The Onion should really stick to satire. When it makes its pronouncements about culture and politics in the "serious" part, it makes me wonder whether it's just cashing in on the hipster cred its at-times extremely brilliant and insightful humor makes. I should probably write a long essay about this someday, but the gist is this: the depth of the satire in The Onion at its best invites the kind of social analysis and critical thinking that implicitly delves into root causes; unfortunately, this is severely lacking in the "AV Club." In this week's column, the anonymous op-ed piece (published presumably with the blessing of The Onion's national office) laments the defeat of Proposition 86, and then adds that at least SF voted overwhelmingly in favor of it, and (smugly) that SF should succeed from the state or the union. Proposition 86 would have imposed a $2.60 tax onto cigarettes making the average retail price for a pack $7.60ish. The Onion, along with many other "progressive" papers were adamantly against it, on the grounds that it helps Big Tobacco. But the tax would be passed on to smokers, rich and poor. Oh, sure it's a vice, but is the tax going to stop people from smoking. Is it going to delve into the causes as to why people smoke?
Where was the money going to go? Allegedly to help defray medical costs.

Medical costs are way too high. Many people--myself included---cannot get the basic healthcare we need, but proposition 86 wasn't going to come close to offering universal healthcare. If it had, perhaps it would have had a better chance of succeeding. I certainly would have been more willing to vote for it (even as a smoker). But it's another "feel good" stop-gop measure that doesn't really accomplish much (like San Francisco's ban on guns).
Why is it even out of the realm of possibility that ADVERTISEMENTS FOR HOSPITALS."Health coaches," HMO, should be taxed, or banned, and that THAT money
could be used for better, more affordable, healthcare? It is a question that needs to be asked. It wasn't that long ago when hopsitals did not advertise, when the notion of hospitals advertising on TV, Radio, Billboards, Newspapers, Direct Mail campaigns, etc, would have been laughable or even inconceivable. Yet, now, it's taken for granted by Democrats as well as Republicans in the mainstream of American life. It's like car advertisements, the complex interdependent economy of American white collar life would fall into chaos if we got rid of advertisements for healthcare. In fact, many people who currently don't have affordable healthcare coverage might be out of a job if we got rid of those advertisements. Hmmm....

Yet singling out cigarettes is so much easier, singling out "Big Tobacco" as if it's significantly more corrupt than commercials for Kaiser Permanante that hypocritically tell people to "thirve," and surely it wll contribute to the health of this nation.