Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century

Chapter 5. Tobacco under Attack: Hello, “Heritage”

145 Chapter 5 Tobacco under Attack Hello, “Heritage” A 2003 editorial lamented, “They tell us change is good, and we generally don’t shy from it. But when change causes the demise of a tradition, it’s a sad thing. Tobacco is not the most politically correct crop in the world, but it is such a huge part of our history and heritage .”1 Here tobacco is described as a dead tradition, killed off by change. By the next sentence the stigma now associated with the crop is referenced, and tobacco is relabeled “heritage,” calling forth Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s definition of heritage as “the transvaluation of the obsolete, the mistaken, the outmoded, the dead, and the defunct.”2 As the rhetoric of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture continued to shift through the 1960s and into the 1970s, the deployment of “heritage” as a defense of tobacco production became pronounced. However, heritage as a defense not only failed to recover tobacco production in the present but also rhetorically recategorized it as a past practice even as it continued. Tobacco coverage had become increasingly self-conscious by the 1960s, as the “attacks” on the industry increased and the KDA directly responded to the surgeon general’s report on smoking and questions regarding health. In contrast, by the late 1970s, the topic of smoking and health was ever present but not always directly acknowledged, although the argument for more research on the health effects of smoking continued to be made. Direct references to the surgeon general’s report dwindled from few to none, and articles about tobacco pageants and state fair tobacco exhibits disappeared. Attention turned from health to “attacks” from more generalized “anti-tobacco” forces, as well as calls for increased tobacco excise 146 The ShiFTing MeAningS oF ToBAcco taxes. However, articles that expressed pride in tobacco were on the rise, and heritage entered the lexicon—not just heritage implied but the term itself—joining the economic rhetoric. Heritage and economics would later become discursively separated, and eventually the use of heritage in defense of tobacco would disappear from the pages of the KDA newsletter. By that time, however, “heritage” had become the primary screen through which tobacco was viewed. HELLO, “HERITAGE” The 1970s began with consistent tobacco coverage resembling that of the 1960s. The December 1970 issue included a full-page spread on a tobacco harvester that was being tested, an indication of a farmlabor shortage. The cover photo of the 1969 Kentucky Agricultural Statistics and Annual Report (advertised in the KDA newsletter in August 1970) depicted a field of tobacco, emphasizing the central place of the crop in Kentucky agriculture. In October 1970, the KDA announced that “talent will not be a factor” in the 1970 Burley Belle pageant. Instead, the contestants would be judged on their recitations of the essay each was to write on the topic “What Burley Tobacco Means to Kentucky,” a competition “designed as a means of encouraging general interest in the importance of burley tobacco as the major cash crop in Kentucky.”3 It seems that the healthy young bodies of the Burley Belles were not enough; these “goodwill ambassador[s] for the industry” were now charged with addressing their implicit task explicitly. This attempt was to be short-lived, however . Just a couple of years later the pageants would disappear from the pages of the newsletter. In November 1972, a photo of a KDA staff member who represented Kentucky in the Queen of Tobaccoland contest and a piece on “Miss Tri-State Tobacco,” crowned at the Tri-State Tobacco Festival (Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky), were the last newsletter features to mention tobacco pageants, although other pageants, such as those for dairy princesses and pork queens, continued into the 1980s. Importantly, tobacco pageants did not end at this time; only coverage of them in the KDA newsletters ended. In November and December 1970 a two-part series focused on the early history of tobacco in Kentucky at Boonesborough, settled in the late eighteenth century. This two-part series, entitled “The Birthplace of Kentucky’s Largest Industry,” seems to have been Tobacco under Attack 147 another way of answering the question posed to the Burley Belle contestants, and together coverage of the Belles and Boonesborough represent the beginning of a move from direct responses to tobacco health critics to the deployment of the celebration of heritage as a line of defense. The...