Dear Mr. Bageant,
I've read some of your stuff. Good points. We raised six children on
$30,000 a year, in North Carolina and in Pensacola, Florida. We live in
a neighborhood made up of working class whites, blacks, and Asians,
reflecting our demographic.
I went back to school in the mistaken belief that if I just got my BA
degree in journalism I'd be hired by the local newspaper. Didn't
happen. I am the wrong age for the "lifestyle" section of the
newspapers. They are looking for 20-30 year-old age demographic persons
in their attempts to hook that age group into reading the papers. So I
did freelance for a number of years which paid $35 per article and $10
for photographs. In other words, grocery money at best.
Continue reading "Broke and so screwed it's not funny" »
That ain't no class underclass; it's 250 million rugged individuals being pissed on.
By JOE BAGEANT
Unbelievable as it seems today, there was a time when such people as
doctors and lawyers did not necessarily live apart from the dirt front
yards and Saturday night domestic scraps of the laboring class. The
doctor who delivered me in 1946, the most prosperous in town by all
accounts, lived just a few short blocks from the rundown Kent Street
"white trash and nigger street" my parents called home. His fee for
dragging my screaming ass into the light was an exorbitant $100 -- and
for a caesarian birth at that -- because the US Army was writing the
check. The good doctor lived close enough that my old man could walk a
five-dollar payment over to his house on payday, close enough that I
could see his rooftop from my upstairs bedroom window. As a kid,
knowing such an educated, prosperous man lived so near was somehow
comforting. And at least it gave an example of what one might possibly
aspire to, given the education.
Continue reading "Adam Smith Meets Cousin Ronnie's Boy" »
Hi Joe,
Your essay "The Beauty of the System" is an outstanding portrayal of
the futility of the suburban middle class life and the increasingly
frenzied, but futile, attempts to remain in the shrinking middle class
and "improve" one's lot in life. Although I now live in the heart of
fly-over land, I grew up in northern Virginia in the 60s and 70s. I
still have relatives there, who moved out of the inner suburbs to the
"affordable" confines of the nightmare called Ashburn.
Continue reading "Living better, healthier with much less" »
Joe,
When we were kids, running through a fog of DDT sprayed off the back
the old township jeep, we thought the good toys were American and the
trash came from Japan. If you had an ink pen whose metal clip said
"Made in USA" and if there wasn't a period after the "U", the "S" and
the "A", we all said that came from Usa, Japan, and we all laughed at
your cheap shit.
Continue reading "It's not the heat, it's the humility" »
Joe,
A uniquely American institution, I'm sure you'll agree, is BRAGGING to
folks about how poor your family was when you grew up. "What? You call
that POOR? That ain't SHIT! Lemme tell you how poor WE were, junior ...
Yevver heard of a mayonnaise sandwich? Yabbut, how about with only one
piece of bread?"
Continue reading "Growing up poor in a housing project" »
Joe,
Jesus, you've summed up beautifully the mess that many feel trapped in.
Even the less rich ones, who have to cling to their shitty jobs due to
the iron fist of the insurance industry clutching their necks. And, at
the heart of all this is the ethic that "more is better." Each of us
under an obligation to "give our children more than we had," the
capitalist system of always having to make a profit and expand just to
be able to cover the interest charges on everything starting out with
the money supply leased from the Federal Reserve, and extending to all
the investments at every turn. It's a nightmare of bondage and bad
karma.
Continue reading "Not easy to say 'enough is enough'" »
A tale of shopping, blackmail and slow death in the lost Cul de Sac
By JOE BAGEANT
America is a dark half continent of grotesque notions made manifest,
such as Scientology, the GOP and the McDonald's "Big Bowl" meal.
Americans seem to possess psychic flypaper that attracts strange
unsavory notions. Worse yet, we act upon them. One notion we got into our heads right after World War II was that each
generation must live better than the previous one. Not such a bad idea
at the time, considering the number of folks in the previous generation
who grew up during the Depression and knew what it was like to scratch
with the chickens to survive.
Continue reading "The Beauty of the System" »
Joe,
I consider myself a leftist, but not a liberal. And your mention of
Brokeback Mountain with its gay cowboy plot twist touches on the reason
why I am not a liberal -- the American liberal groupthink obession with
identity politics and, in particular, with gay issues.
I have been out in the world for quite a few decades, and I have come
into contact with quite a number of gay people. In my opinion, gays
don't need any special help. They get along just fine, and in fact,
better than most. So why is gay rights such a key aspect of American
liberalism? Who knows?
Continue reading "Gays don't need any special help" »
Dear Mr. Bageant,
I just finished your essay, "Contemplations from the Cheap Beer Zone"
and enjoyed it immensely. Virgil reminds me of some of the codgers I
knew from my small hometown in Iowa, that I left behind for more
liberal pastures. However, I have a bone to pick with you about the
joke you made about "Brokeback Mountain", or as you called it "Buttfuck
Mountain". Granted that it falls into the category of Pop Culture, it
has also become a cultural touchstone and a major milestone for the gay
community.
Continue reading "In real life, there are no gay cowboys" »