"It's Toasted"

I have recently started watching Madmen, an AMC series that "follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising ...." I was struck by an scene early in the first season where lead character Don Draper meets with executives of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Discouraged by the recent exposure of the "health risks" of smoking, the company must try a different approach to advertising. Their ads featuring physicians claiming that Lucky Strike are less irritating must be replaced. After a few minutes of brainstorming, Don comes up with the phrase "it's toasted." A few weeks before seeing this episode, I came across an exhibit curated by the Stanford School of Medicine and on display in the New York Public Library through the end of December. Not a Cough in a Carload: Images from the Tobacco Industry Campaign to Hide the Hazards of Smoking tells "the story of how [principally through advertising images] between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products." The ads in this exhibit illustrate social norms and gender roles of the early to mid 20th century. Check out the exhibit at http://lane.stanford.edu/tobacco/index.html.

Harding Home

On November 13 we visited the Marion, Ohio home of Warren G. Harding and made a stop at the Harding Tomb, a white marble monument designed with similar features of a Greek temple.

Harding is often ranked at or near the bottom of the list of American presidents. We learned that his designation as possibly the worst president to date is based on scandalous actions of his cabinet members and possible personal indiscretion. Are scholars considering Harding's high approval rating at the time of his death in office, the founding of the Veterans' Bureau under his administration, or the establishment of the Bureau of Budget to help curtail federal expenditures?

In the tradition of grand presidential tombs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Harding's memorial was complete with funding of public donations in 1927. However, the tomb was not dedicated until 1931, as President Coolidge was unwilling to preside over the dedication ceremony in fear of too closely associating himself with the Harding administration.