These days, we can all go to movie theaters, sporting events, restaurants, plane rides and even work without having to deal with someone else's cigarette smoke. It wasn't always that way. Scientists working for the major tobacco companies discovered that second hand smoke was a serious health hazzard way back in the 60's, but mainstream science didn't really catch on for about another decade. As soon as the issue became public and the battle was on, the big tobacco companies led preemptive strikes against possible future bans. One of their weapons? By golly, his name was Sylvester Stallone! Brown and Williamson ponied up $500,000 to Stallone so that he would use their products onscreen in 5 of his films. Evidently, they figured that the site of Stallone lighting up would give their product an aura of power and strength, particularly in the eyes of impressionable young males. (Glantz et al, The Cigarette Papers 366)

I'm willing to bet money that Stone's next picture will be about the BP oil spill.  

 

Now...shall we go back to bashing this movie?

There's really no easy answers, just more questions.

RESPONSE from Head RAZZberry: Not to join the "Conspiracy Buff" crowd, but I have always found it significant that from his perch in the School Book Depository, Oswald had a direct, head-on shot at Kennedy's limo before it turned that last corner -- A shot not obscured by any trees or obstacles. If he did indeed act alone, why did he wait until he had to take a far more difficult, less-likely-to-succeed shot? Not necessarily proof of anything, but an interesting paradox...  

But for all the moments I've had my doubts, the old scientific principle of Occam's razor seems to apply to this case fairly well, and provide the simplest and best answer: One pathetic loser, acting alone, changed history... 

Both sides probably deserve blame. But a rather famous interview with John Wayne comes to mind.  Wayne was extremely conservative politically, and someone asked him shortly after JFK's election what he thought of the new President. I can't quote him exactly, but it was something very close to this: "I didn't vote for him, but he is my President and I hope he does well." Fast forward just under half a century and we have Rush Limbaugh saying, after the election of Obama, "I hope he fails." That, in a nutshell, is where we were...and where we are.

 

To be sure, there were a lot of people around for whom WWII was fresh in their memory, but even an event on that scale hadn't come into American living rooms every night, whereas by 2001, people had seen war and terrorist events and all sorts of other maladies, with some regularity, almost every day.