Joe Bageant

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

Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus

Dear friends,

Our popular masked political consultant just rode back into town "on his white horse Mescalero" to again scrawl insight on our village walls. This time the subject is elite consensus and how it affects our lives.

Enjoy,
Joe

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By an anonymous political consultant

Over the last many weeks we have all been subjected to endless news stories about Senator Obama's campaign "Move to the Center". Leaving aside the political illiteracy which underlines this phrase, the use of it reveals important clues about the rhetoric of electoral campaigns, whom they target and what they are trying to communicate.

Put simply, what "Moving to the Center," means is: moving towards power and money.

Times of London article on Joe Bageant

The Times of London in its most recent Sunday magazine had a wonderfully written article on the coming American election, "How Barack Obama can win over poor whites". The Times writer, Tony Allen-Mills, spent a couple of days with Joe Bageant in Winchester, Virginia, to learn why many Americans vote against their own self-interest.

"The story is pretty accurate," Joe says, "except for one transposition of quotes. I have never milked a cow in my life and certainly never walked four miles to school. That was 80-year-old Jim McCoy's quote."

This article uses Joe's book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, as a focal point to explain the Obama/McCain race to British readers. Also, be sure to look at the comments, including many from American readers. It appears that some Americans don't like a European, especially a Brit, getting ideas from a redneck socialist. Click here.

-- Ken Smith

Life in the Post Political Age

Every now and then I am fortunate enough to communicate with someone who has near complete insight into our political process, why things happen and where it seems likely to be headed. Recently I received this analysis from a high powered political consultant whose name is withheld for obvious reasons. He/she has to live and work in the political world and for either party. In any case, I found it breathtaking in its fundamental analysis and its clarity -- clarity being no easy thing to accomplish in the swamp of media-consumerism-politics. Here it is:
-- Joe Bageant

By an anonymous political consultant

Much has been written by political pundits in their attempt to explain the unexpected victory of Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton in this year's Democratic Presidential Primary. When looking at the results of this race, none of the conventional political math that would help one handicap the outcome would make one conclude that Senator Obama would win this contest.

Most Americans are afraid to feel outrage

By Joe Bageant

The story of convicted sex offender Stokes (Old Dogs and Hard Time) caused a landslide of poignant, and often terrifying emails describing other victims of our system. Some are as young as ten years old, others are working single moms or retired people whose lives were ruined by our increasingly punitive state. A state that increasingly derives profit by inflicting misery upon its citizens through an ever growing number of laws and regulations.

The majority of Americans do not feel a thing about these state orchestrated persecutions of their fellow citizens. They do not feel anything because they are afraid to allow themselves to feel outrage. And because their government has conditioned them not to feel public anger. There are social consequences (being an outcast) for speaking such things aloud. There are even more consequences for acting upon those feelings. The citizenry is deeply afraid of those consequences. The bottom line is that they are afraid of their government.

Breaking the Beer Barrier

This is the advance text of a presentation by Joe Bageant at the National Conference On Media Reform June 6-8 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Joe is scheduled to give the presentation Saturday, June 7, 4:30-6:00 p.m. in Room 212-B. His participation in this conference is sponsored by WorldNewsTrust.com.

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By Joe Bageant

Hello fellow members of the liberal media conspiracy. I'm happy to be here at the annual gathering of our secret cells.

Here's my question: Why can't progressive media ever learn to communicate in redneck and born again bubba? I would guess that a lot of you are thinking, "Why would anybody want to?" One answer is the election of George Bush -- but there are many others. For example, a third of all Americans live in the geographic South and over 50% live in the "cultural south" -- which is to say places with white Southern Scots-Irish values -- places such as western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire -- and others we never think of as Southern. When you look at people in what has come to be called the red state heartland, most of their values are more or less traditional white Scots-Irish values.

The Fight for Gauley Mountain

An introduction:

Bob Kincaid is a journalist, activist and co-founder of H.O.R.N.: (The Head-On Radio Network www.headonradionetwork.com) broadcasting from the heart of West Virginia's coal fields; from the heart of the whitewater rafting country. Founded specifically on the internet because, "barring a paradigm shift of monumental proportions," Bob says, "progressives will NEVER get a voice in terrestrial radio. HORN uses a a new form of radio format: "Conversation Radio," in which guests and callers get all the time they need to put their ideas forward. The host is not the star and does not ramrod the conversation. HORN has seven professional broadcast hosts, all doing shows every day without pay, with hosts in Chicago, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Florida and Australia, not to mention the only gay conversation program going on the internet. Bob is one of those people who talks straight, is tough as nails and stays broke so he can help sponsor the fight for the dignity of the ordinary working man. As far as I am concerned, Bob Kincaid is the only progressive talker in the medium with a Southern background, talking genuine progressive politics and still living in the South.
-- Joe Bageant

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Coal keeps the lights on and the workers locked in darkness

By Bob Kincaid

I live in Fayette County, West Virginia, the heart and soul of West Virginia's whitewater rafting tourism industry. Thousands and thousands of people come here every year to raft the New and Gauley Rivers. They roar down gorges as old as the earth itself, past the ghost towns that are all that's left of the mine wars of a century ago; towns where Mary Harris "Mother" Jones worked to organize the slaves of the coal industry: Thurmond and Glen Jean and Brooklyn and Cunard and Hawks Nest and Prince and McKendry; places that are little more than wide mossy spots by the riverside, with a few squared stones marking where entire generations played out. These are the Tombstones and Dodge Citys of Appalachia.

Joe Bageant radio interview available

Since Deer Hunting with Jesus was published last June, Joe Bageant has been interviewed by more than 100 radio stations. There is another great interview this week and it is available online in MP3 format.

In his introduction to the interview, Doug Fabrizio of KUER-FM in Salt Lake City, describes Joe as "one of the last remaining gonzo journalists still writing irreverent prose about social justice" for the working class poor, who are "the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks." Fabrizio says Deer Hunting with Jesus helps explain to Democrats, the progressive left and urban liberals how they lost the 2004 election by ignoring the great unwashed working class. The book "is not a critique of the underclass, but rather an homage."

The interview is 52-minutes long and well worth a listen.

KUER is a service of the University of Utah and is affiliated with three major public radio networks: National Public Radio (NPR), American Public Media, formerly Minnesota Public Radio, and Public Radio International (PRI).

Click here and look for the MP3 link in the upper left of the KUER web page.

-- Ken Smith