Bageant: Sarah Palin is a redneck

I was raised in the same culture, coming from Scotch-Irish stock in Eastern Kentucky. The thing is, many of these ideas are profoundly ill thought out in one way or another. The lack of subtle thought is one of the great problems in American political discourse, and this sort of jingoistic, self-serving cultural myopia has become dangerous in the real world. As I said before, qualifications are not elitist, and ignorance is not populism. Good-ole-boy rhetoric may make people feel better, but it's not an acceptable political stance. I grew up with people holding these ideas, and most of them are, in fact, decent human beings. Many are formally educated, but their view of the world is parochial, almost defiantly so. That's potentially a problem if you are holding high political office.

"Cosmopolitan Redneck"? I think I saw them play at the Continental Club a few years ago - great band. :)

I grew up in a Scoth-Irish/Pennsylvania German, one-industry small town. The cement company dumped tons of cement dirt onto the town until the government mandated scrubbers on the stacks. We grew up learning to hate Roman Catholics in general and Hungarians in particular. When girls got pregnant, they either got married, went to New York (pre-1973)for a long weekend, or if they were athletic and couldn't afford New York, worked out a little more vigorously on the uneven parallel bars at the high school.

I'm not rushing to Sarah Palin's defense.

Readingbill,

"I'm a pro-abort" would have been a much shorter first paragraph. Succinct and accurate.

>Just as tribalism has influenced overwhelming black support for Obama

Black people detest the GOP as all 36 of the black delegates to the Republican convention can tell you. Tribalism my foot.

>the redneck republic

Good lord.

Have you no idea why that name is such an anathema to black Americans?

You can't take redneck or the Confederate flag back from Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the segregationist lynching South no matter how hard you try. If you want to proclaim your support for the equivalent of the swastika be my guest.

I don't care about your Scott/Irish heritage, I care that proud rednecks called me nigger when I was growing up, and worse they enforced absolute segregation of large parts of the city and surrounding county where I lived, keeping the best economic opportunities for themselves until a veritable eye blink in time ago.

Please God, let's have have Sarah Palin proclaim herself the redneck candidate right now and get it out in the open.

Note Bageant's conclusion:

"It represents many of the worst traits in American culture and a few of the best.
And that has every thinking person here in the US, except perhaps John McCain and Sarah Palin, worried.

Very worried."

And I'm a 6th generation West Virginian, BTW, and it has me very worried too.

Grew up in Southern Indiana and live in small town PA. Mostly agree with author's characterization. He underemphasizes loyalty and fealty IMO. Identity with the group is paramount. Any attempt at discussion of issues which does not recognize this filter is doomed to failure.

"+ Personal pride in equality. No man, however rich or powerful, is better than me."

OTOH, there is a kind of xenophobia present in redneck culture which amounts to feeling superiority. "Everybody needs somebody to look down on."

Steve

"It represents many of the worst traits in American culture and a few of the best.
And that has every thinking person here in the US, except perhaps John McCain and Sarah Palin, worried.

Very worried."

blairburton thanks for mentioning that. rod decided to leave it out because it undermines his quasi-rational cultural/regional defense of palin.

here's the thing: i am from pennsylvania, in the "T region" that is so famously derided. i was a boy scout, altar boy, went fishing with my great-uncle every year on trout season's opening day. i was on the football team in high school. my family is solidly blue-collar. i am the second person in my entire extended family to go to college, my mother being the first.

and you know what? my family members weren't and aren't rednecks. redneck is a state of mind, not where you're from or what your religion is our what your hobbies are.

people like rod pretend they're one in the same to justify their xenophobia and cultural resentment. this palin business is a signal that american democracy is dead.

Is it worth pointing out that a few of those things are objectively wrong?

Interestingly enough, I personally disagree with almost every single one of them...and I'm from Georgia.

I make no claims to being a "redneck". I never wear cowboy hats or boots, don't drink alcohol at all, am a lifelong vegetarian, a computer geek, and love great music and only a small bit of country music. I don't care for sports and the only auto racing I am a fan of is when I'm behind the wheel doing autocross.

Though some would call me that, in a dismissive way.

However, I have enough personal knowledge of the topic to comment on this:

that's what i'm talking about. that. elevation of cultural resentment above all objective inquiry and reasonable discourse.

That's what you would like it to be, so you could dismiss it and continue on your own arrogant merry way. But you're wrong. It's your inherent belief in your superiority and your moral right to control others than we, even who are not rednecks, rebel against.

We do not believe in the inherent superiority of government over the individual. We believe in the reverse. Your intellectually engineered "solutions" to our "problems" are WAY worse than the problems themselves. We know that, because we live and deal daily with the real life problems caused by the real life meddlesome incompetent government we already have.

Our objection is not "intellectually constructed theory", it is real life observation. We have some theories of our own, and they tend to be those derived from real life as well.

When you're willing to accept that there's legitemate debate to be had over what you think, then get back to us. In the meantime, just consider us locked and loaded. In defense of our own lives, no less.

"resentment against "coastal elites". i live in NYC. i don't know who these people are, or how they're so different in elitism from the millionaire businessmen who live in mcmansions out in "the heartland". why are these guys less elite? accents and hobbies?"

Funny, considering how "McMansions" is a perjoritave term used by elites to disparage nouveau riche hicks.

Being an uneasy hybrid between Scots-Irish hillbilly on one side, and Hungarian intellectual types on the other, and having spent my formative years in both blue New England and red South Carolina...well, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.

Anyway, in SC we had trailer trash, and we had rednecks, and then we had a third sort called "bubbas." Bubbas were kind of like respectable rednecks; they were gainfully employed and often quite prosperous, usually in a blue-collar way, like skilled tradesmen or contractors; had better teeth; were better educated and frequently had college degrees (though never from them fancy Yankee colleges); and were highly skilled in hunting, fishing, shrimping, etc. Mind you, they did have some rednecky tendencies like a fondess for mullets, country music and oversized belt buckles, but unlike rednecks and trailer trash, they seldom appeared on Jerry Springer.

Sarah Palin strikes me as more of a bubba than a redneck.

I was just thinking yesterday, it would be funny if Sarah Palin made "Redneck Woman" (the only country song I can think of that I like) into her official campaign song.

God bless.

I think that probably one of the best treatments of the Scots-Irish and their role in America is the book by the junior Senator from Virginia, Reagan Sec of the Navy turned populist Democrat, gun owner and self described Southwest Va. redneck, Jim Webb. "Born Fighting" Where I live the native population (we also have many Hispanics, Vietnamese and Russians) is divided between Germans, usually Lutheran, Mennonites (mostly from Switzerland way back) and Scots-Irish. However, the S-I's that have been in America for a long time are not particulary anti-Catholic in my experience.

Re Sarah Palin being a "Bubba", yeah, even though she's from Idaho/Alaska. One does not have to be a southerner to be a Bubba, also a Good Ole Boy or Good Ole Girl. One is a GO Boy or Girl, even if they are 70 years old. When I was a kid, what is now called "trailer trash" was known as "poor white trash". Probably a marginally better term as not everyone who lives in a trailer is trash. Maybe they're just poor. My husband and I lived in a 10 x 50' trailer for 6 years till we bought a house. It was better than paying rent on an apartment in our view because we owned it.

A Southerner or country person might not be able to exactly define what is the difference between Bubbas, rednecks, and white trash, but we know it when we see it.

Good ole girls usually don't consider themselves feminists, they just live it, and they don't believe in being just like men but they don't see any reason why they have to act girly girly. They believe you can camp, fish, hike, kayak, and hunt and field dress your own game and still be a feminine woman. I am sure much of the country thinks this is kinda strange. Where I live this is pretty normal. Hardly worth remarking on.

Where I come from "redneck" is a codeword for "racist" and I see little to dispute that.