Wry Martinis (16 page)

So it’s clear that the tobacco industry is doing its level best to help youth to say no to smoking. I left the Tobacco Institute lady’s office feeling warm and fuzzy.

My next new friend works for the Beer Institute. The
Beer
Institute! I come to him straight from a visit with the head of the hard-liquor lobby: the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. They hate each other, the beer and the booze people. Why? Because of a tax issue called “equivalency.” If one beer and one highball contain the same amount of ethanol, well then, say the DISCUS people to the government, you should tax beer at the same rate you tax us. This makes the beer people—Augie
Coors, especially—very unhappy. So I do not tell my beer people that I am bellying up to the booze people.

My beer guy—what a guy! Good-looking, jockly hail-fellow-well-met. He is calling me “guy” and we have only known each other for ten minutes. On his desk is a recent copy of
Fatal Accident Reporting System
, a Department of Transportation publication. On the bookshelf: beer steins, empty bottles of exotic beer. On the wall: his diploma from the Summer School of Alcohol Studies. I yearn to ask, Do they know how to party at the Summer School of Alcohol Studies, or what? There is also an autographed photo of him and his wife and President Bush.

He works hard. And with a handicap. He hates to fly, and yet he used to have to fly one million miles a year. Once, he was on a plane that got struck by lightning. He drank fifteen drinks to calm down. After that he got so nervous that he had to get himself drunk to fly. “Which sometimes leads to trouble,” he allows.

He gives me a
tour d’horizon
of the beer world. It is not a pretty picture. Sales have been basically flat for ten years: Neo-Prohibitionism is on the rise. Hypocrisy is rampant. Congressman Joe Kennedy II is demanding yet more warning labels on beer bottles. You know it’s bad when a Kennedy is staking out the moral high ground on alcohol.

“We pour
millions
into traffic safety issues each year,” he says. And what thanks do they get? None,
nada, rien
, zip, zilch. Ingrates. We discuss the government’s “Controlled Availability Theory,” the idea that if you tax something, people will buy less of it. He quotes Himmler: “We must get rid of the alcohol.” He adds, “That’s not an exact quote.”

I follow him to a health symposium called Healthy People/Healthy Environments 2000. My beer guy says that he sort of “relishes” being at the conference. He says it’s “like being black in the Old South.” I will hear variants of this as I shuttle between my alcohol, tobacco, and firearms people: They are the new pariahs, the niggers of postmodern morality—the
victims.
The DISCUS person, gray-haired, grandfatherly, and aggrieved, will crack the faintest smile when asked about the effects of neo-Puritanism on his social standing and will shrug, “It’s not
quite
as bad as being a Colombian drug baron.”

My beer guy gets up and speaks to the healthy fifteen hundred. They sense the presence of the enemy. Fifteen hundred bottoms—three thousand buttocks—shift warily in their seats. You can hear them clenching.

It is called buttlock—gridlock of the indignant. They do not like him. He is … unwanted.

He looks like an Eagle Scout up there. He pleads earnestly, “All we’re looking for is some input.” Can’t they see that? It’s all he wants, input. Just a little input. “We’re not saying we in the industry should control alcohol policy in this country, but for Christ’s sake”—he smiles when he says this—“give us some input!”

At the National Beer Wholesalers’ Convention in a few weeks their banners and lapel buttons will say it loudly: “
WE’RE PART OF THE SOLUTION
!” And they are! Drunk driving is down 40 percent since 1982, but you don’t hear that from the Healthy People. “It interferes with their funding needs.”

He is finished. The applause defines politeness: over in less than a nano-second. The next speaker, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, receives applause befitting Schwarzkopf ticker-taping up Broadway. I begin to appreciate what my beer guy is up against: a massive, tectonic moral shift, spearheaded by a phalanx of pissed-off acronyms: MADD, SADD—Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Students Against Drunk Driving. P. J. O’Rourke, booze muse of the open road, wants to form an organization called DAMM: Drunks Against Mad Mothers. My beer guy loves P. J. O’Rourke. So does my cigarette girl, so does my gun guy. So do I.

We descend the hotel escalators into the exhibit rooms, where the individual groups that form the body Healthy have set up their booths. It is just like any trade fair. My beer guy says, “We’re sort of shocked that they’re even allowing us to exhibit here. They were very specific that we could not give away free products. It was a real interesting discussion,” he chuckles, “about what we could and couldn’t do with that booth. It was their worst nightmare that we’d have a couple of kegs tapped and some trashy trinkets like bottle openers.” He laughs. Animal House. A toga party.
To-ga, to-ga!
He is hearty, my beer guy. Which is really what you want in a beer guy.

Together we walk down the aisle between the booths. It is to walk a gauntlet. I keep my reporter’s notepad well in view, like a shield, so that they will not mistake me for a beer lobbyist. You would not want to be mistaken for one yourself, walking past displays from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Trauma Systems Associates, the Mid-Western States Substance Abuse Committee: Facing Alcohol Concerns Through Education.
Their display shows the Coors ad girl altered so that she’s pouring a pitcher of beer down the toilet. He shakes his head and says, “What a waste.”

There is the National Head Injury Foundation booth. He says they’re “okay” but adds winkily, “We usually define the good guys by who’ll take our money.” We then come face to face with another of the enemy, and here is more evidence that God is a bad novelist. She is a nice lady, in charge of Washington D.C.’s anti-drunk-driving initiative. Her name is Pam Beers.

On we go past the National Highway Safety Administration, the New Hampshire Concerned Citizens Against Drunk Driving. They have caught on to the quilt thing: Theirs is inscribed with the names of all the kids killed in drunk-driving incidents. “Chipper, We’ll Always Love You.”

Does this crack my beer guy’s heart? Not. In truth, he didn’t even see it. We have arrived at the Beer Institute’s booth—no Spuds Mackenzie, no Swedish bikini team, instead a model of sobriety and educational material. Signs proclaim the 39 percent decline in drunk-driving fatalities between 1982 and 1990. A slogan urges,
THINK WHEN YOU DRINK.
A lonely color poster proclaims the photographic glories: a frosty mug surrounded by mountains and valleys of fried chicken, burgers, ham, and pizza.

But what’s this? The booth next to the Beer Institute’s is … the National Coalition to Prevent Impaired Driving. My beer guy grins wickedly, “They’re going to be sooo pissed.”

What does the novelist make of all this? As much as he can, I suppose, while straining—straining—not to turn his director’s chair into a seat of judgment. Anyway, who’s to escape whipping in
this
crazy, mixed-up world? An ethical man, said Twain, is a Christian holding four aces. While in the midst of my research, I was somewhat surprised to find on the back cover of the magazine I edit an ad for cigarettes. My indignation, expressed to my superiors, was duly noted. What goes around karmically comes around: Several weeks ago an excerpt from my novel, eagerly desired by the literary editor of a national magazine of reputation, was turned down by the magazine’s editor in chief on the grounds that it would imperil advertising. “Yes, yes,” I said, “I understand.”

—Adapted from a talk given to
The Century Association, 1994

While consumption of whale meat among older Japanese has remained at satisfactory levels, consumption among the younger generation, susceptible to international whale-lobby disinformation about alleged “endangerment” of world whale stocks, has fallen off drastically. Groups of young Japanese are even being lured to Hawaii, where instead of playing golf they participate in offshore whale-watching parties, and they return home to disseminate pro-whale sentiment and dissuade their peers from eating whale meat.

An immediate and all-out information campaign targeting the under-thirty Japanese, to show the new generation that eating whale meat is not only nutritious and healthful but also “cool.”

To bypass ordinary advertising methods, which the media-savvy younger generation regards with suspicion, and to develop dramatic and documentary television programs and specials that will bring about a real “sea change” in attitudes toward the true nature of whales. Specifically:

The Harpooneers
, a hilarious series about the antics of the wacky but brave crew of the whale ship
Minke Business.
Sample episode: After a grueling six-month whale-gathering mission, the good ship
M.B.
is on its way back to Yokohama in time for the big dance, but the young crew members have all broken out in pimples and are ashamed of showing themselves to the pretty young port girls. Fortunately, the wise, fatherly Bos’n Kikkoman knows that whale meat is an ancient cure for unsightly acne. He advises the youngsters to eat plenty of whale meat. They receive this advice respectfully and, sure enough, their pimples disappear just as the ship pulls into Yokohama. As the crew files down the gangplank, the girls cry out, “What fine skin they all have! We cannot wait to have sex with them!”

Devils of the Deep!
Narrated by Leonard Nimoy (if we cannot get him, we will get someone who looks like him), this series will expose the whale for what it is: a large, ugly nuisance that only a
gaijin
could love.

Who Cries for the Krill?
A shocking, heartrending documentary about the alarming depletion of the world krill supply caused by the irresponsible eco-gluttony of the blue whale, which has enjoyed “protected status” since 1966. The krill, the most gentle of the creatures of the sea, faces virtual extinction, with dire consequences for the world’s food. Using a special new underwater “krill-cam” developed expressly for this investigation, the documentary will feature twenty-four hours in the harrowing life of a krill as it is pursued across the South Pacific by a so-called “gentle giant of the sea.”

Ahab’s Children.
Real-life interviews with people who have lost limbs to whales.

Exxon Valdez: The Untold Story.
This fresh look at the 1989 tanker “grounding” uncovers shocking new evidence suggesting that the fateful Alaska oil spill was not the work of a drunken captain and a submerged rock but, rather, a whale’s coolly calculated revenge upon the sea otters of Prince William Sound.

Mega-Waste: The Coming Crisis.
A frightening documentary that demonstrates what scientists have long suspected: if present whale excretions continue unchecked, the world’s oceans will rise twenty-five feet by the year 2000, causing unimaginable global havoc. A family in low-lying Bangladesh expresses its hope that the international whaling community will not stand idly by as this tragedy gathers critical mass.

Mammals, Schmammals.
A controversial cetologist (to be determined) reveals that these so-called ocean monarchs are really fish after all, and feel absolutely no pain when harpooned.

—
The New Yorker
, 1993