Should Obama choose Jim Webb as VP?
Dear Joe,
Whatever passes for "dittos" from me to you. I live in Sweden, but grew up in the USA, with bonafides from places like Okeechobee, Florida, where I have in fact lived in a double-wide. I have honest to goodness rapture ready relatives.
Have you ever read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason? Paine wrote this in Paris, in prison, and he thought it was going to be the last thing he did before Robespierre put him to the guillotine.
I've got a question for you.
If, as you suggest, the answer to the question, "What is the matter with Kansas?" is "Why do you think Hadrian built that wall?", should we not hope for a black William Wallace, to select Senator Jim Webb as his vice president and use that same mob. Isn't that the point of Webb's book Born Fighting?
With appreciation,
Scott
Sigtuna, Sweden
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Scott,
Obama as a black William Wallace -- what a marvelous thing to try and get one's head around! A non-white guy leading the rowdy redneck Scots Irish American culture to a 21st Century Stirling Bridge victory. It's certainly appealing, if for no other reason than seeing John McCain's skin tanned and made into a "sporran," a male handbag, as Wallace is said to have done with the hide of warring opponent, Hugh Cressingham. An Obama-Webb ticket.
Of course, Obama ain't exactly your Celtic warlike type. He doesn't even clear the bar as an "angry black male," though that did not stop GOP from trying to paint him as such by tying him to Rev. Wright. Obama is of course neither truly black (though I think he once was almost so) nor apparently capable of expressing anger in any believable form. Picture Obama slamming, say, that potato headed neo-con eunuch David Broder right in the kisser. I'm not saying he should do it, I'm just saying try to picture it. Cain't do it can ya? Right. The wimp factor. On the other hand, I can picture his wife Michelle popping some bastard if he got far enough up her nose.
OK, my evening double shot of Wild Turkey has eased off, so let's be more realistic. Picture Obama wearing his son's combat boots to his Senatorial swearing in and insulting George W. Bush out loud as Webb did. Never happen. It's cause Obama done drank too much Washington Kool-Aid -- or done et too much of the caviar, in this case. That shit will bleach yer ass right out. Same goes for the coke he admits to have snorted, a white man's drug if ever there was one. Look at what it did to Dave Chappelle! They say Chappelle was found in plaid under shorts watching an Adam Sandler video and drinking a mohito! To his credit though, Obama was also a weed man, which links him to just about every young redneck I know here.
Then you got Jim Webb, born with bourbon in his veins. Hoowee! But Webb, on the other hand, is a handful, maybe two handfuls, and I am told the Democratic Party insiders do not much like him. As in loathing the sight of rats tracking feces across their granite countertops in Westchester County. But Webb is everything Obama ain't and vice versa. I suspect the two of them as a pair would cause heads to literally explode, especially among those slick little shits, the media pundits. We're talking a lotta aneurysms here.
Still the South is 42% of the vote and growing. Thar's a lotta blacks and a lotta necks in them Dixie hills and flatlands. Actually in the suburbs these days, but hell, most of the bubbas, 'necks and good old boys are gonna be foreclosed upon soon, so it's back to Dickville, Alabama for most of 'em.
In all honesty though, given that I'm never gonna get the kind of redneck Buddhist commie government I want, I'd have to personally give Obama the nod. Like that matters. Still, there's more at stake here than the man who gets elected. If Obama wins, we get at least mild proof that the Rovian reptilian brain style politics has not completely stomped American political civilization (assuming American politics and civilization can even be used in the same sentence.)
On the other hand, if Hillary wins, which she can't, we'd have proof that the whore of Babylon now treadeth this republic in triumph. Yeah, I am told by her friends that in person she is really nice -- that she would actually be happier as a deep policy wonk. But once you've been married to a president, especially Bill Clinton, who I am sure was no Alan Alda in the White House boudoir, well, I guess I'd have blood in my eye too. But hell, a fella can only take so much ambition in a person, whether that person has breasts, or whatever. And there are a lot of options on the whatever these days. Beyond that, she has awful taste in whiskey. Canadian Club? Aw come on now!
I dunno. My neck is showing. Gotta go get a higher collared shirt at Penney's.
Just rambling to some guy in Sweden who sounds like he'd make a durned good friend.
Joe
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"Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else. The account of his revisit to his Virginia roots is sobering, poignant, and instructive."
-- HOWARD ZINN, author of A People's History of the United States
"This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril."
-- SHERMAN ALEXIE, author of Reservation Blues
"This fine book sheds a devastating light on Bush & Co.'s notorious 'base,' i.e. America's white working class, whose members have been ravaged by the very party that purports to take their side. Meanwhile, the left has largely turned them out, or even laughed at their predicament. Of their degraded state -- and, therefore, ours -- Joe Bageant writes like an avenging angel."
-- MARK CRISPIN MILLER, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Election Reform
"Joe Bageant is the Sartre of Appalachia. His white-hot bourbon-fuelled prose shreds through the lies of our times like a weed-whacker in overdrive. Deer Hunting with Jesus is a deliciously vicious and wickedly funny chronicle of a thinking man's life in God's own backwoods."
-- JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, author of Grand Theft Pentagon and co-editor of CounterPunch
"This recounting of lost lives -- of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states -- has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bagaent's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media."
-- STUDS TERKEL
"Deer Hunting with Jesus is one of those rare books that is colorful, depressing, hilarious, and biting all at the same time. Joe Bageant has given us a glimpse into the vicious class war that is too often ignored or hidden by those happily perpetrating this war."
-- DAVID SIROTA, author of Hostile Takeover
"Dead serious and damn funny ... Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder ... Takes Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas, to the next level."
—- MOTHER JONES
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