Is smoking cool?

Of course it is. I know that poster on the wall in your middle school gym said it wasn't, and that D.A.R.E. speakers will continue to advocate that it isn't, but it obviously is. I think it's the biggest obstacle that anti-smoking advocates have to overcome. I mean, smoking is a pretty gross habit - it's deadly, expensive, annoying to others, it basically grimes your body up from the inside out, and I (like many people) have little to no interest in doing it or being around anyone doing it - but it's nothing if not cool. Why else would people start doing it when they know all the bad stuff I just mentioned?

Without going beyond 'James' I submit for you the following evidence:



Here's well-known actor James Franco (or as I like to call him, David Lefstein) douche-bagging it up at home, staring at his own narcissistic self in the mirror. It's obvious that no one likes him, and therefore obvious that there's no one on that phone and he's just posing, which makes it even worse.



Then BAM! Next thing you know he's smokin' a J at the MTV movie awards with Seth Rogen in a cool jacket. What could possibly be cooler?



Next, Rick James:





A city council election? Local government is kinda cool, but not compared to this:



That's probably the most badass you can possibly look.



And lastly, there's James Dean, a man so cool that there are hardly any photos to be found of him not smoking, and definitely none of him not being cool to use in a clever juxtaposition. So then, just two cool ones:









I like how someone who thought they were clever added the caption "subliminal message: smoking is cool" to that last one. They were obviously an idiot, because that's the most overt message I've ever seen. It's so overt that it's not even a "message", it's just a fact. It's like saying the 'subliminal message' in the photo is that James Dean is wearing a hat. In fact, that hat blends in with the background fairly well, so you'd definitely be more likely to miss that "message" if you just took a quick glance at the picture. Point being, I didn't even need to write anything or find those other pictures; this one does it all. Case closed.