Come on, with a subject line like that, how can you not click through?
I come from a long and distinguished line of hicks, crackers, rednecks, buckra, hillbillies, po’ white trash, and so forth. I know these people. I grew up among these people. Their ways are not foreign to me; I know them inside and out. I will refrain from the obvious joke here, for those of you who know the tale of Coach Radi.
However, I know this, too: that’s not all there is.
It seems like you can’t ever go wrong publishing material that exalts rural America as the salt of the earth, excoriates anyone with a word to say against “flyover country,” hails the South as the most American of regions in a fashion that would cause the Vanderbilt Agrarians (look it up) to blush in embarrassment. I’m not sure why it’s necessary, to be honest. Less than fifteen years after the worst upheavals of the civil rights movement, the highest-rated thing on Friday nights was a two-hour block of “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Dallas.” For crying out loud, they elected a peanut farmer from Plains, GA to be President of the United States in 1976, and ever since, Ronald Reagan is the only President successfully elected who didn’t claim some sort of Southern heritage. In fact, every elected President from 1948 on, other than Ike and JFK, has been from either California or a state with a star on the Rebel flag. (Note “elected” which gets me off the hook for Ford.) Country music is thriving, NASCAR is the biggest sport in the country, and we’re heading into only the second Presidential election since 1972 where neither nominee can claim to be from the South.
Long story short: anybody who says rural America – and especially the old Confederacy – are getting some kind of short shrift from the powers that be? Is utterly and completely full of shit. Not only are they convinced that they are the only Real True America, they’ve got a bunch of self-loathing media whores in Washington and New York and Los Angeles convinced of it too.
I don’t know how many times I have to keep saying this, but I’m going to repeat it: Cities are America. Urban life is America. California is America. New York is America. Hawaii is America. Massachusetts is America. San Fran-fucking-cisco is America. And unlike some parts of the country I could name, none of those places ever took up arms against the Stars and Stripes. And yes, the South is America, too – if it weren’t, they wouldn’t bother me nearly so much. But then, that’s the curse of being born a scalawag.
Not having a Starbucks doesn’t make you un-American. But neither does having one.
(Note “elected” which gets me off the hook for Ford.)
Also for Bush, who’s from CT. *rimshot*
Well said. as usual!
Hicks, crackers, rednecks, buckra, et cetera? Yep, I’m familiar with them. I even married into more of the same…
See, you know that, and I know that, but I don’t think *he* knew that – and since the political press will report anything they’re told without question, he turned a legal residence in a Houston hotel into being a full-blown Texan. Absurd that a Yalie from Maine could be some sort of roughneck son of the soil in preference to an immigrant’s kid from the tough side of town…but then, history always rhymes, doesn’t it?
AAAAAAAAA-MEN!
Here’s the other part of the equation – rural doesn’t equate to Southern. When pundits and jack(asses) of the trade talk about rural America they mean your good kinfolk; they mean the back end of Arkansas and the deep woods of Tennessee. They never mean the Dakota plains or the Nebraska prairies; they’re not interested in rural life that means living in a desert or outside someplace like Portland, Oregon. And to assume that everyone who’s rural shares some spiritual and political identity when their worlds are a thousand shares different – just one more piece of crazy to add to the rest.