A short outing this time, because we’ve got a huge batch of letters and want to share them with you. Many of the letters are in favor of the smoking ban, and I think it’s important to let you know how much better and more socially concerned those folks are than the rest of us. There aren’t two sides to this issue, only one side — their side, the right side, the truth. One reader writes to correct me: Calling the well-funded, well-organized anti-smoking campaign a “special interest” is wrong. Since the reader agrees with them, they’re “concerned citizens.” Evidently, “special interests” are well-organized, well-financed groups who disagree with the reader.
Congratulations to Brewster McCracken on his election to City Council. This is heartfelt and sincere. The Chronicle endorsed McCracken’s opponent Margot Clarke, but from the beginning we noted in our endorsement that we were impressed with the number of qualified candidates running in Place 5. McCracken will make a fine council member.
Now, those who see McCracken’s victory as evidence of some kind of sea change in Austin politics are being ridiculous. Some weekend host on KLBJ-AM asked if this race showed that the outer city was finally fed up with the political leadership elected by the inner city. Whoa there. We know the radio guys always need good topics (they spent most of this show on the strikingly original pastime of beating up Hillary Clinton) but be real. McCracken far outspent Clarke, and less than 10% of eligible voters exercised their right. But more importantly, there wasn’t that great a philosophical distance between the two. Except for not having the endorsement of the Chronicle and a handful of other organizations, McCracken was the perfect inner-city candidate. Political pundits: Snap out of it.
The smoking ordinance has now passed. Council Member Daryl Slusher responded to neither a phone call nor an e-mail from me, which shows you the level of interest the council has in what the community really thinks about this measure. This was a gift to departing Mayor Garcia and the anti-smoking special-interest groups. Like redistricting, this was an offensive way to misuse the legislative powers. In both cases, there is no time imperative; in the face of crushing budget shortfalls and other serious issues facing state and local government, how did these distracting, divisive issues become so important?
The most offensive part was the unapologetic arrogance of the pro-ordinance forces. Health trumps civil rights. End of story. Do safety and security also trump civil rights? Does that make John Ashcroft our king? Where does that end? Read the letters and listen to the statements by the anti-smoking leaders. Health trumps truth. They assert again and again that a smoking ban won’t affect small businesses. This simply isn’t true. In the wake of anti-smoking legislation in other cities, many businesses have suffered and closed. Undoubtedly it has had an impact.
Now, it would be one thing if the anti-smokers had admitted that they didn’t care about the lives and livelihood and investments of individual small-business owners, because even if those folks went under, in the long run, in most cases, business as a whole pretty much returned to normal. But instead, the anti-smokers blithely claim that nobody is put out of business by anti-smoking laws. This isn’t true. The staggering self-righteousness and self-satisfied moral superiority of the anti-tobacco gang pollutes the air more than any secondhand smoke. Where will the purity of their vision and their cause take them next? When the anti-smoking gang finally puts the tobacco companies out of business, those guys are going to have to do something for a living.
Talking about staggering self-righteousness: I’ve checked the last few weeks of “Postmarks,” and something seems to be missing. Where are all those letters explaining how — in the wake of massive budget cuts in health care, education, and social services for the unemployed and working poor and the gutting of industrial regulation and the devastating assault on environmental protection — the two parties are really the same? Nader voters: Now is the time to strut proudly across the stage and tell us how we were wrong to believe there would be a real difference between President Gore and President Bush. Now is the time to come forward and take proud ownership of a class-divided nation, with its tattered social safety net and its horrendously misfocused budget that lays debt burdens upon our great-grandchildren. Now is the time to point out how alike the parties really are. Please cc: children, the poor, the sick, the uneducated, the disadvantaged, immigrants, and workers around the world, so they can know that contrary to appearances, the good times are coming. 
This article appears in June 13 • 2003.