So I saw Thank You For Smoking this weekend. The woman at blockbuster said it was hilarious. I didn't quite agree...

I'm not sure if my little over a year's worth of work on an anti-tobacco campaign for teens affected my ability or inability to laugh at it, or if it's because I have a problem with the way the main character was portrayed.

I know he was never officially called a publicist/public relations/communications manager/vp/whatever, but anyone remotely involved with the industry knows that's what he was. He was the company spokesperson after all. I was tremendously annoyed that he described his job as "debating" and "convincing" people that their opinions (if they were against smoking) were wrong. And I won't even get into how I felt about him teaching his son how to do the same.

Anyway, back to my point, they made him seem beyond sleazy, like he knew what he was doing was wrong but it didn't really matter to him because he was good at it/got paid well. The same goes for the members of "MOD." Movies like this just keep adding to the stigma a lot of pr people face. Why can't there be a movie that portrays us pr folks as the good buys, not scum bags...