-
too young to remember any of this,
-
but there was huge fuss in the tobacco days around Joe Camel
-
who was this sort of glorious icon,
-
a sort of cool, some 1990s version of cool,
-
who went from this kind of icon once tobacco began de-demonize to
-
a very different kind of figure, from Joe Camel to Joe Chemo.
-
These charges let me note again,
-
can be accurate, they can be wildly exaggerated,
-
or they can be completely false about
-
the producers or the purveyors of whatever the substance is.
-
What matters in American political life,
-
is that they pack real political power