Tabloids and tobacco: “TRICK CIGAR BLOWS MAN’S HEAD OFF”

Excerpted from The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society’s new online exhibition, “TRICK CIGAR BLOWS MAN’S HEAD OFF!”

The Weekly World News covered smoking for laughs…The National Enquirer wouldn’t cover it at all

This exhibition is drawn from the Center’s collection of supermarket tabloid newspapers with stories about smoking in the 40 years following the publication in 1964 of the Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health — when the few early anti-smoking messages by the American Cancer Society and other health organizations were being drowned out by the torrent of cigarette ads on TV (until 1971), on billboards, at sports events, and in newspapers and magazines. Because of the tabloids’ large circulation and their readers’ lower educational attainment compared to the major newsweeklies TIME, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report — which were heavily dependent on cigarette advertising and minimized their coverage of smoking and cancer — these publications could have played a life-saving role in educating the public about the devastating health consequences of cigarette smoking. Instead, they, too, passed the buck.

Through the years the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS (WWN) published hilarious headlines that rivaled those of the New York Daily News (“FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”) and The New York Post: “HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR”), such as these:

“12 U.S. SENATORS ARE SPACE ALIENS!”; “PIT BULL EATS MOBILE HOME”; “MUMMY FOUND WITH ARTIFICIAL HEART”; “When their check bounced for surgery that separated them…HEARTLESS DOC REJOINS SIAMESE TWINS”; “COLOR-BLIND MAN HAS NEVER STOPPED FOR A RED LIGHT IN 20 YEARS”; “PHOTO OF ELVIS CURED MY CANCER!”; “TOOTH FAIRY CAPTURED”; “BIGFOOT CRASHES WINE TASTING”; “MAFIA ORDERED TO ADMIT GAYS”; “ANOTHER METEOR FELLS POPE!”; “SADDAM’S MUSTACHE FOUND! U.S. confident DNA tests – and hummus residue — will prove Hussein’s a goner!”

But unlike another well-known humor publication, MAD Magazine, which published dozens of pungent parodies of cigarette advertisements and mocked tobacco industry executives who continued to deny the dangers of smoking (see the section on MAD in the Center’s exhibition, “Cartoonists Take Up Smoking”), the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS just aimed for the funny bone. The first part of this exhibition features the WWN’s over-the-top stories on smoking. The second part includes examples of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER’s front-page stories on how to reduce the risk of cancer… with back-page ads for cigarettes — another kind of “catch and kill,” this one related to cigarette smoking and lung cancer, paid for by the tobacco industry.

This exhibition was designed by Bryce Callahan.