NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The state attorney general wants the country singer who made the song "Redneck Woman" a hit to stop "glamorizing" the use of smokeless tobacco at her concerts.
State officials said Gretchen Wilson can be seen on concert jumbo screens pulling a can of Skoal from her pocket while performing her new song, "Skoal Ring."
That may violate the 1998 settlement between states and tobacco companies forbidding tobacco ads targeting young people, Attorney General Paul Summers said.
"Many young people attend your concerts and purchase your music and T-shirts," Summers wrote in a letter he sent to Wilson Thursday. "Because your actions strongly influence the youth in your audience ... I ask you to take steps to warn young people of negative health effects of smokeless tobacco use."
A ridiculous request. The ickiness associated with a woman chewing tobacco aside, Gretchen Wilson is an adult and has every right to use the tobacco product of her choice. She also has a right, as an artist, to write and perform songs about said product. Just as she has done with this song.
Yet, according to this attorney general, this is border-line illegal activity. Why? Because the health fascists have decided that Americans are so blindingly stupid that they'll mimic anything a celebrity does regardless of the consequences to their own health. After all, in the minds of said health fascists, Americans don't smoke because they like it, they smoke because the tobacco companies made them do it.
Welcome to today's America, where the government will always be there to make sure its dumb-cow citizens aren't lead astray by nefarious tobacco-using celebrities.
Update:
Wilson knuckles under.
Attorney General Paul Summers said the singer's representative apologized Friday and said Wilson would not use the Skoal can in concert again. It was not used at a Cincinnati concert Thursday night, his office said.
"I appreciate Ms. Wilson's attitude," Summers said in a news release. "I thank her very much. This quick and positive response speaks well of her as a professional artist, as a good citizen, as a parent and as a role model for youth."
I'd have told the AG to mind his own damn business.