[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: Smokes if ya got'm

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
Smokes if ya got'm
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1206158680.shtml


   It's been a busy week, and I'm relaxing watching the 1948 "Berlin
   Express" that I had recorded last Saturday. "The neo-Nazi underground
   tries to kidnap a diplomat" it said. It's nothing great, but it is
   historically interesting, what with the various armies of occupation
   running everything.
   What's really interesting are the cigarettes. They're as valuable as
   the military scrip issued as currency. Toss a half-finished cigarette
   on the ground and others dive for it. They smoke them with the rounded
   finger hold, not the casual pointer-index American way.
   In this picture, almost every man smokes and maybe half the women, a
   cultural universal of sorts. It was one of the few pleasures they had
   amid the bombed out buildings. How stupid they were, right? We're so
   much smarter now, right?
   And yet sixty years later, a GI who crawled up Omaha Beach can't light
   up at his VFW. Yes, we're so much more intelligent and caring these
   days.