Not too long ago, Albert Gore, then a U.S. senator, was telling a group of tobacco farmers that he was one of them -- that his father had been the proud owner of a tobacco allotment that had given him the experience of raising and selling this important product.
That was after his sister had died of lung cancer presumably caused by tobacco and before he tearfully took the platform of the Democratic National Convention to denounce the horrors of smoking and to relate how he had unsuccessfully begged his sister to quit. At the time of his emotional appearance, he was roundly criticized for one of the more hypocritical political performances in recent memory.Now it seems that Gore has failed to learn any lessons from that embarrassing debacle. His advisers have accused his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Bradley, of using a consultant who had committed the crime of having been connected to tobacco advertising, particularly the kind that appeals to youngsters.
It is alleged that Felix Kroll, who heads Bradley's advertising team, had extensive contacts with the tobacco industry while he was the head man at the big Madison Avenue agency, Young & Rubicam. Worse, it seems, he had been the agency's chief executive when it was responsible for the Joe Camel ads aimed at convincing young smokers to select Camels as their brand.
In a two-man race that grows in intensity daily, one can expect some degree of silliness now and then. This allegation, however, crosses the line into something far more serious. It is an unfair effort both to plumb the growing emotional tide of anti-tobacco sentiment by linking Bradley's campaign to those who pollute young people through the sale of cigarettes while neutralizing criticism of the same nature about a Gore aide whose identification with tobacco is far stronger.
Kroll did not deny that he had meetings with tobacco executives but reportedly said he had no direct involvement with the Joe Camel ads, noting that he wasn't the creative director or the leader of the account. He rightly called "preposterous" allegations that this somehow relates to the Bradley campaign and his fitness to be a part of it.
Cigarettes are a legal product. Perhaps they should not be, but that is a far different question. The fact is that there is nothing illegal in representing tobacco companies in their advertising efforts as long as those ads do not violate Federal Trade Commission restrictions against false claims. Tobacco has been a major source of revenue to advertising agencies just as it has been to farmers who grow it and companies that manufacture it and the governments that collect the taxes from it throughout the ages.
A number of large advertising agencies have held manufacturers of tobacco products among their most important clients, and the R J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was represented for a time by Young & Rubicam, one of the nation's largest agencies. Actually, the agency had the account for only two years and Kroll hasn't been with Young & Rubicam for five years.
How, one must ask, does this have any relevance to Bradley's campaign except to infer guilt by association?
Suddenly, it appears, being connected with tobacco in any form, except growing it, is a moral stigma which renders those accused unfit to serve in any other useful capacity, no matter what it is.
Emphasizing Kroll's links to tobacco, no matter how tenuous, is not only hypocritical, it's a blatant attempt to offset criticism aimed by health organizations and others at a key Gore media adviser, Carter Eskew.
Eskew has been directly involved in the development of advertising to defend the tobacco industry on several fronts. He helped Phillip Morris in a campaign to reduce support for a planned federal lawsuit against the industry and worked on commercials and ads that played a part in the defeat of anti-tobacco legislation.
The allegations from the Gore camp were met with an instant response from Bradley's headquarters, where it was noted that Eskew was hired as a Gore adviser while still working in behalf of the tobacco industry. There is little comparison, a Bradley spokesman reportedly charged, between that and someone who headed an advertising agency years ago that happened to have a tobacco client.
Until now, the war for the Democratic nomination has been bloodless. It was inevitable that it would not remain so. But Gore, whose penchant for cheap shots while professing the high road is well known, had better look to his own associations, past and current, before he waves a finger of morality at his opponent over tobacco.