Joe Bageant

Down Under radio interviews with Joe

Joe Bageant is on a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand where he is talking about his new book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, published by Scribe Publications. The book is a collection of stories from his own background growing up among the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes of West Virginia -- the people who according to President Obama "cling to their guns and their religion".

Rainbow Pie will be published by Granta/Portobello in the UK later this year. A date has not yet been set for the US release.

In addition to speaking at book fairs and writers' festivals, Joe has been interviewed by a number of print and broadcast journalists. Below are three radio interviews. For each, follow the link and look for a button to download an MP3 file.

Richard Fidler of ABC Brisbane welcomes Joe back to a second visit to discuss Rainbow Pie. Joe was a guest on this popular radio program two years ago when Deer Hunting with Jesus was published in Australia. Click here.

Joe is interviewed by Kathryn Ryan of Radio New Zealand. Click here.

Annie Warburton of ABC Northern Tasmania interviews Joe. Click here.

-- Ken Smith

Understanding America's Class System

Honk if you love caviar

By Joe Bageant

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys.

Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political class. For instance, they do not work for a living in the normal sense of a job, but rather obtain their income from abstractions such as investment and law, neither of which ever gave anybody a hernia or carpal tunnel. By comparison, the ruling class does not work at all.

Joe's Australia, New Zealand book tour

Joe Bageant will be on a two-week tour of Australia and New Zealand, starting 27 August 2010. He will talk about his new book, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, to be released by Scribe Publications in Australia and New Zealand during his tour. At two writers' festivals, Joe will also discuss his first book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War.

Here's one of the early reviews of Rainbow Pie: "An amazing read. What Harper Lee had to hide behind fiction to write, Joe Bageant has done straight-up, with all the bones showing. This is a majestic work." -- Bob Kincaid, Head-On Radio Network, "America's Liberal Voice".

Check back to this page for updates.

-- Ken Smith

Bageant, Chomsky featured in film

Joe Bageant is featured in a documentary film now in production, titled "The Kingdom of Survival", scheduled for release in November. Others in the film are Noam Chomsky, Mark Mirabello, Ramsey Kanaan, Sasha Lilley, Mike Oehler, Bob Meisenbach, and Will "The Bull" Taylor.

Writer and filmmaker M. A. Littler describes his film as a search for visions that challenge the status quo. "This is an interdisciplanary documentary combining speculative travelogue and investigative journalism in order to trace possible links between survivalism, spirituality, art, radical politics, outlaw culture, alternative media and fringe philosophy," he said.

"Contrary to the popular approach of trying to summon arguments that legitimize a pre-conceived point of view, I sought out contrary opinions ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum, from the spiritual to the strictly secular and from the profound to the profane," Littler said.

"The Kingdom of Survival" circles through themes of utopianism, globalized capitalism, anarchism, intellectual and spiritual self-defense, religion and art in an investigation of physical and psychological survival strategies practiced by groups and individuals in a conflict-ridden and confused post-modern world. The film is a production of Slowboat Films .

-- Ken Smith

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball

Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse

By Joe Bageant
Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico

As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringo's hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you -- the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts -- who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones.

Live from Planet Norte

America's totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder, or, life is a titty tuck and a Dodge truck

By Joe Bageant
Winchester, Virginia

Starting with the Homeland Security probe at Washington's Reagan Airport, arrival back in the United States resembles an alien abduction to a planet of bright lights, strange beings and incomprehensible behavior. The featureless mysophobic landscape of DC's Virginia suburbs seems to indicate that homogeneity and sterility are the native religions. Especially after spending eight months in Mexico's pungent atmosphere of funky, sensual open air markets, rotting vegetation, smoking street food grills, sweat, agave nectar and ghost orchids.

The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook computers, monitors in cubicles, and the ubiquitous TV screens in lobbies, bars, waiting rooms, even in taxicabs, mentally knead the public brain and condition its reactions to non-Americaness. Which may be defined as anything that does not come from of Washington, DC, Microsoft or Wal-Mart.

Lost on the Fearless Plain

 

Big Brother's got that ju-ju, Gaia's got the blues -- hologram, carry me home

By Joe Bageant
Ajijic, Mexico

I've spent most of this week watching American television and movies. I leave the TV on all night long. I toss and turn with my bad back, and bad lungs, catch a rerun episode of Two and a Half Men, or CSI, and conk out again. Then I awaken to the U.S. morning talk shows. It's a grueling regimen, only for the strong. Or the lonely. For periodic relief, I switch to Mexican television (be patient, I really am going somewhere with this). Mexican TV is not one iota better than US television, but is veeerrry heavy on the booty. More than heavy. Astronomical. Think all-but-bare tits and ass close-ups every fifteen seconds, straight through commercials, dramas, comedy shows, history shows, and even the news where possible.  Every show but the bullfights and that old nun who comes on at ten PM, who invariably drives me back to the U.S. channels.

Blogging toward the Kingdom

Booze, rage and justice in the participation age

Hey Joe,

I know it's painful for you to observe what is happening here in America, and a lot easier to stay drunk and not think about it in Mexico, but some of us are still sticking it out here and we depend on you to help us feel less isolated. That's probably more responsibility than you or anyone would want, but you started the conversation that confirmed our vague feelings of being screwed. Now you're the de facto leader of your own political movement. Betcha didn't mean to do that, huh?

Please don't make us all wait so long for each new essay, don't be one more person that hangs us out to dry. Sober up and post more often. The laboring classes need you and, believe it or not, your voice makes a difference to this country. Help us take it back from FOX, CNBC, and CBS.

There ain't no escape from collapse

Joe,

In response to a letter from a reader (Joe, why did you crap out on us?), you wrote: "Places like Ecuador, northern California -- all sorts of places -- creating little spots of sustainability as best as possible."

Since the US is the nexus of all the fraud, empire, control, and will thus be the center of the pain in the upcoming financial collapse (AND contains a huge percentage of "useless eaters", i.e. superfluous workers) have you given any thought as to where the best places/countries in the world will be to "hang out" while the Collective Madness and Economic Collapse take over?

Thanks,
Kevin

Anderson Cooper and Class Solidarity

You cannot man the barricades with a mouth full of Cheetos

By Joe Bageant

Class solidarity was such a good idea. It really was. Obviously, most of the people who need solidarity are in the world's laboring classes. After all, the rich have more than enough solidarity already, as was recently demonstrated by their successful execution of the greatest global financial heist in history. Oh sure, we'll see some state sponsored mock show trials of a few of them -- they always throw a few of their own out of the sleigh to the wolves during their escapes. The big heist was big news. Working Americans will be applying Preparation H to their keisters for a long time to come.

But the ultimate accomplishment of the already rich, the newly rich and the corporate rich, has been their global solidarity on the corporate/financial front. It's been a long run up to globalism, but the rich have great patience. As an American, all my life I've heard their chief mouthpiece, the president of the United States, beginning with Eisenhower, right on up through Kennedy, Reagan, Ford, Carter and Bush, and now Obama, sing the same song. Which goes moreover like this: