The L.A. Times’ Virginia Problem

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, August 4th, 2011

On Aug. 3 The Los Angeles Times published a smug front page article about a grim study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation on the shortened life expectancy of women in the rural south, specifically highlighting Virginia as having the greatest disparity in life span. The article points out that while women in Fairfax can expect to live to 84, women three hours down I-95 can only expect to live to 74.

The disparity stems largely from obesity and smoking.

To illustrate the fact, the paper dispatched a reporter to Emporia, Va., a tiny town in the southern part of the state that’s most famous as being a junction for Route 58 and I-95. It’s also a hot bed for speed traps. The article touches on the region’s economic trouble, a weak economy tanked formerly strong job providers like tobacco and peanut growers, and securing a job with health benefits is nigh impossible.

Census data for Emporia is bleak: median household income is $32,178, $27 thousand less than the state average, which scratches near sixty. Housing prices are over $150 thousand less than the state average.

Emporia has legitimate problems.

But judging by The Times article, the only ones to blame for Emporia’s health woes are the citizens themselves. The article depicts them as a bunch of bumpkins too addled on fried food and nicotine to change their ways. They eat pie for lunch while sitting around all day getting their hair did between smoke breaks in a rocking chair. They eat hush puppies with everything, and will only tolerate vegetables if they’ve been boiled in pork fat. Even the health conscious ones are too ignorant or stupid to know that mayonnaise isn’t exactly diet food.

It’s irritating that the Times dispatched a reporter to a legitimately hard-pressed Virginia town only to produce a snotty hit piece on Southerners and Virginia culture as a result. Southern cooking is far from indefensible. It’s a greasy, brown, artery clogging (*ahem* delicious) wasteland, and many poorer areas of the south are flushed with the stuff—nary an appetizing salad in sight. This is especially the case for Emporia, whose restaurant scene is like a who’s who of America’s most unhealthy eateries: Hardees, Bojangles, Cracker Barrel.

But that doesn’t mean that Emporia is a vegetable-less blight. Last year the city opened the City of Emporia Farmer’s Market, a small, but nice stand that only sells produce grown within 50 miles of the city. The Market only has 81 followers on Facebook, an LA Times bump would likely have been welcome.

The cultural snipes are the worst. The piece is peppered with pithy remarks about the McDonald’s to YMCA to  ratio of the city (2:1, for a low income city of 6,000, according to the piece, not bad, really) and the ubiquity of hush puppies, and it dismisses Virginia staples like the Virginia Peanut Festival and the Virginia Pork Festival as examples of southerners’ obsession with unhealthy food–glossing over, or all out forgetting, that both are massive industries in the region.

Obesity in the south is a problem, one with roots in our culture, economy, politics and bull-headed reluctance to accept change; it is without a doubt a topic that warrants serious coverage. But painting southerners in a manner that makes them seem like they’re just too stubborn and ignorant to wise up and eat some greens is insulting and dismissive of the region’s broader problems.

In short, get bent, L.A. Times.

- Kris King

Tags: cigarettes, Emporia, Gut Check, health, LA Times, nobody steps on a church in my town, Northern Virginia Magazine, obesity, reactionary rant, The Los Angeles Times, Virginia