Health Group Pans Seinfeld

Health Group Pans 'Seinfeld'

OS ANGELES (AP) -- Sorry, ``Seinfeld'' -- the American Lung Association says you still stink. For the third year in a row, the NBC comedy was given the association's ``Phlemmy'' award, handed out to TV shows that glamorize smoking. The dubious honor was announced Friday, two days before the Emmy awards. ``Seinfeld,'' which showed its final new episode in May, was chosen by a panel of more than 50 teen-agers who logged 126 hours of prime-time viewing in April and May. The judges found that 28 percent of 179 reviewed episodes showed tobacco use and that NBC showed the most smoking of all the networks, followed by Fox, CBS and ABC. NBC declined immediate comment. Association officials said ``Seinfeld'' characters Elaine and Kramer helped to glorify cigar smoking and that Jerry Seinfeld also lit up. Hospital dramas ``ER'' and ``Chicago Hope'' were lauded by the association for pointing out problems associated with smoking.

AP-NY-09-12-98 0543EDT

This is a perfect example of what makes the finale intelligible. Things like this Lung ASsoc protest. It's so out of whack with what the show was about. The finale was satirizing these kinds of people. STicking them in jail at the end was showing how much harm people like this can do to funny people. These critics are dangerous. Look how they managed to get the Puerto Rican Flag off the air. When there was NOTHING racial about the show. It was a satire on people reading race into everything, even the most innocent of blunders.

Call 1-800-732-9339 to voice your complaint with them.

Raingluttn wrote:

[email]:

Do they count these scenes as a positive influence on the anti-smoking effort? Or do they just count them as part of the 28% of shows that "show tobacco use"."

Exactly! This condemnation by the Lung ASsoc reminds me of how they once said a textbook I used was not suitable for collage use because it didnt pass the test for being over 8th grade reading level. The book was Huston Smith's World REligions book which is very abstract. Their test criterion turned out to be how many syllables are in each word. If the words are mostly 2 syllable, it is thought to be easy reading. One of these "easy" words was the word "being", another "finite". No attention to how abstract the content was but only to the number of syllables in the word.

This reminds me of the same kind of thinking. Or not thinking. How many times is the word smoking used in the show. Or how many times does the person light up? Nothing to do with what the result is. Cynthia

Raingluttn wrote:

They said they used a number of teenagers to watch TV and record the number of smoking scenes. Surely there is a militant Teenager Rights Group that will storm the ALA labs and free these trapped teenagers.

Call 1-800-732-9339 to voice your complaint with the ALA.

 Who is this American Lung Association anyway.  Did they ever comment on Terri
Hatcher's?
:-)
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C'mon, this is only a sitcom, for heaven's sake. we must remember *seinfeld*'s credo, which is "no learning, no hugging". that is to say *seinfeld* does not purports to teach or preach any worthwhile notion or "feelings".

Tom Sella wrote in article ...