Joe Bageant

Sarah Palin, through the Toast Crumbs Dimly

Carstair's muse on Gidget, dominatrix of the North

By Joe Bageant

"I grew up with those people. They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America … who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town."
-- Sarah Palin in her speech to the Republican National Committee

Translation: "Along with John McCain, I am the only candidate who is not a lawyer. My old man has fished for a living and I have gutted those fish for dinner. And yup, we have a kid that got knocked up too."

In those few sentences Sarah Palin delivered the only legitimate populist message -- however thin -- we can expect to hear during the entire campaign season. Never mind that it is a fraught with contradictions. Whose life isn't? It's a political sop but it's a heartfelt sop, true and simple enough for ordinary heartland working folks to grasp amid the shitstorm of political jargon and crafted messages that say exactly nothing.

No one is looking out for your interests

Good Afternoon Joe,

I live in the path of Hurricane Ike. While my TV and internet were down and I was listening to the local news for where to go for ice and when the utilities would come back on, the world changed.

The US economy had not only taken a swan dive as I expected it eventually would, but the Secretary of the Treasury and the Fed had stepped up with a "plan" to save the day. Of course if you read the fine print it actually would give them total discretion as to HOW the plan was to be implemented and I quote "without review or recourse by congress or the courts."

This is a fucking coup in sheep's clothing. Probably unconstitutional, but we have blown so far past that it shouldn't even count.

Bail-out is just more trickle up economics

Dear Joe:

Practicing law can sometimes give you a clear perspective of national events. Over the past few years, the car dealers, con artists and blue suede shoe boys that had previously been hawking multi-level marketing, penny stocks or ostrich farms seemed to all wind up in real estate finance. Mortgage brokers went from being a ridiculous waste of money to an every day occurrence. And since it was real estate, there was suddenly an air of respectability to the con games. And they became appraisers, developers, real estate brokers, title insurance agents and on and on.

Flips were the buzzword of the day. Just about anyone, from the sidewalk wino on up, could qualify for a mortgage. And the price of real estate always went up. So it was a no-brainer to simply bid in for whatever real estate you could get and sell it to the next greater fool. Like all ponzi schemes, the last guy in the chain suffered all the losses.

Canadian Scots-Irish were never underclass

Hello Joe,

I'm a long-time reader, first-time writer. (I read your book in one day, I was so captivated!) I am an ethnic Canadian Scots-Irish, born and raised in Toronto, where Matt is writing from in his letter "Scots-Irish in Canada and US are different". (I'm currently temporarily working in Brisbane, Australia.)

To possibly offer some regional context to this issue, I think an important aspect of difference between our two environments is that, in Toronto (and Ontario in general), the Scots-Irish were never an 'underclass', in any way shape or form. Now, this is not to say that there weren't poor, economically unsuccessful members of the community in Toronto, of course there were. But what I mean is, the Scots-Irish formed a dominant group in Ontario's political life from the 19th to well into the 20th Century.

Scots-Irish in Canada and US are different

Joe:

I've been reading your blog just about as long as it has been around, and I bought your book as soon as it came out. Kudos on your quickly percolating career as a redneck pundit in the UK press. Try not to turn into one of those 18th Century Savage Red Indians taken back to England for display as a curiosity illustrative of the wonders of the Americas. But I'm sure you won't, and if you do and get paid for it, it's all good anyway.

I recently gave up on the USA (Abu Ghraib was the last straw) and moved to Canada, where I'm now married to a lovely Canadian girl and going through the process of becoming a Canadian citizen. I love it up here in Toronto, and we visit quite often with her parents in rural Ontario.

TV documentary about Joe Bageant (in Italian)

Several months ago, Vasco Dones, an independent television producer for Swiss TV spent a week with Joe Bageant in Winchester, Virginia, interviewing Joe and many of the people who are profiled in Deer Hunting with Jesus. This resulted in a 30-minute documentary titled "Joe's Winchester" that was broadcast yesterday on the Italian language channel of Swiss TV and posted to the web.

The narration and voice-overs are in Italian and even if you don't understand the language the story is wonderfully told. Dones began his career as a still photographer and this is evident in the way he shoots video. Each scene is carefully framed, the camera is still, and the subjects move within the frame. Beautifully done and worth a look.

Dones said today there are no immediate plans for French or German versions of the documentary for Swiss TV, nor yet any English language versions in the works.

Click here and scroll down to the clickable "Guarda il video", where you will find a choice of high and low speed connections.

-- Ken Smith

PS: This has nothing to do with above, but I just noticed that out of the hundreds of current articles on the BBC News web site, Joe's article "Why rednecks may rule the world" is the most emailed.

Why Rednecks May Rule the World

This article originally appeared on the web site of BBC Radio.

By Joe Bageant

During this US election cycle we are hearing a lot from the pundits and candidates about "heartland voters," and "white working class voters."

What they are talking about are rednecks. But in their political correctness, media types cannot bring themselves to utter the word "redneck." So I'll say it for them: redneck-redneck-redneck-redneck.

The fact is that we American rednecks embrace the term in a sort of proud defiance. To us, the term redneck indicates a culture we were born in and enjoy. So I find it very interesting that politically correct people have taken it upon themselves to protect us from what has come to be one of our own warm and light hearted terms for one another.

Can Democrats Learn to Speak Redneck?

In a HuffingtonPost.com column today, "Can Democrats Learn to Speak Redneck?", Beth Arnold writes that the McCain/Palin ticket appeals to far more Americans than the Democrats have been willing to recognize. Using Joe Bageant's book and his recent columns as a starting point, Arnold writes that the Democrats need a campaign with more than the charge that John McCain is too old and trigger-happy and that Sarah Palin is nothing more than an inexperienced "hockey mom".

Arnold, a staunch Democrat and ardent supporter of Barack Obama, says that the Democrats must do more than simply make fun of their opponents. "We cannot let this happen," Arnold writes. "We dim Democrats have got to stay on task here. As idiotic as it seems to have named Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain has accomplished what he set out to do in some sense."

It's a column worth reading. Click here.

-- Ken Smith

Joe in The Guardian explains leftnecks

Joe Bageant has a great column today in The Guardian (UK) explaining to the British some aspects of American politics. In the column, "Meet the leftnecks", Joe says: "McCain's popularity in the red-state heartland took another jump with his selection of the moose-shooting ex-beauty queen, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, as his vice-presidential running mate. The war hero and gun advocate 'hockey mom' are obviously reaching American heartlanders: at some point the left is going to have to learn to reach the same people, especially in the swing states. And to do that they are going to have to learn to speak redneck."

Click here for Joe's Guradian column, and be sure to read the comments, including one by Joe himself in response to some of the other comments.

-- Ken Smith