Tennessee attorney general Paul Summers sent a warning letter (PDF) to country music star Gretchen Wilson (“Redneck Woman”) demanding that she stop pulling a can of Skoal smokeless tobacco out of her pocket on the concert stage; she’d been waving the can to illustrate a song about the “Skoal ring” outline in the back pocket of a pair of jeans. Summers’s letter invoked the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement, although neither Wilson nor her concert venues ever signed that agreement or could be in any way bound by it; it went on to insinuate that Skoal’s manufacturer had procured her “promotion” of the product, an insinuation that turned out to be quite false, the singer’s representative explaining that she had had no dealings with the company. Nonetheless, perhaps fearful of suffering the fate of the much-boycotted Dixie Chicks, Wilson capitulated instantly and promised not to display the tin on stage any more, whereupon Summers expressed satisfaction (PDF) and called her a “good citizen”. Had the object of suppression been something other than tobacco, do you think by now we might have heard any outcry about artistic freedom or musicians’ rights of expression? (“Country singer Gretchen Wilson asked to keep smokeless tobacco in back pocket”, AP/CourtTV, Aug. 29; Gail Kerr, “Wilson put quick stop to spat over Skoal”, Aug. 31; CommonsBlog, Aug. 27; Nick Gillespie and Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Aug. 29.) More: Will Wilson comments at the AEI Federalism Project’s AG Watch (Aug. 29).
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