Strange Standards of the Media

Strange Standards of the Media

Dear Editor:

The Arizona Republic recently published a touching plea by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas urging his fellow writers to stop the glamorizing the use of tobacco in their scripts. His article was both a confession and a desire for absolution by the writer of box office hits like Basic Instinct.

After years of personal smoking and drinking and using those indulgences as traits of his script characters, Eszterhas has had a major change of heart. His change came after he developed throat cancer, "the result of a lifetime of smoking," but also associated with heavy use of alcohol. His survival instinct enabled him to quit smoking and drinking and 18 months of treatment in cancer wards have made a true believer of him. Now he wants to help young people say no to tobacco. He is pleading with other screenwriters to eliminate use of tobacco from their scripts. He is sure young people are seduced into the use of this destructive product by what they see on the screen.

My deepest sympathy goes out to Mr. Eszterhas in his illness and I commend him for his efforts to reform his industry. I do however have a few questions:

If it is good for a Hollywood leader to exhort kids not to use tobacco, why is it considered "puritanical and oppressive" when Christian leaders do the same?

If seeing movie stars use tobacco on the screen entices kids to smoke, doesn’t seeing uninhibited sexual conduct, vulgarity, alcohol consumption and violence on the screen entice them to do the same?

If it is good to urge screenwriters to phase out the use of tobacco by their characters would it not also be good to have them phase out the use of alcohol?

It is at least as harmful to personal and public health as tobacco, perhaps even more.

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