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Not many people know that Wisconsin is a tobacco-growing state. But it
is, and the areas just south and east of Madison are major producers of
chewing tobacco. The little town of Edgerton celebrates "Tobacco Heritage Days" every year, and there was supposed to have been a tobacco spitting contest. But the organizer caved in because of criticism from the media and their allies in the usual anti-smoking groups. He claimed that "Bringing back the tobacco spitting contest was not a practical option. Having that event allows anti-tobacco groups to use our event as a platform for their cause." Evidently it did not occur to him that the anti-smokers already own the media. They have full time hate propaganda machines spewing forth venom, and they do not need to use this or any other event as a platform. The only thing the cave-in accomplished was to betray the local people and deprive them of self-expression, and hand the anti-smokers another effortless victory. According to the town newspaper, The Edgerton Reporter:
Langan was quick to point out the festival stopped the tobacco
spitting contest back in the 1980s due to the controversy the event
caused at that time.
"The reason we lost our funding from tobacco companies and
games like this were dropped was the vandalism and protesting that
was done in the 1980s," he said.
At that time, someone spray-painted "Cancer Days" on the road
leading to the annual breakfast and local tobacco representatives
were harassed by protesters.
"Anyone who doesn't think there are fanatics out that would do
the same thing to our event this year is a fool," Langan said. In other words, they disgracefully gave in to a little gang of hoodlums. In a healthy society, those anti-smoker hooligans would be busted by the police, assuming a citizens' committee didn't get hold of them first. To appease the anti-smokers, Langan switched the tobacco spitting contest to a watermelon seed spitting contest, which was universally boycotted by any would-be competitors and spectators. Only a few members of the media showed up. A camera crew virtually resorted to interviewing the watermelon, training their camera on it and directing the microphone boom at the cut. After becoming bored with the watermelon and having run out of people to talk to, they finally relented and interviewed me. I hope that the organizer can be persuaded to show some backbone next year. Not just Edgerton, but this entire country has become like one of those fabled western towns, taken over by a little gang of bandits, while our so- called leaders cringe and cower and let them run the town. Anyone can see that it's time we "cleaned up Dodge."
Courtesy of Carol Thompson 08/23/93
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