Politics Be Nice To Rubes!
posted by on November 17 at 11:12 AM
David Brooks, New York Times op-ed columnist, wrote an anti-Borat piece in yesterday’s NYT. (I would link to it but it’s behind the Times Select firewall.) In his column Brooks repeats what has become the conventional wisdom—indeed, John Teirney wrote a similar column in last week’s NYT—about the Borat movie: Funny, sure, but it’s unseemly when urban elites sneer at rural and southern rubes.
It’s also, as some have pointed out, bad politics. When urbanites sneer at the rubes in, say, Kansas, the rubes turn around and vote for Republicans. Why? Because Republicans pay ‘em compliments. It doesn’t seem to matter to the rubes that these same Republicans, once elected, enact fiscal and social policies that harm rural rubes and actively block programs that would help American families regardless of where they live.
It doesn’t matter to the rural rubes that Democrats, by backing programs like family leave to national health care to an increased minimum wage, demonstrate that they actually value families, and don’t just pay lip-service to “family values.” What matters to the rubes, it seems, is voting for people they want to have a beer with—even if, at the end of the legislative session, they can’t actually afford to buy a beer.
In this week’s Stranger, author and journalist Brian Mann writes about this urban/rural divide and its impact on last week’s election. Mann is the author of the new book Welcome to the Homeland, a book that’s bracing and infuriating in roughly equal measures. Mann’s book and Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, Mann’s book is required reading for the fall. Buy and read both books.
Mann’s book focuses on his relationship with his brother Allen. Mann’s a “metro,” one of those urban sophisticates. His brother—despite being raised in the same home and have similar life experiences—is a mega-church-going, straight-Republican-ticket-voting rural, uh, rube. And like so many rural rubes, Allen has a towering persecution complex. Like so many rural rubes, Mann’s brother thinks the urban elite looks down at him and are hostile to him and he takes his revenge in the voting booth.
Mann’s brother says he feels uncomfortable in urban areas because he’s a hunter, and you know how we urbanites look down on hunters. “Living where I live I don’t have to be careful about what I say,” Allen says, “about my enjoyment of hunting or owning firearms, for example. Those things are really important to me.” Puh-leeze. It’s a fuck of a lot riskier for me to discuss the things that mean a lot to me—like, oh, sucking off my boyfriend or having a boyfriend at all—in rural America than it is for Mann’s brother to discuss hunting in urban America. (You can talk about it with Brendan anytime you like, Allen—and the owner of this here urban sophisticate paper is a hunter!)
This whining, the sense of being put upon, this feeling of being oppressed—it’s such bullshit. And we have a right call the Allens of the world on it, and we have a right to ridicule them for it. Because they are ridiculous.
And they’re hypocrites.
In addition to walking us through just how stacked our political system is against Dems and progressives (a lot of anti-democratic elements are hard-wired into our democracy, from the Electoral College to the disproportionate representation that rural states have in the U.S. Senate), Mann pounds home the point that rubes don’t like being disrespected and looked down on. But in an alarming scene in the book Mann’s brother jokes with his young children about shooting liberals. Liberals, his brother maintains, are like deer. Too many of us, oughta be picked off one by one, shot. Like vermin.
Hm. Despite being a member of the urban elite—ooh, smell me!—I don’t teach my kid to think of rural folks as animals, nor do I joke with him killing people like Allen and his children. I may marvel at Allen’s gullibility come election time. Still, we make sure our son sees the folks we meet on our annual cross-red-America road trip as human beings, even if they refuse to see us that way.
Which brings us to something that sticks in my craw about this sneering-urban-elites vs. angry-rural-rubes thing. The rubes run around screaming their rube heads off about all the godless heathens in the cities and how we’ve destroyed their country—”theirs,” mind you, not “ours.” According to the Allens, we urbanites are a pack of latte-sipping sodomites, sophisticates, softies. We’re also open America-haters and closeted Osama bin Laden fans. Unlike rubes, we have no values. No respect. No faith.
So… uh… who exactly is sneering at whom?
How come one ever calls the rubes on just how disrespectful they are of their fellow Americans? And, really, do they have a right to complain when the folks they’ve insulted and denigrated and refused to accept as “real” Americans for—what?—the last 40 fucking years don’t hold them in the highest regard? Contemptuous and backwards, the American rube wields disproportionate, un-democractic power over all of us— they hold the country back—and yet we’re the nasties when we make fun of them?
Weren’t we all taught that respect is a two-way street?
I, for one, am sick of being told I have to be polite to people who insist that I’m a sinful abomination and seek to make my life miserable. I’m not one of those pansies that wants to argue with religious folks about their beliefs. Hey, the fundies think I’m going to hell—great, fine, whatever. I’m going to hell with the Catholics, the yoga instructors, the adulterers, and the atheists. Shouldn’t that be enough? Eternal punishment? But somehow it’s not enough for folks like Mann’s brother. They have to punish me here on earth too.
At bottom it’s really not about respect for their values. It’s about insisting that everyone adopt their values. When we say, “We hear you, homelanders, but we think you’re wrong,” that’s makes ‘em mad. That’s what kills ‘em. That’s so insecure that they take our rejection of their oppressive, retrograde political agenda as somehow personally disrespectful—particularly of their religious beliefs. They only way to appease an Allen is to live like one. Not gonna happen.
Yes, yes: It’s bad politics to be openly dismissive of the homelanders, as they wield disproportionate political power, thanks to stacked Senate and the Electoral College. But we should call the rubes on their hypocrisy, their ignorance, and their fear. And mockery is one way to do it. If it makes the Allens angry, good. Maybe the anger will make him think.
God bless Borat.
I agree, fuck the rubes and the Dog they rode in on.
I grew up in western Iowa, and when I go back to see family and friends, there are a lot of them that are very defensive. I think it's because they never got out of there, and think that I am judging them on it.
In a way, I suppose I do. But no more than they judge me for being a "left coaster" or BS like that. It's not my fault they were too stupid or cowardly or lazy to leave their safety zone, just as it's not their fault that I decided to move away.
And everytime I hear one of them refer to that region as "the heartland" or "the real America" I want to vomit on them. It's the middle of fucking nowhere, and the major pastimes are church or drinking.
Having moved here from Spokane, I agree with this statement completely. Why do the rednecked, truck-driving, fundamentalists get the rights to anyplace rural? I love the woods, grew up on a farm, and miss it all the time, but could not talk to my neighbors because they were so ass-backwards in their idea of what constitutes right. Plus, their indignation when someone has the nerve to disagree about love, religion (or lack thereof) or suggest new ideas. Is is laziness, too much work to use your damn brains? Easier to say "move if you don't like it", right?
Well, I did, I am now a Seattle-ite, I guess.
But I will move back to the woods eventually, my true home, and I can only hope that people will have finally gotten the point.
Personally, I hate broad brushes and overgeneralizations of EITHER urban or rural denizens. I've met plenty of closed-minded, provincial, racist, homophobic assholes who never venture outside the city limits, and have met probably an equal proportion of live-and-let-live, utterly anarchic, peaceful, well-educated folks living in places like Wauconda or Duckabush.
I genuinely don't think you can generalize urban-vs.-rural anymore. The old archetypes really don't hold. Just to give one small example, think of a couple of communities in Okanogan County - which one might think would be the reddest of red areas. If you're in the town of Twisp, you might be right; you're not going to find a whole lot of back-to-the-landers there. But go a few miles more, to Republic, and you'll find a whole community of people who live by barter and wouldn't harm a fly, people living happily in group marriages and rearing children communally.
You'll find that same dichotomy within Seattle, even on the same street - yes, even within Seattle, a town that bleeds indigo. Look at the difference between Madison Park and Broadmoor. Between eastern and western Magnolia. Between View Ridge and Laurelhurst.
I'm just not comfortable with this whole urban-rural invented controversy. It was VERY comforting to me for a couple of weeks after the 2004 election; hell, I still have a copy of the Urban Archipelago cover. But nonetheless, I believe it is a false paradigm.
Personally, I hate broad brushes and overgeneralizations of EITHER urban or rural denizens. I've met plenty of closed-minded, provincial, racist, homophobic assholes who never venture outside the city limits, and have met probably an equal proportion of live-and-let-live, utterly anarchic, peaceful, well-educated folks living in places like Wauconda or Duckabush.
I genuinely don't think you can generalize urban-vs.-rural anymore. The old archetypes really don't hold. Just to give one small example, think of a couple of communities in Okanogan County - which one might think would be the reddest of red areas. If you're in the town of Tonasket, you might be right; you're not going to find a whole lot of back-to-the-landers there. But go a few miles more, to Republic, and you'll find a whole community of people who live by barter and wouldn't harm a fly, people living happily in group marriages and rearing children communally.
You'll find that same dichotomy within Seattle, even on the same street - yes, even within Seattle, a town that bleeds indigo. Look at the difference between Madison Park and Broadmoor. Between eastern and western Magnolia. Between View Ridge and Laurelhurst.
I'm just not comfortable with this whole urban-rural invented controversy. It was VERY comforting to me for a couple of weeks after the 2004 election; hell, I still have a copy of the Urban Archipelago cover. But nonetheless, I believe it is a false paradigm.
Sonofabeech. Didn't mean to double-post - however, the CORRECTION that caused the double post is in the second post; Tonasket, not Twisp.
Despite the fact that rural America holds too much sway in the Senate, the Senate has been much more moderate and far less reactionary than the House in the past six years.
"Maybe the anger will make him think"
Uh, nothing seems to have made the "Allens" that I know think. But it is definitely fun to ridicule.
Catalina> you must be a hit in Western Iowa. You shoul make a reality show about that.
Borat makes his tour through the American South, true, but most of the places he visits are Urban areas; Louisville, Birmingham, Phoenix...it's not like he's visiting Hooterville...and I think the message is, the Rednecks and the Rubes are everywhere...he could have found them in Boston and Chicago and Seattle if he wanted to...
I also don't blame the people that are angry about being portrayed in a negative light in the movie...I don't like most of these people but they have a right to be pissed. If a rightwing filmmaker ambushed extreme liberals and made THEM look ridiculous, they'd make just as much noise...And you know what, the producers do need to cough up some more money for these people. I'd be pretty fucking pissed if I was humiliated for $400 for being tricked into participating in something that's gonna end up earning hundreds of millions of dollars...for Rupert Murdoch's Fox....
I wouldn't worry too much about the rubes for that much longer. 80% of Americans are now living in metropolitan areas, and that numbers keeps growing, along with the borders of those metropolitan areas. I grew up in New Mexico, and when I was a kid, Moriarity was a pit stop if you couldn't wait til you got to Albuquerque to pee. Now it's a bedroom community for Albuquerque. Albuquerque and Santa Fe have just about melded into one another, consuming all the formerly open space in between them, and they're putting high speed commuter rail between the two. Of the nearly two million that live in New Mexico, over 800,000 of them live in the Albuquerque metro area. When I was a kid, Albuquerque comprised 33% of the state, not 40%. I wouldn't be surprised if at the next census, New Mexico got a 4th congressman, and if the district which currently surrounds Albuquerque were divided into two districts, meaning that the current split which gives two thirds of NM's reps to the rural areas and just one to the city will be changed to fifty/fifty. Hell, at the rate the small towns in New Mexico are emptying out, it may not be long before Albuquerque holds three reps and the rest of the state one. At that point, it won't much matter if the rural parts of NM vote for GOP. When 75% is in the city, they'll cease to matter.
I feel the exact same way about the people in Borat that I do about people who fall those false premise reality TV shows (like that one on Fox where the women thought that construction worker was a prince). You wanted to be famous, you didn't read the release, you got scammed. You're stupid and you got caught looking stupid. Sorry, better luck next time.
um.. if you're easily portrayed as an asshole for $400, you probably are an asshole.
Thank you. Thank you for putting into eloquent words what I have been struggling to get across for some time now. I lived in the Midwest for almost five years and struggled with this very issue countless times.
Why does the left have to exercise endless tolerance and patience while the right tries to strangle our lifestyles, our rights, our very lives?
Yes, sometimes to get people to vote for you it is necessary to tell them a little bit of what they want to hear. That's why it's called politics.
4, Geni -- Nice one! Eastern and western Magnolia.
In the words of Aaron Sorkin:
-What are the sides in the culture wars?
-You hate us because you think we think your'e stupid. And we hate you because we think you're stupid.
Strangeways @ 10: What's great about borat isn't that he makes people look foolish, it's that people are fools, and he gets them on film. Too bad for them, guess they shouldn't be rubes.
I do agree that rural areas have too much sway politically (One person one vote should matter a whole lot more than it does in our system), and that the whole "real America" thing is horrible. But there are places where rural voters are starting to go Democratic. In Montana, Kansas, rural North Carolina and other places, Democrats won. Now, except in the last one, I am not positive if most of the votes came from urban parts of those states or not, but Montana and Kansas at least, are pretty rural. In Ohio, however, which I do know a lot about. The Democrats did very well in rural counties, winning the majority of the rural vote. Even Sherrod Brown, who is as liberal as you can get on almost everything. And the way they did that was they did something Democrats have not done in a long time, they made the campaign about making people in rural and urban areas lives better. I know Dems are always better for people pocket books than the GOP, but Dems did not do a good job articulating that until this year, in my opinion. They did this year, that is why the won, and started to do well with rural voters, at least in some places. And while I think that people disapproving of who people love is as ridiculous as it is terrible. I know plenty of city dwellers that are bigoted in that way too.
I could give a horse’s ass about protecting the sensitivities of “rubes” who are offended by Borat. The hypocritical dolts preach from the mountain top, blathering on about god’s love and family values while they fill the heads of their followers with messages of hatred and intolerance. Given rule of the roost, they’d have the rest of us breeding like flies, producing scores of unwanted children, contracting preventable diseases such as HPV and HIV (presumably as punishment for our sins), and condemning our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to lives of denial and self-hatred. It’s bad enough they choose to live that way, but I’d appreciate it if they kept their backward ways to themselves.
And as much as I’d like to see the light of reason dawn in the eyes of right-wing Jesus freaks (and no offense to the vast majority of believers who are tolerant, middle-of-the-road sort of folks), I’m not going to deny them the right to choose their beliefs and I’m not going to tell them how to raise their children (not that I wouldn’t like to, but that’s sort of the point). That, of course, is where a big line can be drawn between the goal of the rubes and rest of us. Where the rubes of America would like to place spy cameras in our bedrooms and religious fanatics in our classrooms, most of us just want to be left in peace to live our lives as we see fit – which shouldn’t be a problem as long as we aren’t causing harm to anyone else. And you know, last time I checked, the liberal social policies I support tend to protect, rather than harm, the rights and opportunities of average Americans, including the vast majority of rubes. You can’t say the same for those “compassionate conservative” policies that oppose universal health care coverage, funding for college education, and so on.
Anyway, the rubes of America can’t stand Borat because, like Archie Bunker a generation ago, he exposes the truth of the hypocrisy behind the political policies they support. Where they speak in public about protecting marriage by limiting it to a union between a man and woman for the sake of children – and NOT out of hatred of gays, Borat reveals the stinking rat of homophobia that is their real motivation. The good news is that there are enough Americans who disapprove of this mentality to make Borat’s tongue-in-cheek portrayal of it a big hit. Maybe what the rubes need to do (just like that sorry uber-hypocrite Haggard, who, when no other way to weasel his way out of it remained, thanked god for revealing his sin, thus allowing him to seek forgiveness) is thank Borat for showing them how truly laughable they are. Then all that would be left is to get them to ask the rest of us for forgiveness.
I don't know why people think Borat is an indictment on Americans or southerners or rubes or whatever. There's nothing for them to be upset about. He made half a dozen people (well, more if you count the rodeo audience, I guess) look like assholes. First, those same half-dozen people can be found anywhere in America, not just in Rubetown, Mississippi. Second, like any "reality" show, you can't help but wonder what got left on the cutting room floor. Footage of people being nice, generous, open-minded, but which wouldn't be funny enough in the film.
Geni #4#5 I whole heartedly agree. I have a lot of friends and family from rural america and its amazing that people equate the city as being loveing and inviting. Many people realize that as the cities overcrowd and Seattle will(like NY) become segregated as hell. La has what the mexican community,(or ghetto-which was my friends a city term which albeit became racist usuage) oh theres the chinese in their community and look theres the black people in theres.ver there see in Bellevue all safe from the Big Bad city kids are protected from influence by those in west
Seattle. "Get back home johnny I don't want you hanging around westlake center with those hip hoppers and their race mixing.". give me a brake that city don't foster hate and intolerance. Theres more of that crap in Seattle than here in Gig Harbor and yes there are Black people and Asians out here too. Jesus christ what the hell is up with this Urban I'm all high and mighty BS. Oh and heres the hypocrisy- most libs from the city becry energy waste and hate on pollution, by buying hybrids and shit, but when do they realize that the philosophy of its cool in the city and everyone moving there translate into building outward more and more. when does it stop? Until this entire planet is overun in concrete and metal like some Sci-Fi flick(Judge Dredd/ Fifth Element) ?! You wanna talk about nearing a boiling point of racism and intolerance and government corruption(fascism and organized criminality)and wire tapping by the big bad republican machine that started NSA in the vocabulary. you will most certainlly have it. Urban folk will most likely drain this world of its resources quicker than those in the rural parts where life is simple and not buy, buy , buy gotta have a my apt gotta have my stereo gotta have my t.v. gotta move out of downtown and buy on outskirts because city is to crazy but close enough to visit. buy buy buy. gotta get this gotta get that. Can't stop moving out of city oh theres some land buy buy buy there goes the farm whocares onions will come from basement of organic farm under federal building. We'll buy electrons and live on electricity if we have to but bygolly we'll tramp the country into the ground with more apts and condos after another. Screw nature and screw those bad hunters who kill animals for sport. They are bad people yes indeed . Now another puff while I relax without busy car and beep beep beep noise and drilling. eeeeee thats all I heard while living in and around the city. You can keep that folks. On the other hand lets build and build so we can all be neighbors with the bad rural racists and their farms. We'll showem how to live. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Man does it ring true. It should be Fear and Loathing in Seattle. Heres my new term for urbanites. Oh yeah, what was it?...!Brickheads.
i'm in milwaukee, where the rubes are partially domesticated. and their sneering judgments are so commonplace, i almost don't notice them any more.
it is assumed that if you are white, you're racist, catholic and drink until you pass out.
even if you're not the first two, that latter inevitably becomes true. you are, after all, in milwaukee.
Mike - I live in North Carolina, smack in the middle of the county that voted overwhelmingly Democrat. (80% of the voters in Buncombe County voted for Heath Shuler, who ousted Charles Taylor.)
I'm not exactly sure how one defines "urban" vs. "rural". This county has the same population as my hometown (350,000, give or take), consolidated into a smaller land mass. The city itself has about 70,000 residents. But leaving the downtown area, you will spot wide open spaces, farmland, and vast stretches of nothing.
It seems that people voted for Shuler in this district because of his football background and because he's liberal-lite. He was open about being pro-life in his campaign, and he emphasized "benchmarks" in Iraq, rather than pulling out entirely.
I'd heard it mentioned, and I think there's some merit to the theory, that many Democrats won because the candidates put forth were conservative "enough" to appeal to the "heartland" voters.
No one likes patronizing, condescending icky-shits.
Even when they might be right.
Hey, Sputnik, use some paragraphs, huh?
If you look at it from the perspective of the rubese, you have to understand that they believe, rightly, that everything they have is being taken away from them. Their towns are dead, replaced by Wal-Mart. Their farms are bankrupt, and if they're still farming they're little more than sharecroppers to Monsanto and ADM. None of the neat stuff they see on TV is available where they live. They can see with their own eyes that what they value is becoming less important, as they cling to a lifestyle that the modern world frequently doesn't have room for.
As a result, they're defensive. People who are defensive aren't that way because they're assholes, they're doing it because they're hurting.
And even the splashiest leftie has to admit that any argument that revolves around "a decline in morals" gets a lot of oomph from much of the trashy news these days, such as OJ's book and TV show. You and I may know that OJ isn't one of us, but they're not so sure.
They are also subject to a lot of really stupid and corrupt leaders who promise to take them out of the wilderness and restore this country's greatness and yadda yadda. They follow not because they're stupid themselves but because they're desperate. If you have yourself never clung to anything stupid out of desperation, I envy you; I have, and it's not fun.
I'm not sure where I'm leading with this, but "rural", or more accurately non-metropolitan, people are not all awful by definition. They're just hurting and scared and resentful. And yes, they do have some personal values that city folk could make good use of; there's a kind of resilience, and directness out there that's kind of nice after you get too full of puffed-up Seattle bullshit.
But in the long run, we're winning. Try to be a gracious winner. When they throw clumps of mud at you, smile and take it, and let them know you'll still be here for them when they get over their little tantrums.
i love the word rubes so much. it is right up there with ne'er-do-wells and shysters, as far as i am concerned. thanks, dan.
Thanks Fnarf. Well said. Much better than the editorial which led me to post my grievance. I will take it in to account and relax a little more before I have to worry about haveing my neighbors breathing down my back and a looming building over my home blocking out the Sun and sky. Hears a vision Big metropolis looming over The Olympic mountains. Or blocking Mt Rainier. My beef is with that endless obssesion with moving outward from the City that made it so theres no sanity or quiet anymore. No trees. Its all chop chop chop drill drill drill with urbanites that does me in. peacepipe anyone?
Oh my God! David Brooks scolding urban liberals for their alleged elitism? Like this guy has ever left the beltway in the last three years...
However, it's not just the right who find Borat offensive. The Nation's resident scold Richard Goldstein finds it violates race and class...something or other.
I blogged about it here.
Oh and my girlfiend wanted to add that Borat when he was Ali G came out as an ignorant ass and cannot stand his stupid english hip hop dribble. He sounded like he need a good asswooping from the crips or bloods. So with his Ali G see how stupid people are in america in the ghetto. Just watching thaqt shopw is enough to put you off you stomach about city urbanites trying to do interviews. eccch! So don't worry ruralites, he's made fun of urbanites too.
Fnarf, with all due respect, that is such bull. Indeed, the rural way of life is changing, but it's not in a way that most rural folks hate. Close proximity to a wal mart means not having to trek 45 minutes into town, to Roanoke or to Asheville, to find a shirt that resembles the "neat stuff they see on TV". What percentage of rural wal mart shoppers are the former shopkeepers they displaced? For the most part, those old shopkeepers are the only ones who dislike the fact that wal mart has rolled into town.
You have plenty of desperate farmers, displaced electronics store owners, and people who haven't had access to good education making desperate, hateful decisions. But what you have more of are the mail carriers, freight company managers, and judges in rural america who are just hateful, spiteful assholes. These are not desperate people.
I'm just going on my vast personal experience, but most rubes have access to the real world and are willfully obtuse, hateful people who dare you to challenge their mean-spirited ideas.
Borat was never Ali G. The dude's name is Sacha Baron Cohen, and he's one damn hottie.
Just a minor side note.
To make my previous overlong post (made even worse by double-posting it) simpler, my point was: you can find rubes, or sophisticates, anywhere. You can find provincial, narrow-minded dickheads on Capitol Hill. And you can find well-educated, generous, tolerant people in East Armpit.
Alice-
You clearly know more about Schuler than I do. I did know he was pro-life, may be anti-gay (I do not know about that), but I understood that a big part of his appeal was his economic populist message. I have heard him interviewed, and on matters of economics, he seems very left.
And I know several other candidates, some could be considered liberal, others conservative on social issues, but who were very left on economic issues (Jon Tester, Jim Webb, Bernie Sanders, several of the Ohio Dems) all did very well with rural voters. Maybe in some cases their conservative social issue stances were a big part of it, but I think their economic populism was what carried the day. I worked on the elections in Ohio, and I know it was there.
In my experience, growing up with high school teachers who specifically urged me to look no further than the local state university and a parent who complained how much more hostile everything felt when driving across the border from our little town into the "city" (of
Fucknuts. I had to use a less-than sign, didn't I... let me try to reconstruct.
In my experience, growing up with high school teachers who specifically urged me to look no further than the local state university and a parent who complained how much more hostile everything felt when driving across the border from our little town into the "city" (of less than 30,000), the rube attitude comes from insecurity about a lack of understanding of the outside world. It was scary the first time I had the opportunity to meet people who had traveled widely and had a decent education - everyone seemed so superior. The instinctive response to that realization is to become defensive and wall oneself off from new experiences and information. It took me a little while to realize I was no different, and I just had to get out and have some of those experiences. But, I was teenager. I can sort of imagine (with horror) what it would be like to have never had that experience by middle age. When everyone around you, people in authority who are supposed to be your guardians and educators, are discouraging you from exploring the outside world both implicitly and explicitly with every word and deed, it takes a lot of courage and independent thinking to actually do it. So, it's hard to judge whether Borat is helpful (I haven't seen the movie, only read about it). Those already inclined to see the problems with small-town existence will have their desire for something more reaffirmed by seeing it ridiculed. Those who lean toward being defensive will just dig in their heels emotionally, and I think there's a fine line between the two. It's like dropping a ball on the tip of a rooftop. Since comedy has a way of shining a glaring light on things that are ridiculous, though, as long as it sticks to ridiculing that that actually are ridiculous, I agree with Dan. And the same problem occurs with people who've lived in Manhattan their whole lives and are afraid of open space and bugs, but I think that's a lot less common, and they have a lot less political power.
Note to self: copy long comments to clipboard before posting.
Gopher: there are hateful assholes everywhere, always have been, always will be. But they are not the majority. And while I agree that much (not all) of the cultural and economic desperation of the rural population is based on fantasy, I think virtually all of the cultural life of America is based on fantasy, ours as much as theirs.
What is happening in the rural zones is that their FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) is making them turn to the people with easy answers: the hateful assholes. That doesn't make everyone in Eastern Washington a hateful asshole; it just means they're afraid. If liberals want to win them over, they have to find ways to make them less afraid.
You can disagree with me if you want, but if you disagree, you'll never win them over, which means you'll never win an election ever again. This doesn't mean turning a blind eye to hatred, but it does mean finding a positive way to talk to them about stuff that matters to them. Otherwise you're letting these hateful assholes you're so upset by control the conversation.
Hasnt The Texas Chainsaw Massacre taught us anything? Dont make fun of rubes. To their faces anyway.
By the way, Borat is the "Foreign Man" reborn and updated....all hail the great Andy Kaufman, who was doing this 20 years ago. Way ahead of his time...
Thank you for this thoroughly nonsensical, belligerent tripe. It clearly elucidates the ways in which urban progressives have given up trying to bridge the divide between themselves and the rural working poor. It should come as no surprise that your shrill platitudes will have no effect outside of your close circle of readership, but I'm assuming that when writing a piece like this, one doesn't expect much more than to see others exactly like him nodding in vigorous assent. Your worldview is the same one espoused by Bill O'Reilly and Anne Coulter: you have allowed the mass media to completely color your ideas about the body politic of America. I am here to tell you sir, that there is no culture war. There are many hysterical blowhards so dedicated to their ideology of choice that they can no longer countenance pluralism or anything that is not entirely flush with their "values system"--and these blowhards are, unfortunately, extremely adept at whipping their fellow ideologues into a seething frenzy. The base, once sufficiently excited, squares off against those who do not share their beliefs, and the two assembled masses scream trite phrases at one another like a playground full of retarded children. If you consider this a war, sir, then I suppose you can count yourself on the front lines.
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If you have a minute check this.
Be so kind and click
Och beautifull site below too
Be so kind and click
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It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
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Sorry for that.
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Sorry for that.
Sorry for that.
Sorry for that.
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Dont be angry please
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
It is very important for you to click below. Trust me
If you have a minute check this.
If you have a minute check this.
If you have a minute check this.
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