Joe Bageant

One Last Kick at Liberal Dogs

Just to Hear Them Bark

"Why do you rope-belted redneck mouthbreathers assume that if a liberal drinks a glass of wine they are going to attack people like you? You know, it is just possible that someone can eat a piece of cheese for some other reason than hating rednecks."
-- Posted on Smirking Chimp website by Wile E. Chimp Supergenius

By Joe Bageant

Many American liberals believe working class conservatives see them as the enemy -- that they stereotype liberals as a bunch of over-educated quasi-queers sucking down cappuccinos at Starbucks or spreading brie at a self-help book signing, or something like that. We can thank television for such ignorance.

Free People Do Bad Things

Overall, we can expect more of the same

By Joe Bageant

A while back there was a wrestling promotion campaign in which young children were encouraged to attend local wrestling bringing weapons of their own creation. The weapons would later be used in the ring. One small boy returned with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. Asked about the wisdom of encouraging the child to create such brutal weapons, the kid's father appeared dumbfounded: "This is just entertainment! It's fun!" World Champion Wrestling's Vince McMahon's indignant response was, "This is still a free country. I will not let anyone stop me." The implication being of course, "I am a great defender of freedom against evil liberal regulation." Then he looked into the camera to his fans and said: "DON'T LET ANYONE STOP YOU!"

Carpooling with Adolf Eichmann

Dark mutterings from the sidelines on Prozac cookies and our disturbing sort of sanity

By Joe Bageant

One of the most unsettling things about this country is that the following people are considered perfectly sane by American standards: Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Deepak Chopra, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Pat Robertson, Grover Nordquist, and Michelle Malkin. See anybody in that list even remotely normal? Every one of them lives in an egomaniacal la-la-land of his or her imagination and manages to get paid to do it. Believe me when I say that just about any face you see on your television or in the newspaper is a nutjob. I used to interview such freaks for a living. Of course, given that American journalists and interviewers have become mindless suck-asses, I understand that I may have a credibility problem here. But onward!

Publisher's announcement about my book

Publisher's Marketplace, May 2005:

Rachel Klayman has gotten in on the class act. The Crown editor has bought the primevally titled DRINK, PRAY, FIGHT, FUCK: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, which blogger Joe Bageant fills with observations and tales of how most Americans really spend their lives. The love-child of Barbara Ehrenreich and Hunter Thompson is how Klayman describes the voice.

Publisher's Weekly:

Gonzo web columnist Joe Bageant's DRINK, PRAY, FIGHT, F -- K: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, about the parallel world of working class America today, focused on Winchester, Virginia, taking us from the local Rubbermaid plant to the "Christian madrassas" to karaoke night at the local tavern, and challenging the left to get to know their working class brethren, all in a funny, furious, blunt voice that evokes Hunter S. Thompson, to Rachel Klayman at Crown, by Daniel Greenberg at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).