I Present: The Non-Sequitur

Contender for STUPIDEST LETTER EVER.

Smoking ban sends folks to food banks

I heard on the radio that the Community Harvest Food Bank is almost out of food because of hard economic times. One has to wonder just how many of those people collecting food may be unemployed thanks to the City Council.

Cindy Henry said in the September issue of Fort Wayne Magazine that 22 bars have closed since the City Council banned smoking in bars and private clubs. She also said she employs 16 people. If all 22 bars have 16 employees, that amounts to 352 people and their families who can thank the City Council.

What happened to all the non-smokers who couldn’t wait for the bars to go smoke-free so they could enjoy the night life also?

STEVE SCHECKEL Fort Wayne

Ladies and gentlemen, I have no comment. This level of abject stupidity must stand on its own merit.

Left-Wing Mailbag, "Godwin's Law Bites Man in Ass" Edition

J-G Letters page, 2/14/2008

Invoking ‘Nazis’ admits defeat

Regarding John Strathmore’s letter, “Ban reminds one of Nazis” (Feb. 1): Is this how devoid of argument the smoke-lovers are that they have to resort to the ultimate ad hominem attack of calling those they don’t agree with “Nazis”?

In the world of online discussion, there is a phenomenon known as “Godwin’s Law,” which states that as a discussion continues, the probability of someone comparing his or her opponent to Hitler or the Nazi Party rises to the point of inevitability. As a corollary to Godwin’s Law, there is a long-standing rule that any person making this comparison has, in essence, admitted defeat, as it proves he or she is out of logical arguments.

That Strathmore would compare those of us who want to breathe clean, smoke-free air to a fascist regime that murdered millions because of the delusions of one wholly insane man proves that he is either incapable of arguing in good faith or that he has so little regard for those who suffered through the actual Third Reich or lost family members to the Holocaust that he should rightfully come off as heartless.

DAMIAN HOOD Garrett

Now who's the clever fellow who wrote that?

Right-Wing Mailbag, Invocation of Godwin's Law Edition

J-G Letters Page, 2/1/2008

Ban reminds one of Nazis

The Journal Gazette published several articles regarding smoking the week of Jan. 13. This concentrated blitz is surely an effort to influence the City Council as it prepares to consider modifying that oppressive piece of legislation commonly known as the smoking ban.

People who go to bars and clubs go there to smoke, relax and have a few beers and socialize with like-minded friends.

Now, the smoke Nazis are encouraging people to inform on their fellow citizens. They have even come up with a special 311 number to make the process easier, and they have enlisted the pledge of the police department and fire department to enforce their edict.

I resent that my tax money is being used to police the city for people who want to have a cigarette when that tax money could be used for better purposes.

This whole debacle reeks of the same tactics that got the Third Reich started, i.e.: unreasonable laws, people informing on each other, businesses going broke, people out of jobs and so forth. For those too young to remember, maybe the words “Adolf Hitler” and “Nazi Germany” will have meaning.

JOHN STRATHMORE Fort Wayne

I don't even have to waste my time pointing out how utterly stupid this man is. The fact that he Godwined himself does it for me.

That's how intellectually devoid these smoke-for-brains assholes are - they're out of arguments, so it's time to start calling people Nazis!

The Kids Call It Ownage

Today's Journal-Gazette Letters page

Fighting for freedom to smoke in a bar

I am exceedingly grateful to those at the July 27 City Council meeting who did so much to clear up something that has been troubling me and many others in this country and around the world for some time. Finally, we have the definitive answer to the question of why we are in Iraq. Apparently, we have killed half a million Iraqis, at the cost of thousands of our own children, so that some citizen in Fort Wayne can slouch in a sleazy bar swilling bad beer, chain-smoking Winstons. I assume the president has been alerted. All of his other ridiculous excuses for this fiasco of choice have imploded, and this one certainly seems as good as any.

But seriously, I object to the tragic war in Iraq being so appallingly trivialized. I know my two stepchildren, both of whom have served in Iraq at least once, would be rather depressed to discover that their devotion to this country has been reduced to such a pittance.

BERND FISCHER
Fort Wayne

Oh man, you beter believe I got a lugh out of this one. I was afraid I'd have to be the one to call the whiners out on this, but there it is.

Thank you, friend, for doing what needed to be done.

On Not Knowing Real Oppression

Okay, I admit I've been on a real tear about all the bitching over the smoking ban. What can I say, it's gotten annoying, especially with utter stupidity like this being printed in the paper nearly every day:

Our military is fighting for Iraqis’ freedom. Who is fighting for ours? Does freedom stop at the United States borders?

You've got to be kidding me. You wouldn't know what it's like to have your freedom taken away, you spoiled asshole.

Smokers Should Get the Hint

O plight and oppression! How terribly these smokers have it these days, what with ever-increasing taxes upon each pack and a new smoking ban in Ft. Wayne. Why, to hear their lamentations, one would think they are, beyond all doubt, the most put-upon group ever to walk the face of this Earth. They write into the paper, bemoaning taxes and bans and their utter, utter repression, all the while asserting their "rights" as smokers.
To them, I pose this question: If you're all so incensed about how being a smoker has become ever so difficult, then why not take the hint and quit? You'll save money, your health, and the health of those around you. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness, they say.

In Which I Become Angry About Idiotic Pseudo-Libertarian Garbage (or, Damian Tells Smokers to Shut Up)

Thanks to people who like to buy papers and leave them behind, I find myself reading the Journal-Gazette nearly every day I work. Between huge walls of text about FWCS petition color coordination and pithy defenses of Matt Kelty on the opinion page, they occasionally print yet another whiny letter about the Ft. Wayne smoking ban. Beyond the BS arguments about the ban "reducing business", there's a lot of flap about "smoker's rights", always phrased as either "the gummint's takin' my/business owners' rights, yours'll be next!!1" or "why shouldn't I be allowed to smoke in public?"

To this, I still ask, why is it that smokers have some inherent right to smoke inside a building, but non-smokers like myself don't have a right to not breathe poison? And no, the arguemtn of "well, you should just go somewhere that doesn't allow smoking" is and has always been a load of utter horseshit. Why shouldn't the smokers go outside? Why shouldn't the smokers go somewhere else? Why do their "rights" trump mine?

The answer? They don't. Smokers, you're making a choice to harm yourself, so you can at least have the courtesy to not harm us. Your rights do not trump ours.

Rights as an exclusive concept.

If I may, boo-hoo. This is an example of something that's really been bothering me.

In the past I-don't-even-know-how-long-anymore, I've seen an avalanche of letters to the newspapers around here, carping and whining about the Ft. Wayne smoking ban and how evil it supposedly is. People compare it to Bush's warrantless wiretaps, free speech violations, even Nazism. It's all rhetorically unsound, to put it nicely, and there's simple reasons for that: why shouldn't people be disallowed to endanger the health of others? For all the endless screaming about "smokers' rights" I see in many of these letters, nobody thinks about the rights of non-smokers to go to the places they WANT to go, without being subject to health-endangering smoke. As for the angle that it's "taking away the freedoms of business owners", do these people complain about business owners being told they have to follows health codes or fire codes? These laws are founded in the same concept: that the public's health is served by disallowing certain things.

Ultimately, I say this: If smokers don't like it, don't go out, or step outside. Your rights end where my lungs begin.