Thank You for Smoking

I think the video clip for “Thank You for Smoking” provides some excellent examples of fallacies and bias. I actually own this movie and have watched it so many times I can’t honestly count but never once have I ever considered it as a learning device. If I may go off topic for just a second, I think this is a wonderful way to show that everything, including things that have no apparent educational premise, has a way of teaching or demonstrating.

To address an instance of bias in the video clip, I think that the whole overtone of the hearing represents a group bias. To explain what I mean let me say that having the committee “attacking” the Tobacco industry and trying to force them to place a warning on their packaging represents a group of people acting on one passing judgment on an entire group or entity. The committee is passing their combined opinion onto the Tobacco industry trying to force them into something they obviously don’t want to do. This seems to me that they are being one sided against something else.

I think the biggest fallacy in this video clip is scapegoating, and it occurs on the part of both parties. The major example of this is the entire committee hearing—nothing specific in this clip is an example of scapegoating, but the hearing as a whole insinuates that cigarettes are more harmful than anything. I feel that the committee hearing is putting an exaggerated emphasis on the dangers of cigarettes making it seem that they are the only cause of the troubles attributed to them. Begging the question is represented in this clip when Senator Finistirre asks Nick Naylor who pays for the Academy of Tobacco Studies and Nick Naylor says “Conglomerated Tobacco”, when Senator Finistirre suggests that because the agency Nick Naylor works for is paid for by the very companies the agency researches the research might not be accurate by saying, “Do you think that might affect their priorities”. The senator is begging the question by making a...