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Monday, July 19, 1999 By Brian O'Neill
Butt Ugly," "Butt Munch" and "Butt Head"
You've likely seen the billboards. If you've managed to miss them, maybe you saw the story in our Health section last week.
Pennsylvania and other states have launched an aggressive anti-smoking campaign aimed at children from 9 to 14. This $200,000 billboard campaign represents just a fraction of the $206 billion settlement that 46 states pried from the tobacco industry.
So it's not as if spending this fortune wisely is the biggest deal in the world. It's found money. It's OK to blow a little on a well-intentioned mistake.
And so I believe we are.
It's been a long time since I was a 13-year-old boy, but I'm guessing I'd be more intrigued than repulsed by a teen-ager wearing an oversized cigarette butt on his noggin, as "Butt Head" does.
Ditto for the freaky chick with the horn rims that is "Butt Ugly," and the pair of choppers clenching a cancer stick in "Butt Munch." As for the two ads supposedly dramatizing the real dangers of smoking -- a cigarette transformed into a bullet, and another combined with a syringe -- I think the operative adolescent response would be "cool!"
Pennsylvania Physician General Dr. Robert S. Muscalus argues that these creations by a Harrisburg advertising agency "should give parents and kids an opportunity to start talking to each other about smoking and other health hazards."
Maybe. But this guy should beware the law of unintended consequences. These billboards remind me of a public television special I once saw about the political manipulation of television images.
A network news show ran what it considered a very tough piece on President Reagan's use of staged events to boost his popularity. So the reporter of the piece was surprised when one of Reagan's spinmeisters called to thank her for doing the story.
It seems that, in telling the tale, the network had rerun all the images the Reaganites had worked so hard to produce. Who cared what the reporter was saying? Those great images of the president were flashing again.
These Buttinskis sneering down at drivers might also backfire. They're quirky. Hip. Edgy. Very '90s. They look as if they'd irritate their parents to no end.
Excuse me, but isn't that the average teen-ager's goal?
If Muscalus and Attorney General Mike Fisher want to stem cancer, they shouldn't try to gauge adolescent fashion sense. This might offend some voters -- and not a few of my friends -- but why not a billboard depicting what has become a classic Downtown winter scene?
Picture a huddle of cold, aging nicotine addicts, snarling across their cigs outside a building where they're not welcome.
"Welcome To Your Nightmare, Children."
Of course, that might look strangely inviting, too. Maybe this is why the tobacco companies caved, taking down all their billboards this spring. Some genius in Richmond or Winston-Salem must have realized that any mention of cigarettes, in any context, can't hurt.
We should have saved the 200 Gs and left the damned signs blank.
Brian O'Neill's e-mail address is boneill@post-gazette.com.
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