In 2009 this country will inaugurate as president a man whose election represents a major alteration in our society.

This president will be a representative of a minority group which has too long been banished to the periphery of society, subjected to ridicule and discrimination, and denied equal rights under the law.

I refer, of course, to smokers.

I’m not a smoker myself, but I’ve watched with concern for the last few decades as the tobacco enthusiasts among us have been first pushed to the back of the room, then walled off from the rest of us, then forced out of doors, and finally banished from whole cities. Anti-smoking zealots have taken over the media, promoting anti-smoking science and demonizing smokers to the point where even old movie stars’ photographs are getting the cigarettes airbrushed out of them, like the disappearing commissars of Stalin’s Russia.

This will certainly change now.

It’s a given among our intelligentsia that Barack Obama can do not wrong. He is the One, the Lightworker, the fulfillment of our national hope. It follows that if he smokes cigarettes, cigarettes must be all right.

I expect to see anti-smoking programs defunded within the next few years. Cancer and heart disease researchers will suddenly discover that hey, smoking really doesn’t hurt you after all! The true enemy is… uh… red meat. That’s it. We’ve got to ban red meat now.

Characters on television programs and in movies will start smoking again. TV news anchors will smoke on camera. Cigarette ads will go back on the air. The Department of Health and Human Services will mandate Safe Smoking classes for elementary school students.

Our long national Smokeout is over.