In Syriana, Tim Blake Nelson pretty much summed up the Free Market credo:  "Corruption is why we win."  This oil lobbyist takes it one step further:  He argues that we have laws against corruption precisely so that we can have corruption.  It's this corruption that greases the wheels of the free market machine, thus generating wealth and prosperity and a higher standard of living for the country. 

Personally, I think this is mostly bullshit--as Kansan (a former KU student) Thomas Frank argues in his book One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy.   His theory of "market populism" explains "America's new secular religion":  That the "markets" are just as democratic as democratically elected governments.  That's where Thomas Friedman's "golden straightjacket" pronouncement came from:  Everybody agreed that technology will inevitably lead to globalization, that governments were going to become dinosaurs unable to respond to the flow of information--and this is good because markets they provide for everyone and are inherently democratic because we vote with our dollars. 

Problem is, the market is no more a perfect machine than was Da Vinci's perpetual motion machine. In his latest book, Friedman that the Flat Earth has created this machine and we'd better "wake up" because there's nothing we can do about it.  Friedman and his Market Disciples are moving at the speed of business--so fast toward that they wizz right on by the inherent contradition in their theory:  Markets are inherently democratic, but there's nothing we can do about it.  In other words, this new world order is being forced on us by people none of us ever voted for.  My hometown doesn't shop at Wal-Mart because we choose to; we shop there because Wal-Mart forced out small business and wages (in real dollars) have been depressed.   Did you vote for Sam Walton, Bill Gates, or Ken Lay?  Me neither.  In fact, corporations (especially under current regimes of CEO compensation) are not democratic at all--they're much more like dictatorships.  In this vacuum of regulation, Enron was able to use the free market to bilk unairconditioned grandmas in California and my dad lost thirty years worth of savings for his retirement.  And the Free Market Disciples say this is democracy? 

There's a passage in Friedman's most recent book where he quotes an Indian entreprenuer, who calls America "whiners."  Fuck you--I'm fighting mad, and I want my democratically-elected (sort of) government to do something about it. Government, through the proper balance of regulation and greased free markets, can and should tilt the flat earth in favor of its people.  This is not tariff-related protectionism; rather, we need to make health care cheaper (using a combination of the market and forced regulation to create a more efficient delivery system) for people to drive down employment costs while putting money in the pockets of its people, and foster a movement toward science and technology (like the Indians have done in Bangalore), and create business conditions that make living wages affordable for the US worker.  The Disciples are right that the world has flattened, but shouldn't the American middle class reasonably expect that its democratically-elected government should work to tilt the flat earth in their favor?  For example, illegal immigrants aren't doing jobs Americans won't do--they're doing jobs Americans can't do and support their families.  

Republicans who are pissed off at illegal immigration and Bush's amnesty program should read some Friedman:  He would say, hey, the earth is flat, Mexicans are coming across the border, and there's nothing we can do about it.  In fact, to the Market Disciples, this is democracy at its best because the market, with its infinite, invisible hand, is virtually pushing these people across the border.  And because the Earth is flat, there's nothing you can do about it.  So, relax and enjoy!  It's democracy!

So what does Thank You for Smoking have to do with any of this?  Well, it describes precisely why leftists don't win the rhetoric and have been overtaken by the Free Market Disciples in the public square--creating Republican majorities in rural areas and suburbs who should,if they were voting their economic interests, vote Democrat.  This movie is about the rhetoric of Truthiness.  

Nick Naylor, the public face of Big Tobacco, calls himself the "Colonel Sanders of Nicotene."  "Michael Jordan plays ball.  Charlie Manson kills people.  I talk."  He goes on the "Joan Lunden Show" with a lung doctor, and crusader from an anti-smoking group, and a bald cancer boy.  He gets booed, of course, and until he argues that "It's in our best interests to keep this young man alive and smoking!"  Then he accuses the indignant anti-smoking crusader of "trafficing in human misery," and trampling on free choice.  Then he announces a $50 million anti teen smoking program and hugs the cancer boy.  We need to save the cancer boy!  Cheers rain down!

Naylor's M.O. is precisely that of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al:  He zeroes in on singularly meaningless platitudes (free choice!) and makes absurd analogies that forces the debate into impossible either/or choices, and uses this to discredit the opposition and spin an alternative reality.  As Naylor explains to his son, if I'm promoting vanilla and you're promoting chocolate, what do you say about chocolate?  Well, the kid says, I love chocolate, chocolate is the best.  Naylor's response:  I think people shouldn't have to eat chocolate.  What if they like vanilla?  Or strawberry?  This is about liberty!  And you lose, because I just proved you wrong--because you're wrong, I must be right.  My mommy says smoking is bad for me, says a little girl and bring your dad to school day.  "Is your mommy a doctor?"  "No."  "Well then, she's not a very credible expert, is she?"

The anti-villain is William H. Macy, the Democratic senator from Vermont with maple syrup pourers covering his desk, and wears Birkenstocks with his suit.  Macy absolutely nails the liberal stereotype:  He's so full of indignant pseudo-rage that he becomes aghast when anyone tries to call him a hypocrite.  During the big showdown at the Senate hearing, Macy asks Naylor if the fact that their scientists are paid by the tobacco companies affects their research:  His lips quiver at the response "no more than campaign contributions affect yours."  His eyes go wide as a canyon when Vermont's cheddar cheese is accused of "clogging the nation's arteries."  "The good people of Vermont will not apologize for their cheese!"

Aside from the inevitable irrestible force/immovable object showdown, the rest of the movie charts Naylor's journey as a "yuppie mephistopheles."  He's divorced and trying to connect with his son, which he does by showing him the ropes.  The kid catches on to the game immediately, tagging along as Naylor visits the original Marlboro Man (Sam Elliot), and the southern graddaddy of tobacco (Robert Duvall), a Hollywood weirdo executive who is into "Asian shit," and Naylor's only friends--the so-called MOD Squad (the merchants of death, Naylor, alcohol (Maria Bello), guns (David Koechner).  "I'm sure you both warrant vigilante justice," Naylor comforts.  The movie does what movies do best:  Efficiently sketch minor characters.  When we watch Duvall demonstrate how to crush mint into your julep, we immediately recognize that he stands for old-South aristocracy.  Who better to play the cancer-stricken Marlboro Man than Sam Elliot.  Adam Brody has one extended scene as the lackey for Rob Lowe's Hollywood exec, where they apparently pay a guy named "Hiroshi" to rake the sand in a display and have a pond full of $7000 goldfish.  Rob Lowe "invented product placement," and comes up with a plan to make Catherine Zeta-Jones and Brad Pitt have levitating sex in space and then enjoy a cigarrette. 

The problem is that the movie doesn't really make Naylor into a fully three-dimensional character.  He has a crisis, of course, (involving Katie Holmes, a kidnapping, and an certainly Rumsfeld-unsanctioned form or torture), and he rises from the mat like Rocky to Macy's Clubber Lang.  Still, as a satire of the rhetorical strategy and spin-doctoring of industries that warrant regulation because of public health and safety, it's hilarious.  I got the same enjoyment I get out of "The Colbert Report", and it's essentially about the same thing:  How easy it is to spin extreme right-wing rhetoric in to pseudo-populism, and why liberals have to fight with something other than indignant outrage.  It's this mastery of pseudo-populism that allows Sean Hannity to rally the working class against "liberal elitists," that allows Bill O'Reilly to equate the ACLU with NAMBLA.  It's also a form of the argument that Thomas Friedman and the other Free Market Disciples to convince people that CEO-driven free markets are democratic, democratically-elected goverments aren't democratic, and that voting with our dollars is the same as voting at the ballot box--even though over 90% of the world's wealth is concentrated in the ultra-rich.  This is precisely why satires like Thank You For Smoking and "The Colbert Report"'s use of "truthiness" is important:  It brings rhetorical trickery into the public consciousness, so perhaps more people will start catching on to "truthiness" when they hear it and start waving their bullshit flags.