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DUNCAN: Big Tobacco Masters Newspeak 

Now, in the wake of recent legal setbacks, Big Tobacco is picking up the pieces and moving on, and Philip Morris (now using the alias "Altria Group") is still out front. This was made clear last November when a Sunday edition of The Washington Post carried a 22-page, magazine-sized advertising insert (on thick, glossy paper) from your friends at Philip Morris U.S.A.

The package was a masterful work of "newspeak"--the language George Orwell invented in his dystopian novel 1984. Newspeak was used to control people's thoughts by redefining the words they used, so that "war" became "peace." Orwell's thought police also rewrote history so that whenever political alliances shifted, history books and newspaper archives were rewritten to prove that the new reality had always been the case. "We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia." Actually, on the Internet, this manipulation of the historical record would be much easier, and the Philip Morris ad booklet was mostly devoted to touting the contents of the company's new Web site.

Here are some Orwellian highlights from the site: Philip Morris U.S.A. endorses the findings of every surgeon general's report on the dangers of smoking all the way back to 1964. . . . Big Tobacco has always stood shoulder to shoulder with the public health community in the battle against smoking. War is peace. And, oh, by the way, love is hate. . . .

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration eliminated one barrier to corporate power when it effectively broke the U.S. trade union movement (anyone remember PATCO?). But ordinary citizens can still punish corporations, and perhaps influence their behavior, through the courts. The Bush II administration aims to eliminate that inconvenience. Next, no doubt, will come the sale of branding rights for the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.

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