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Bette Davis, Thank You For Smoking... NOT!!!!
Dear Miss Bette Davis,
Only you could appreciate me writing you. After all, in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, you sang, "I've written a letter to daddy/His address is Heaven above." I'm sure your address is Heaven above too, but just in case I'm wrong, I'm sending a fireproof version of this letter to my eternal resting place as well. Your biggest fan is here to ask you two favors: Say hi to Barbara Stanwyck for me (hubba hubba!! Sorry...) and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forgive me for not noticing a crucial detail about your new postage stamp. I wrote about it before, and am using it to mail this letter. Please have a look at it. I know, I know! How could I have missed that you've been censored in it? Your second most famous attribute is missing: They removed Margo Channing's cigarette! Ms. Channing has been castrated by the politically correct post office! Holy Marlboro Man, Miss Davis! Your hand looks as if you should be screaming out "WESSS' SIIIIIIIDE!"
Why am I surprised? This isn't the first time you've been censored. In Bunny O'Hare, the 1971 movie you made with Ernest Borgnine, American International Pictures altered your closing line to use a more PG-friendly (or "GP-friendly," as PG was GP then) F-word. The original line would have made you the first famous old-school celebrity to drop that word on the big screen. Instead, Kate Hepburn (say hi to her too) got to level the F-bomb in Warren Beatty's Love Affair. You sued AIP for censoring your line, and while the suit was eventually dropped, I think you had the right idea. I think you should sue the United States Post Office, demanding they reinstate Margo's symbolic middle finger. Find John Edward and scare the shit out of him by actually conversing with him, making your demands. It would be just like that scene in Ghost when Oda Mae Brown realizes she actually DOES "see dead, white people."
Let's be real, Miss Davis. What the hell is wrong with the PC powers-that-be in this country? Do they honestly believe that removing a cigarette is going to stop people from smoking? If we don't acknowledge something, it'll go away? It doesn't work for ignoring poverty or birth control! Why would it work for smokes? Nobody I know started smoking because stars like you did; they started smoking because somebody they knew, or were related to, smoked. Peer pressure, not the mere act of seeing smoking onscreen, is what gets the little puffers started. By that rationale, should we eliminate a teenager's friends?
In closing, I humbly restate my appeal for forgiveness for my lack of astuteness. When I buy the stamp that adorns this letter from the post office, I'll make sure I'm smoking five or six cigarettes at once. Please tell John Edward to bail me out of jail.
Your biggest fan,
Odie
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When you decide to stop smoking, you will undoubtedly reap some health benefits from quitting. To end the habit successfully, one of the most helpful things you can do for yourself is to make a list of the reasons for quitting. Then, when the craving for a cigarette hits, you can take your list out and look at your reasons for quitting. Oftentimes, the list of benefits will override your urge to smoke. Some companies will get you the extra cash that could keep you from needing payday loans if you do something for them. GE performed an experiment by offering select groups of employees either a financial incentive or no incentive to quit smoking. Just as payday loans are confidential during a financial emergency, this was all confidential, as behavior modification experiments must be done with scientific rigor, and the establishment of a control group was essential. They found that more people quit with an incentive, but that more people stayed smoke free without one. If I were in that position, I'd give up the habit if it meant I'd be paid and wouldn't need payday loans for a while.
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