Why CNN hasn't fired this moron I have no idea. He makes the most uninformed, highly judgmental, and pedestrian kinds of commentary possible. His latest offense comes in a diatribe against smokers in an op-ed for CNN.com titled, "High cigarette taxes? Great!" Who does this asshole think he is? All we know about smoking is that its the poor and marginalized who smoke in greatest numbers today, in part because of a self-righteous anti-smoking sentiment among the middle and upper-classes. As if they don't condemn smoking and turn around and down a fifth of vodka. Spare me.

That self-righteous, self-congratulatory, highly moralizing tone is on full display in his piece:

There is nothing -- NOTHING! -- that I like about smoking.

Why someone in their right mind would want to essentially inhale fire is beyond me.

When relatives come to my home and they smoke, they can't just stand outside the front or back door. No, I send them to the furthest point in the backyard to get their nicotine fix.

I celebrate when cities pass smoking bans because the only smoke I want in a restaurant should come from a hot, juicy steak. If I'm walking down the street, and the person in front of me is leaving their trail of smoke, I'll happily speed up to get past them or publicly wave the smoke out of the way when walking by them to show my disapproval. And it angers me to drive down the street and look over to the next car and see a mom or dad puffing away as a helpless child has to sit there and inhale that junk.

You could just replace "smoking" with "having sex with men" and "smokers" with "homosexuals" to see the point I'm trying to make here. It's not so much that there's a problem with informing consumers that there are risks to smoking. Sure, that makes perfect sense. But it's that Public Health has enabled a moralistic crusade to make people who smoke not just out to be people who risk danger to their own health, but irrational, pathological subjects who need to be denigrated for their habit. They're not just making a bad decision, they're committing a SIN. 21st century religion isn't happening in churches, it's happening in the domain of Public Health.

CNN, I beg of you: Fire this idiot. He has nothing new or interesting to say.