Eric Jong at the Huff:
Irving Berlin was wrong: you can get a man with a gun.
Not that I think Sarah Palin will make it to VP. But given the repugnicans’ habit of caging votes, it’s certainly one horrid possibility.
White trash America certainly has allure for voters. Some people think rednecks are more American than Harvard educated intellectuals of mixed race. God help us in the next election. The NRA and the oil industry sure won’t. [emphasis mine – which part of this sentence is more offensive?]
Read the whole offensive thing here if you must.
Much more important may be Joe Bageant on American “rednecks”:
Can Democrats Learn to Speak Redneck? (apparently not, assuming Jong is a Dem)
and Why Rednecks May Rule the World
UPDATE: I couldn’t resist coming back to post this bit from “Why Rednecks May …”:
rednecks have never had so many friends or so much attention as in 2008. Contrary to the stereotype, we are not all tobacco chawing, guffawing Southerners, but are scattered from coast to coast. Over 50% of us live in the “cultural south”, which is to say places with white Southern Scots-Irish values — redneck values.
They include western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, upstate Michigan and Minnesota, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire …
So when you look at what pundits call the red state heartland, you are looking at the Republic of Redneckia.
As to having our delicate beer-sodden feelings protected from the term redneck; well, I appreciate the effort, though I highly suspect that the best way to hide snobbishness is to pose as protector of any class of folks you cannot bear. Thus we are being protected by the very people who look down on us — educated urban progressives.
And let’s face it, there’s plenty to look down on. By any tasteful standard, we ain’t a pretty people.
mirabile dictu 