icon” Posh suggest that? Randy unveiled some exciting new meaningless catch-phrases for the season. “Doin' it big!” and my personal favorite, “You're a cool guy. Great hang!“
The show started out in Boston. 9000 delusional guttersnipes getting drenched in a pouring rain. And not one of them I'm sure could appreciate the metaphor.
They started right off with a classic nut. Some whacko girl who kept auditioning to the American Idol video game. And when the animated Simon said she was good enough she entered the real competition. She was horrendous. Annie said they should recall the game if it put her through. Her idea of rehearsing, by the way, was to practice jumping.
There was the obligatory parade of idiots — girls who dressed like Diablo Cody if Diablo Cody was blind and guys decked out like Michael Jackson, the Marlboro Man, and the Burger King. This year's atrocious William Hung Asian kid massacred Eric Carman's “All By Myself”. And we had two or three lunatics who mistook grand mal seizures for dance steps. One cretin actually still thought Paula was there.
All of the losers broke down crying. “Simon's wrong!” “I'm a great singer, I know I am.” “I just took the steroids to heal faster.”
There were heart-tugging stories galore — cancer and down syndrome and dying grandmothers with dementia. All of these contestants got through to Hollywood of course. You're never going to hear, “Well, you have only one year to live and you can't sing.“
Ryan said one contestant got a “One-way ticket to Hollywood.” Uh, does that mean he has to pay his own way home? I guess the economic crunch has even caught up to American Idol.
My favorite aspirants: the drummer who broke both wrists after falling out of a tree, some Clark Kent-looking guy who was pissed he had to wait all day (this really irked Kara who intimated that if you're going to make it in the music industry you better have a talent for waiting), and finally - a blond stoner with horrible skin (I love my HD) who said he was going to try to sound like his idol, Chris Brown. Why Chris Brown? Because “he touches young kids all over the world.” Yeah, he sure touched young Rihanna. He beat the crap out of her. Stoner Boy was rejected but he was satisfied with his performance. As he said, “I did what I had to do. I hit really loud notes.“
More auditions tonight but I'm skipping those because, well, it's the same show as this one. Only the sob stories and costumes will change. Oh, and the guest judge. Not sure but I think it's Captain Beefheart.
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The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds.
“Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland, College Park. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both.
“But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible.
If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection.
The idea that tobacco might contain viable germs isn’t just idle conjecture. Several research teams have isolated bacteria from tobacco that they could grow out in petri dishes. Those earlier investigations tended to hunt for — and, when found, attempted to grow — only one or two species of interest, Sapkota says.
What’s novel in her study: She and her colleagues probed for genetic material from any and every bacterium in a cigarette’s tobacco. Under sterile conditions, the researchers opened up cigarettes and then performed a series of tests on the leafy bits. For instance, they isolated all of the ribosomal material and then homed in on its long, species-specific stretches known as 16S regions. These genetic segments were then compared to 16S patches characteristic of known bacterial species.
Sapkota’s team had 16S probes for close to 800 different bacteria and found matches to many hundreds in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. These cigarettes are “among the most commonly smoked brands in Westernized countries and represent three major tobacco companies,” Sapkota notes. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where she was completing her postdoctoral studies.
Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.
Sapkota’s team lists many of these — including the most prevalent bacteria in the tobacco they studied — in a paper published early, online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Some people have criticized the idea of infectious cigarettes, arguing that as tobacco burns, it would kill any germs present. But Sapkota is not so sure that’s true. The tobacco farthest from the burning tip might be a balmy temperature, from a bacterial point of view. And here’s “a really wild idea,” she says: What if the smoke particles traveling through the still-unburned part of a cigarette pick up some germs and then ferry them deeply into the lung, where they’re unlikely to be cleared? Wouldn’t that be the prescription for disease?
Of course, there’s also plenty of chances for a smoker to become exposed prior to lighting up. And, of course, the potential for highest oral exposure would come from chewing tobacco — and nasal exposures from snuff.
Sapkota, an environmental health scientist, plans to follow up her preliminary data to see which types of tobacco are most likely to host viable germs, and whether those bacteria are transported into the body, either during smoking or by the insertion of unburned tobacco products (including chewing tobacco) into the mouth.
Several thousand potentially toxic chemicals have been isolated from cigarettes. Sapkota says that it’s not hard to imagine that the number of germs hosted by tobacco products could rival that of the carcinogens and other poisons residing in or produced by burning tobacco.
How so, when she’s only found genetic material indicting hundreds of germs? Owing to the bacterial probes available when Sapkota began her tobacco work, she was only able to screen for 700-odd species. But newer probes on the market can now screen for the bacterial 16S genetic material of 5,000 or more germs. And if she used such huge batteries of probes now, she said she fully expects she could turn up at least 1,000 hitchhiking bacterial species in tobacco products.
Image: Flickr/alphadesigner
See Also:
- The Cigarette of the Future: All the Cancer, None of the Nicotine
- Philip Morris Tries to Engineer the Cancer Out of Tobacco
- Toxic Soup: Plastics Could Be Leaching Chemicals Into Ocean
- Anti-Smoking Drug Succeeds When Antidepressants Fail
- Darker Skin Linked to Nicotine Dependence
- The Inevitable USB Powered Cigarette
