Fighting Joe Camel With a Foul Mouth

So you’re in your car, listening to the radio, which is tuned to the Dodger station because you’re a big baseball fan. And your little kid is with you, blissing out on the whole, G-rated, parent-kid-baseball-radio-experience, when all of a sudden, the announcer turns PG-13:

Hey, kids! Here’s your chance to win some cool new gear and tickets to a Dodger game! Just tell us in 30 words or less why smoking SUCKS!!

Well, um, good message, but--did they have to say it quite that way? Isn’t it hard enough as it is to keep your kid from talking like Jim Rome? Your head swivels to see if the commercial has registered, as if children didn’t possess the sensory capabilities of spy satellites. You’re thinking that if you don’t make a big deal out of it, it’ll disappear into the ether and your kid might forget when here comes the kicker:

And be sure to visit any L.A. County library for your free smoking SUCKS tattoo!!!

Sheesh. So much for G-rated moments. So much for hoping your child will be the one kid on Earth whose favorite verb is not that word. And the real kicker is, the brand-new ad is sponsored by Los Angeles County, through the auspices of their anti-smoking program. In other words, your cigarette tax dollars paid for what those little ears just heard.

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Parenthood is a constant battle to remember that, no matter what they tell you, it’s actually really hard to mess up a kid. All the things that seemed hip and cool when you were single and childless suddenly start to look like a degenerate conspiracy the moment your own babies start to figure into it.

You grow up knowing that if you cuss, your mouth will get washed out with soap. Then you hit college and cuss even when you don’t feel like it, just to make up the deficit. Then you learn to cuss classy, maybe even cuss a little in British and French. And then, just when you’ve mastered the art of talking dirty, yesterday’s dirty words become so common, they aren’t dirty anymore.

And then, just as the dirtiest words you’ve ever said start showing up in prime time, you become the parent of kids. And then the issue is, how can you dam this tsunami of utter corruption? And how can you train your mouth to replace %$#@$# with “fiddlesticks”?

That commercial, which began airing last week on XTRA Sports (1150 AM) radio, had one father I know so mad, he was ready to burst. He has one child; she’s 12, a wonderful, smart, radio-listening-to, baseball-loving girl. A girl whose excellent qualities include the fact that she has listened to her dad when he’s told her not to use that word. At least that’s what her dad believes. I add this last part because we have a teenager (also quite excellent), who for a long time didn’t seem to use it either. Then she hit high school. Now she figures she uses it “oh, at least a thousand times daily.” Only when a grown-up uses it, she says, does it sound even vaguely bad.

Now other pollution corrupts her world, including the conspiracy of the tobacco companies to make her think it’s OK to smoke. Now, when we forget how hard it is to mess up kids, we worry about what’s worse: Having our younger children hear tasteless words endorsed by baseball announcers and county librarians? Or risking the chance that our older child might think lung cancer is a hoax?

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Mark Caffee of Rogers & Associates, the Century City public relations firm that put L.A. County’s anti-smoking promotion together, says that human resilience notwithstanding, research shows that you need some Beavis and Butt-head to counteract all the propaganda that tobacco companies throw at kids. Every day, more than 200 teenagers in California take their first puff. One study found that by the age of 6, children were as familiar with Joe Camel as they were with Mickey Mouse.

“We’ve got to speak their language,” Caffee says, adding that somehow, it just doesn’t work as well “to just say to kids, ‘Smoking is bad for you.’ ”

Adds Roy Laughlin, general manager of XTRA Sports: “So it’s a little dramatic to say ‘suck.’ How much more dramatic is it to die?”

All true. And true as well that the kids who are most inclined to smoke are also the ones who’ll only hear the message if the delivery is PG-13. Still, propaganda wars are heck for the poor, wistful parents who wish there was a way to win hearts and minds--and lungs--with that public service kicker of their youth: Keep America Clean.

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Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.