They couldn’t get him on the “Madrassa” smear. They couldn’t make him out to be a closet Muslim (and you know what that means!). So now they’re trying another tack: Obama is a dirty, low-down smoker. That’s right! He even bums cigarettes off of other lawmakers! And once in a while, he even has a drink! Where other people can see him! Incredible! The question is quick to the talking heads’ hot, quivering lips: could America ever elect someone who smokes cigarettes? Unimaginable!

On the one hand (as with the “madrassa” smear), if the worst kind of thing that Obama’s detractor’s can come up with is that he’s trying to quit smoking, then he’s in good shape. On the other hand, it’s pretty disgusting to see people taking this kind of thing seriously. I don’t have a recording or transcript yet, so the recall is not perfect, but on Paula Zahn’s show this morning, the smoking issue was presented as if it could seriously hobble Obama–with one expert suggesting that this kind of addiction suggested a weak personality, someone who could never be president. And I immediately thought of George W. Bush, whose alcohol addiction was well-known, and whose cocaine addiction was covered up but pretty much just as certain. I certainly don’t recall the mass media calling Bush’s alcoholism into this kind of question.

Besides which, Americans have recently been exposed to a very popular president who was a “stealth smoker,” as some are putting it. A president who had a habit he was trying to quit but sometimes indulged in, and who even bummed smokes off of journalists on Air Force One. It was, of course, a fictional president–Jeb Bartlet, from The West Wing–but it was something that Americans saw and accepted. True, the fictional president tried to hide it from the press and it did cause the occasional embarrassment, but it was, if anything, a more humanizing element of the character. And when it comes down to it, who the hell really cares?

Hell, I hate smoking myself. It literally makes me ill. And yet, if Rudy Giuliani or John McCain were smokers, it wouldn’t even occur to me to bring this up as a point against them. And this has been brought up in the media: that while smoking itself is unpopular nowadays, smokers are not seen as bad or weak people.

The only good news in this is that while some “journalists” are seriously presenting this as a serious issue, many seem almost embarrassed to bring it up. As well they should be.