Cancerman's Legacy

In the wake of recent events, it will soon be revealed that the Cigarette Smoking Man, to supplant the meager salary he earned from the Consortium that only allowed him to live in a pillbox of an apartment with no cable, had taken a sizable portion of his savings and invested it into a major Hollywood production. Many have remarked that the plot of current film Wag the Dog bears an incredibly striking resemblance to a certain currently emerging scandalous situation. However, Cancerman's interest in seeing both the success of this film and the breaking of a major scandal in Washington was two-fold. Obviously, he wanted to earn money on his investment,and since there's nothing as profitable as free publicity, not to mention that he was in a unique position to provide this free publicity, he simply pulled the proper strings to make the story break nationally (and internationally soon after that). His primary reason, making the publicity for his film only a secondary (but still convenient) consideration, was what it always was with cases such as these. Like that of an illusionist, the art of sociological manipulation depends on covert movements combined with misdirection. Consider what you were seeing and hearing before and during that weekend preceding President Clinton's State of the Union address. Network news and cable news channels, talk radio, internet chat rooms, and conversations around the water cooler had but one topic. What was it away from which our attention was being diverted? Well, that remains to be seen. Did it have anything to do with the Pope in Cuba or the growing sense of unease regarding Saddam Hussein, either of which would have been under much closer scrutiny had they not suddenly become secondary stories? We may never know.

What we do know is that Cancerman had been involved in covert operations within U.S. borders since the early 1960's, at first as only a grunt, but soon afterward he was actually coordinating the misdirections and manipulations of society. We know about his central roles in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and we know that later his power was such that he was dabbling in events of smaller consequence, such as sporting events and Academy Awards, all for the purpose of directing the thoughts and opinions of the population. Let's delve into this idea a little further, asking what smaller events we remember, and why he could have been interested in changing the outcome of these events.

	In 1997, the Colorado Avalanche and the Florida Marlins, both relatively new expansion teams in, respectively, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball, win the championships in their respective sports. Why? It promotes the idea to Americans that in this nation anyone, even a relative newbie, can go all the way with enough heart, willpower, and other cliched terms.
	In 1993, the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is unoffically renamed the "Thud" award for the sound of a billion viewers' jaws simultaneously hitting the floor after hearing Jack Palance say, "And the Oscar goes to... Marisa Tomei, for My Cousin Vinnie!" Why? I dunno. Maybe he liked her.
	In 1997-8, a rare CSM failure, certainly a result of his being assassinated (as we've been led to believe) before finishing the job. First, some backstory. He had long been wary of Hollywood director James Cameron because of Cameron's unnerving knack of getting more correct in his work than it's probable he realized. First, there was Aliens, making people even more distrustful of authority. Then, there was The Abyss, rubbing CSM's nose in the fact that there were other beings out there who were much more power than him. Of course, there were the Terminator movies, knowing much more about the facts of artificial intelligence than they had a right to know. Finally, there was True Lies, making a mockery of a line of work that CSM had taken so seriously for three decades. Having had enough of Cameron, he saw the tool for the director's demise when he learned that Cameron was looking into filming the story of the Titanic. Quite familiar with Cameron's drive for accuracy and perfection (which CSM found quite maddening when these characteristics led to more sensitive areas that were treated in his screenplays), Cancerman knew immediately that the film that would result would likely be by far the most expensive film ever produced. If he were to arrange such a monumental failure, CSM could bring about the end of Cameron's film career, and wouldn't have to worry about him again. When the price of the film immediately skyrocketed, Cancerman arranged a cap on Twentieth Century Fox's financial commitment, leaving Paramount Pictures responsible for the majority of the film's cost. In addition to bringing about the end of James Cameron's career, the massive failure of *Titanic* at the box office was also supposed to cause the financial ruin of Paramount Pictures. Why? In addition to Cancerman's unease regarding Cameron's work, he wanted to pay Paramount back for mocking him with the "box of chocolates" speech in Forrest Gump. We've all seen how skillfully made Titanic was and how incredibly successful it's been at the box office. We're only left to guess how we would have perceived it had Cancerman still been around to finish his plans.

This being an ongoing investigation, as more facts are uncovered, they'll be posted here for you to make of them what you will.

A note on the recent turn of events...

As I suppose you've seen recently, CSM is certainly not dead, as we all already knew in our hearts. We've seen him hiding out in a snowbound shack in Quebec, possibly masterminding or at least involved with the latest monkey wrench to be thrown into the plans of the Consortium, and writing letters to Agent Jeffrey Spender, alleged to be his son - letters destined to be returned unread. However, wouldn't the Consortium's own cleaner, mechanic, or whatever other euphemism you wish to use have known something was up when there was no body to show for his handiwork?

Regardless of the questions that remain concerning his return, it seems that regardless of the Redux smokescreen, The Man is here to stay (at least for this season, anyway).

Given the far-reaching nature of Cancerman's work, there's no telling what all he might have directly influenced. This being the case, feel free to let me know about your own theories concerning what The Man might have done to cause and/or influence real-world events during the past thirty years. Don't forget that not only do we need a "what", but more importantly, we need a "why". Feel free to use your imagination.

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