As a West Coast Trailer Trash PhD now living in the Northeast, I feel your pain.

Ah yes, for all the townies raised in Catholic east coast enclaves and neighborhoods that are intensely urban by the standards of most of the country, I have this to say:  listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. and wearing a cowboy hat and a giant Nascar belt buckle does NOT make you a “regular American” and cannot cover your accent or convey an ability use the letter “r” properly at the end of a word like “sugah”.

UR DOIN IT RONG! Try that shit out west and people WILL laugh at your ass.

Republicans want a populism that has no mention of economic classes, so that millionaires can sneer at people living paycheck to paycheck, but who happen to like foreign films.

Hadn’t heard it put so well in a single sentence before. 

And, uh, sorry about being a Miller Lite sneerer.  It’s not so much a matter of cultural snobbery as thinking that you can get better beer for your money.  Especially when it’s pint night and Miller Light costs the same as everything else.

Amanda, in the parts of Oregon Redneck Wonderland where I grew up, the farmers, ranchers, and loggers would sneer at you for drinking Miller Lite, too.

I grew up on locally produced 40oz Lucky Lager ... not only is it better beer, the rebus in the cap makes a good sobriety test.  Cans are better for shooting at, too.

<q>What kills me about this is that urban liberals sneer at me, to my face, a lot more about cheap beer and country western music than the intended audience ever gets, at least to their face.</q>

Could it be that <q>some</q> urban liberals who do come from a small town might try to overcompensate because they had such a horrible experience growing up, and want nothing at all to do with anything that reminds them of small town redneckness?

And, to be honest, as someone who grew up in a small town myself (though in Oregon) I still hate it, and especially with the nomination of Sarah Palin, find my anger towards those who glorify small town life as strong as ever. Whenever I get the slightest shred of pride in where I’m from, or look at the good aspects of growing up in a small town, some fucktard on the right plays the culture war card-usually a pundit or writer from the East Coast who would never, ever move to bumfuck USA him/herself.

Sorry for the fucked up wannabe html

javelina

I had never heard this word before, ever.  I swear to god that when I read “A javelina got in my backyard once and chased my dog around ” I had a mental picture of a deranged female athlete wielding a javelin. 

This moment of ignorance brought to you by the publishers of “Animals I Never Heard Of”, available from the fine people at Barnes & Noble.

PS:

Now I’m a big city liberal who knows the difference between a hipster and a scenester.

  So do I.  The cull for the former is in October, for the latter in May.

Bah humbug. Redneck-ism is celebrated constantly in the media.

Whereas—and you take note, too, MsKate—everything bad and evil in advertising—mucus, toe fungus, crows that fly at your windows, cartoon criminals—has a *New York* or working-class Northeastern accent. A recent TV ad presented the worst thing that could happen to you on an airplane was to be seated next to a noisy elderly Jewish couple. Blackface is justly held up to ridicule in “Tropic Thunder” but the “Jewface” of Tom Cruise’s character—with his fake body hair that is supposed to just so hilarious—goes without critique. (I otherwise loved the movie, btw.)

The Northeast has its own peculiar working-class and lower-middle-class subcultures. Damned if you find them portrayed positively anywhere (Family Guy excepted).

It’s not a particularly good time to be swarthy or semitic. You should be so lucky to have only Nordic-type hipsters sneering at you.

I think that most people should like in both types of environment at one time in their lives.  I was a born-and-bread Toronto boy and still value the eye-opening impact of living in one of the weirder and more complex parts of rural Ontario. 

One thing I do notice, though, is that neither the cities nor the country have any patience for each other’s defensiveness.  Here in Canada, big-city types tend to vote Liberal or NDP because, for example and amongst other reasons, they are wary of social conservatives who dislike social freedom, gays and whatnot.  (It is a shocking but true fact that the Tories currently govern Canada without a single damned seat in any of the country’s 3 largest urban centres, Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.)  Yet, the urbanites look down their noses at country folk who vote Conservative because they have a different set of social mores (a reluctance to leap into destabilizing change in areas whose very existence depends on a large degree of socio-economic continuity, for example) which cause them to be wary.

Like science fiction is nostalgic for a future that won’t happen, country-western is nostalgic for a past that never really existed.

I just wanted to say that I thought this was an absolutely lovely—and true—line.  Nothing to add to it—I just really liked it.

I liked the entire post, too—as someone who grew up in rural West Virginia and upstate New York, later lived in some urban areas, and now lives in rural North Carolina, it seems to me that the “urban intellectual vs. redneck” conflict is dramatically overstated.  I suppose I’ve known a few “liberals” who looked down on people from rural areas, but not very many.  That’s not a particularly liberal attitude to have, after all—especially considering how impoverished and disadvantaged many rural communities are.

It seems to me that most “rednecks” I know are of the Sarah Palin/ Larry the Cable Guy/ Toby Keith variety—rich, educated people who want to appropriate an identity that isn’t really theirs because they’re attracted to some type of romanticized myth about “plain folk.”  These are people who talk a good game about “the elites,” but also own snowmobiles, jet skis, massive SUVs, and big, ugly McMansions.  Sadly, many of them are also in my family…

One of the things that I’ve picked up from the Mommy Wars (which I find endlessly fascinating, probably because I’m childless in a very childed suburb) is that a large number of people really do find people who have taste different from their own personally threatening.  Some of that can be put down to an unconscious fear of if nobody buys the stuff I like, they’ll stop making it.  But a larger part is the relentless competitiveness of today’s life.  If someone has opted out of the battles I am fighting, I have no way of defending myself against them, except through total rejection.

I love the comparison table…I gotta do one now..!

Redneck Lisa                                               Latte Liberal Lisa
Baffled by anyone paying a daily $5 for a coffee milkshake   Drinks only microbrews or imports
Says “Missoura”                                          Says “caveat”
Sexually attracted to guns                                   Sexually repulsed by cowboy hats
Owns man’s black leather motorcycle jacket                 Owns Tiffany’s jewelry set
Finds meditation baffling                                   Finds revivals baffling
Loves rockabilly                                         Loves classical concerts
Knows how to two-step                                       Never has to anymore
Regards cute bunnies and groundhogs as vermin to be shot   Hates factory farming
Car: four-wheel-drive                                       Car: gold-colored femme SUV

Javelinas are these evil, disgusting animals that look like wild pigs.

Thank God.  Otherwise this…

my dog was only saved because my stepdad shot the javelina

...would have ended in, “Amanda!  Get the shovel before the sheriff comes by for coffee! And put that javelin in the fire or else it’ll be a dead giveaway!!”

Thanks for this great post. I don’t meet anyone’s qualifications for genuine redneck-ness, not with my politics, parents, or education, but I can check off most of the items on both of your lists, and I’m damned proud of being a born-and-bred Texan. I wear boots. I don’t curse, I cuss. I two-step. I chew grass. And I did, on one very poorly contemplated occasion, go cow tipping. (Note on physics: ninety pound tots should not attempt to tip nine hundred pounds of cow, especially when there are bulls in the immediate vicinity.)

But now I go to school in one of the most quintessentially Yankee states in the Union—much more of a culture shock than I predicted—and I’ve realized that some people are always going to sneer. Most of the time I don’t mind any more than you do. Actually, I greet most slights to my background with combative glee, always try to give as good as I get, and would have no problem buying drinks afterwards (if this wasn’t a dry campus, of course). But the more general stereotyping and sneering bothers me, just because it plays into the exact cultural divides that the Republicans so enthusiastically prey upon.

You’ve articulated the problems with the “cultural grudge match” beautifully, Amanda. I think I’ll be quoting you next time one of my native Blue State classmates takes a dig at the uncultured wasteland beyond the coast.

Could part of the cultural grudge match arise out of differing views on knowledge.  If one follows the cliches, urbanites pride themselves (however accurately or falsely) on knowing things and being open to learning; “rednecks” culturally pride themselves on closing off these channels.

I think the term you’re looking for is “redneck with a good college education”. I think that describes people like Bill Clinton pretty well, too.

It may be the rub, Amanda.  I know my own biases, for example.  I’ve got no problem with people who are dumber than me (because I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m dumber than many people) but I can’t shake my own disdain for people who want to be dumb, who actually advocate not learning new things and expanding their minds.  I also can’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t shake that disdain.  Why should I respect somebody who prides themselves on their ignorance?  I’m not obliged to feel good about people with no health problems who eat themselves into hideous caricatures, I’m not obliged to be nice to people who refuse to bathe or clean their teeth.  But so ingrained is anti-intellectualism into the American political culture that public figures are obliged to smile and sing praises to “jus’ folks” who wanna remain as dumb as a hammer and as ignorant as a hermit in a hill country cave. 

Is it tied into fundamentalist faith?  I don’t know, but I suspect it is.  If the most important value and philosophical structure in your life tells you, in essence, “this is what you need to know, it’s all you need to know, and everything else is wrong and vain and shortsighted” then that hardly creates a mindset conducive to open-mindedness, does it?

To follow up on that point:
One needs to feel no less shame at publicly calling people out on their ignorance.  I remember being at an all-candidates’ meeting in the 1980s in a riding north of Toronto.  At that time Canada was pondering whether or not to buy the F-16 (a one-engine aircraft) or the F-18 (which had two).  The Conservative candidate remarked in favour of the latter because “it’s impossible to fly a one-engined plane over Lake Ontario”.  Stunned, the hitherto respectful middle-aged gentleman at the public mike did a double-take and blurted, “of course it is!  I’ve done it myself, you twit!”  And the crowd (in a fairly conservative riding) laughed and clapped its approval.  The would-be-MP had shown himself ignorant and was quite properly shamed for it.

Wait! What’s the difference between a hipster and scenester? I live in San Francisco and though I ride a single speed bicycle (freewheel not fixie) - I’m hoping I’m neither.

And bad beer is just bad beer, with or without irony. Who owns Pabst and who do they donate political contributions to?

Well, in small towns, there is very little economic opportunity for people who don’t have practical job skills. I can’t see there being much use, for example, of a BA in women’s studies in most small towns.

But I think seeker is right that in a certain sense the American public values “street smarts” over “book learnin,” and when that’s combined with the anti-intellectualism of the fundie churches that dominate small towns, its a recipe for nastiness.

Seeker: “’ve got no problem with people who are dumber than me (because I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m dumber than many people) but I can’t shake my own disdain for people who want to be dumb, who actually advocate not learning new things and expanding their minds.  I also can’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t shake that disdain.”

You shouldn’t.  Be at ease. 

Amanda in San Jose:
Isn’t it also valuing so-called “common sense” over intellectual inquiry, with “common sense” being code for “a pre-established set of biases and anger at designated Out groups” ?  The most hardline conservative and mean government Ontario ever had (i.e., the one most like a modern American GOP government!) was elected on a platform called “the Common Sense Revolution”, by way of example.

hM, Pabst is owned by something called the ‘Kalmanovitz Charitable Trust’,  though most of the actual brewing is done by Miller these days.

I submit that they are adorable, except when they are chasing you or your loved ones.

Yeah, “common sense” in the US is pretty much synonymous with “street smarts over book learnin,” and “practical (i.e. conservative) values over cosmopolitan intellectualism.”

But what do you expect, when conservatives think (mostly because of Christian religious faith) that they are sooooo much more experts in the human condition than us snooty secular liberals.

Hey now. It’s common sense that taxes should be based on what you can afford. It’s also common sense that the legislature should stay out of the bedroom.

Good post.

Ta, Lisa KS!

Pabst is owned by something called the ‘Kalmanovitz Charitable Trust’

... in keeping with the fine Victorian tradition of using charity to make the poor as miserable as possible?  [/snark]

Well, in small towns, there is very little economic opportunity for people who don’t have practical job skills. I can’t see there being much use, for example, of a BA in women’s studies in most small towns.

Oh, I don’t know.  It seems to me that a person with a B.A. in women’s studies is someone who has developed critical thinking skills and writing ability, at the very least.  And even in small towns, there are jobs that require those types of skills.  True, the women’s studies major probably isn’t going to find a job where she or he uses all of the knowledge they acquired in their classes, but I think that’s true of most majors.

When I announced my intention to be an English writing/ speech and theatre double major, I expected my conservative father to try to talk me out of my decision.  But he was unbelievably supportive, telling me that in his experiences as an employer, liberal arts majors made the best employees because they’d spent their college years becoming better thinkers rather than training for their eventual careers.

I swear to god that when I read “A javelina got in my backyard once and chased my dog around “ I had a mental picture of a deranged female athlete wielding a javelin. 

Thank you for the best laugh I’ve had all weekend. 

Yeah, “common sense” in the US is pretty much synonymous with “street smarts over book learnin,” and “practical (i.e. conservative) values over cosmopolitan intellectualism.”
But what do you expect, when conservatives think (mostly because of Christian religious faith) that they are sooooo much more experts in the human condition than us snooty secular liberals.

Well, that’s just their way of forging some commonality with the less savory elements of African American culture….

Well, a couple of things.  No matter how much you may enjoy various redneck artifacts you can walk away from it at any time.  There’s a world of difference between having a taste for cheap beer and Gretchen Wilson on the one hand and being poor and rural on the other.  The real problem is when “redneck” is used as a derogatory and “trailer trash” is used at all (people aren’t trash, get over it), and we’ve all seen those over and over and over again in the comments at liberal blogs during this election.  I’m not sure what’s up with the “rednecks need to be protected from sneering” crap - sneer at Sarah Palin and the conservative idiot with a giant RV and a skidoo for every member of his family if you must, but geeze, sneering at rural poor people (and that’s what you do when you throw the word “redneck” around as you are) is pretty much beyond the pale.  Surely you can find a way to express contempt for rich, stupid conservatives without using such sweeping terminology.

Unfortunately for the side that wants to sanctify the “virtues” of the Anti-Intellectual-Yokel population, it’s pretty hard to have a world-beating economy if you don’t have at least a certain level of 1) science and technology, 2) innovation, or 3) commodities to sell off to the rest of the world.  Saudi Arabia has done the third, and Japan has done the first (to give examples at the opposite ends of the spectrum.)

We can potentially go for some commodities (wheat, coal), but the major engine driver up to now has been our science and technology base.  Which is now diminishing. We have shrunk basic investment in S&T;development over the last 8 years.  Plus, we’re up against China and India, which is now churning out scientists and engineers by the tons—either in their own countries, or coming here to the US for an education, then going back home (which they didn’t use to do.)

This enshrinement of anti-intellectual “jes’ plain folks” may be great for C&W;songs, but it’s bloody stupid to try to build an economy on.

Melinda, isn’t “redneck” a reclaimed word?  I don’t see Jeff Foxworthy doing “You might be white trash if…” routines.

I swear to god that when I read “A javelina got in my backyard once and chased my dog around “ I had a mental picture of a deranged female athlete wielding a javelin.

That’s funny; I had the *exact* same mental image, and didn’t quite get why strangers were throwing sports equipment into Amanda’s backyard.

Being from an upper mitwest blue state (Minnesota), I have always felt sort of left out of this whole discussion about “bi-coastal elites” vs “the heartland”.  I don’t live anywhere near a coast but I always feel that I am being excluded from “the heartland” by those who idolize it so much because Minnesotans are not quite so belligerantly conservative on the whole and we don’t say “y’all.”

I figure since I am a liberal and college educated I probably get thrown in with the “coastal intellectual” group even though I have never stuck my toe in either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. I am certainly not considered a “real ‘Murrican” by plenty of “small town values” worshippers.

It’s disgusting that the “they’re sneering at you” argument is meant to mask those who are actually sneering at the rural (and urban) poor—the Republicans.  What else was the jab at community organizers?  Or labeling Clinton—who was one of the few genuine bootstrap stories in the U.S.—“Bubba.”  It’s like they imagine that a shared disdain for expensive coffee and love of patriotic C&W;music somehow trumps the fact that the party leadership genuinely believes that the rural poor deserves their lot in life and could care less about their economic fate. 

Not to mention the small town of Sarah Palin is not necessarily the same experience I had growing up in small towns.  The homogenous, homey, happy small town is a myth.

Seeker6079: “The cull for the former is in October, for the latter in May,” made me laugh so hard my dog came to investigate.

But how do you dress them?  They come pre-dressed!  *bah dum* I’ll be here all week…

As a Dr. Redneck, I’m thoroughly enjoying this post and thread, thanks all.

Sexually attracted to guns

Um. I hope you’re leaving the safety on.

It seems to me that most “rednecks” I know are of the Sarah Palin/ Larry the Cable Guy/ Toby Keith variety

It should be pointed out in fairness that Toby Keith is an Obama supporter, at least to the lip service level.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRR9_pyEtgHI26tHSsFK_upDc6UAD92LJ6EG0

Amanda,
My Ph.D. husband and my Ph.D. self are both of redneck origins (why I think we found each other—we are both the only two people we have met like us in the high-falutin’ research universities we inhabited at the time) and I completely get your border-crossing ways.  Our wedding was a fun attempt to get our redneck brothers and Ph.D./J.D./M.D. friends to all feel at home and interact with each other. We had a pre-wedding BBQ featuring venison burgers shot by two of our brothers (one from each family) AND veggie burgers; at the wedding we had elitist gourmet food, but on a buffet, so people could pick and choose; instead of dancing, we had a bocce tournament (this was an outdoor wedding), cookie decorating, and a pinata.  Everyone (and their kids) could participate or watch all those activities—no need to know the waltz, tango or two-step. 
Question:  Are you the only border crosser in your family, as we are in ours? Or do you have siblings that crossed the divide with you?  I think the latter belies a culture in the home which encourages curiousity and academic achievement, and the former a home either too uninformed to think academic achievement was in reach (my family did not know about financial aid, for example, until I, the youngest, sought out that information) or that it was in some way undesirable.  Making the journey across the divide alone, without support of parents or fellow-traveling siblings, is a lonely one.

A javelina got in my backyard once and chased my dog around and my dog was only saved because my stepdad shot the javelina.

Oooooh, I am now really regretting that time you did two whole readings in New York, which I attended, but was too shy to really talk to you.  Because if I’d had bigger off-blog cojones we could have had a fine time comparing “Stuff My Stepdad Shot In Our Backyard” war stories over a pint of some elitist import beer.

I will now commence reading the rest of the thread.

To paraphrase Churchill, the GOP love the poor , hardworking folks who don’t have enough.  More specifically, they GOP loves them poor, working too hard and not getting enough.

Oh, and per your redneck/urbanite rundown, don’t worry, I wouldn’t have mocked you for blowing off some elitist import beer in favor of Miller Lite.  Well, if I were buying, I’d roll my eyes and be all, “Look, Amanda, I’m buying.  Get something fancy!”  But if you’d insisted, that’d be ok. More Guinness for me, then. 

Or maybe, per your request, I would’ve gotten a shot or two in between sips of my $8 Fin du Monde.

Sexually attracted to guns

Um. I hope you’re leaving the safety on.

Okay, my turn to laugh my ass off!  Beautiful!

I feel “safe sex” jokes comin’ on.

Seeker, I think it’s one of those partially reclaimed words.  It’s one thing if Gretchen Wilson calls herself a redneck, though, and a wholly different one to use the word as an insult.  I tend to think that when people of means and education call themselves redneck, though, we’re back to Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid.  I’m a lesbian - it’s cool to use the word “dyke” if you come in peace, but use it as an insult and we’ve got trouble.

I’m out in the boondocks in upstate NY in a decidedly poor township, and the people here who don’t have much and live in trailers because they can’t afford much else *do* want better for their children, for the most part.  Their kids tend to do badly in school and the parents, being uneducated themselves, don’t know how to help.  Between the Democrats and the Republicans the Democrats are clearly the best hope for creating opportunity in places like this.  But the problem is this: Democrats really do insult the rural poor, while Republicans affect identification with them.  And the weird thing is that Democrats turn around and wonder why rural poor and working class people vote against their own economic interests and then insult them *more* for it, rather than giving them a reason to listen to Democrats in the first place.  And the fix for this one is really, really easy: don’t insult people for being poor, don’t insult people for being uneducated, don’t insult people for not having access to health care or dentists or any of the rest of it.  Deal with people as individuals.

A recent TV ad presented the worst thing that could happen to you on an airplane was to be seated next to a noisy elderly Jewish couple.

OMG, srsly?  I would LOVE that.  Especially if they were an elderly Jewish couple from the Upper West Side or maybe old Village characters who might be interested in setting me up with their cute lesbian granddaughter who is a doctor. 

But the Lawn Guyland accent?  Don’t even get me started.  If I had to pick between sharing a flight with someone who talked like that, or someone who talked like Boomhauer from King of the Hill, it’d be a tough call.  Though at least the Long Islander would probably not be trying to convince me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior, so I’d have to respect that.  On the other hand, they would probably instead regale me with either how much they love Thomas Kinkade or all about that time little Timmy got bit by a pit bull owned by Those People, You Know Who I’m Talking About, There Are Like 20 Of Them Sharing A Little 4 Bedroom House, And None Of Them Speak Good English.  It would be a real tossup, definitely.

::googles:: Oh, it’s a PECCARY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccary

Seriously, the idea of an animal I hadn’t heard of that was large enough to scare a dog was the most important part of this post to me, personally.
But I grew up in a fairly small town, known for it’s agriculture, and my parents both came from blue collar families but were very education and college oriented. I know what plants I can eat if I’m lost in the mountains, and I also know lots of ways to use textured vegetable protein. I know what to do in case of rattlesnake bite, and I think cats thrive as indoor pets. So I get where you’re coming from. Although I’m also prone to culture snobbery myself; manual labor is good (my dad and I actually kind of like it better than sitting at a desk, but we don’t understand or approve of pride in ignorance. My grandfather may have worked in fields, but he kept sharp by reciting Shakespeare, giving his children a sense of high culture.

Melinda, can it be that simple?  That Dems do give a shit about the rural working poor, but act as if they don’t like them, but the GOP acts as if they love them whilst not giving a shit about them?

Maybe those folks can take a lesson from a lot of people up here who voted for Pierre Trudeau: they didn’t like him and he didn’t like them, but he got their votes because he was seen as the best man for the job and his policies came closest to what they wanted and needed.

Well, in small towns, there is very little economic opportunity for people who don’t have practical job skills. I can’t see there being much use, for example, of a BA in women’s studies in most small towns.

On the other hand, my hometown is having real growing pains right now because there are so few locals with enough education to handle anything beyond machinist/roughneck, nursing, small traditional business owner, or subordinate admin positions.  A good majority of the doctors, info tech folks, etc. are transplants (often immigrants, which I think especially stings), and even though it’s growing by leaps and bounds, due to brain drain the town just isn’t able to offer the sorts of things nearby towns without anti-intellectualism issues are able to provide. 

What’s especially sad is that I don’t think very many people actually put two and two together on this, because you still hear people say that x kind of degree “just isn’t practical”, going to grad school is a waste of money, and the like.  When, seriously, like 2 sentences later they will lament the fact that all the doctors are yankees or recent Asian immigrants, all the smart people inevitably move to New Orleans or Baton Rouge, or that we need our own network TV affiliate rather than just the podunk UVF-gone-cable station owned and run by the same guy who does the news broadcasts and high school football announcing.

I think the bicycles versus belt-buckles trope is a cheap visual aid for distinguishing between people who aspire to cosmopolitanism versus those who aspire to provincialism. Both are fundamentally intellectual outlooks and not based in the size of the town you grew up in, live in now, or which beer you choose to drink on any given day.

At bottom, I can’t get too angry about provincialism because it is the default option for most of us to a greater or lesser extent. The problem is that the US is a big country and takes a leadership position in the world, so it behooves us to elect a president with a cosmopolitan outlook because that is the only way to it’s gonna work!

Seeker, it may be.  I do think it’s asking a lot, though, when you ask people to suck up the insults and still vote for you.  Canadians don’t vote the way Americans do (disclaimer: I’ve got dual US/Canadian citizenship, have lived in the US most of my life but the family is mostly in Ontario), not to mention that Trudeau was PM 30 years ago the first time, and times have changed. 

I tend to think that if you’re classist (or racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or ... ) you’re not really progressive, anyway, but even if we accept that the Democratic Party is not actually very progressive it strikes me as tactically questionable to insult people you think should otherwise be voting for you. 

I think it’s cool that Amanda likes country music, cheap beer, and drove a pickup (me too, Rolling Rock, and me too), but I’d be a lot more impressed if she kicked commenters to the curb when they used language like “trailer trash” as an insult.  Now *that* would be a useful way to identify with the rural poor.

It’s disgusting that the “they’re sneering at you” argument is meant to mask those who are actually sneering at the rural (and urban) poor—the Republicans.

Thank you for saying what I was thinking so much more succinctly than I could.

I’d throw out as another, maybe less obvious example the whole “clinging to guns and religion” brouhaha. Maybe, being from small-town, rural Pennsylvania, I’m taking it a bit personally, but everytime someone brings it up as proof that Obama’s a big city elitist I hear “You’re too stupid to understand context/connotation, so come over here and help me screw you over!”  Really people, I’ll take the guy who says he wants to fix my floundering economy and open up the possibility of a better life without the need for coping mechanisms over the guy who defends my coping mechanisms to the death any day.

touhy, I’m curious about Amanda’s answers to your questions, too.  I was the only sibling to break out, but I was lucky to grow up in a home that revered education (“education” being understood very widely in our home, btw).  I’ve always felt very lucky in that- I know other latterednecks who fought their way out of homes openly hostile to education- that is the hardest, I’ve always thought, and I’ve tremendous respect for those who manage it.  My folks haven’t really understood the world I’ve had to figure out on my own and now inhabit for a very long time, but they’re extraordinarily proud at what I’ve accomplished.

Seeker, out here in Red California, the latter explanation would hold, as a family friend once remarked how people around vote against their economic interest by going GOP.

One difference between redneck CA and redneck TX is that there’s more respect for people’s privacy out here on the Pacific Slope, seeing as everyone came out here from somewhere else to better themselves and questions about the past were discouraged.

Redneck Dark                                   Man-about-town Avenger

Coors or Bud Light                               Anchor Steam Porter

Boones’ Farm

ditto touhy, neogrammarian, and in fact every word of Amanda’s post, btw.

I also have to say that as the only one in the family that “broke out”, I, too, consider myself amazingly lucky to only have had to break out of a very middle class, very education-revering family which tended to be on the “towny” end of things.  I mean, they may not understand why I wanted to be a liberal arts major or my complete lack of respect for pickup trucks, but at least they let me go to college and move away to the big city.  At least my dad drinks wine and my mom taught me to properly deglaze a pan.  At least there was non-velveeta cheese in the house (on the other hand, at least there was still a begrudging respect for velveeta, too!).

In fact, thinking about it, I realize that in certain ways I’m actually second generation mochaneck, even though my parents never actually got out of rural America—they just got used to the long drive into New Orleans.

But the problem is this: Democrats really do insult the rural poor, while Republicans affect identification with them.

When do all these real insults by Democrats happen?  I can think of about one quasi-example, Obama’s “bitter” remark.  Sure, there are liberals online and in real life who insult the rural poor.  There are also PLENTY of conservatives online and in real life who insult urbanites, intellectuals, and for that matter gays, African Americans, straight women, and every combination thereof.  And the Republican party, as evidenced by their convention, adopts those attitudes pretty much wholesale.  The Democratic party, as evidenced by their convention, accommodates and even cultivates the interests of the working class and the rural poor.

IMHO the vast majority of the Democrats who “really do insult the rural poor” are imaginary, conjured up by Republicans in order to insult Democrats for being insulting.

Shorter my comment:  What Amanda said in the first phrase of the original post.

There can sometimes be a sort of snootiness about rural realities, for instance I know a lot of liberal cosmopolitan New Yorkers who are absolutely appalled by hunting.  They see it as absolutely barbaric, and a moral stain on anyone who even so much as justifies it, even if that person is not a hunter.  Even if you try to explain it in a class sense, that shooting one buck means a virtually free* year’s supply of meat.

On the other hand, most city folk I know who have deep seated issues with rural people, especially the rural poor, are not necessarily liberal, or even political at all.  As we hashed out in that other thread a few weeks ago.

* What does it cost to have a buck butchered these days, anyhow?

Dark Redneck                       

Coors or Bud Light                            

Boones’ Farm                                

Fried Chicken                                  

Hoot ‘n Holler,                                 
Terra Bella, CA                                

Waiting for Cthulhu’s minons to                
hurry up and take over so                      
that the place becomes
exciting.

Worked for a Mosquito                        
Abatement District.

Man-about-town Avenger

Anchor Porter                                

2004 Chardonnay, Robert Mondavi
                                 
Dim sum                              

William Saroyan Theater
Fresno, CA

Went to school in the Midwest on a scholarship.       
Got the fuck out of Gopher Prairie, CA.

Worked in the mailroom at college.

@ Opoponax.  heh.  ok, so my first thought is: “wha?  Who doesn’t butcher their own?”  but then I remembered that the local butcher offered to do roadkill for folks who didn’t know how to dress their own.  (You have to understand, I’m exactly 1 generation out from hunting-&-foraging for significant portions of annual diet.  My dad pelted the last -turkey- he downed.  Full feathers and all.  That’s skill (and a practiced hand, bird skin is thin).

I’m beginning to think I ought to pitch an essay collection by those of us w/these arcane backgrounds.  Our families do these things w/o thinking about them.  We think about them, because we’ve left them, in an important sense (and in another important sense we cannot leave them entirely).

Flip, I think the Obama campaign has been doing a terrific job of staying away from the appearance of classism since the “bitter” gaffe.  The problem is that I see *comments* about rednecks, yahoo, yokels, and trailer trash on blogs all the damned time.  There was a heck of a lot of it during the primaries aimed at Clinton supporters and I’m seeing a lot of it now aimed at less educated voters who might identify culturally with Palin even while Palin supports policies that leave them worse off.  Maybe this gets back to the purpose of blogs.  Sometimes they seem like a way of getting information out, organizing arguments, developing talking points, and whatnot.  Other times they seem like a gay pride parade, where it’s a party for the community, and outsiders who complain about lasciviousness or whatever really don’t get what’s going on.  Still, I hate to think that a bunch of “progressives” would feel comfortable calling anybody “trailer trash” even when they think they’re alone.

And I have to admit that I’m baffled by Amanda’s post.  Surely a “progressive” analysis recognizes structural asymmetries and incorporates them into the discourse.

When Bill Clinton was president the same people who are so outraged at elitism now called him “Bubba”.

“Democrats really do insult the rural poor”

I am curious exactly what you mean by this.  Do you have any examples of this coming from the top of the Democratic Party or just individual Democrats-on-the-street/internet?

I know that insults between rural and urban stereotypes happen on blog threads etc on both sides, but when it comes from someone in leadership it seems (to me, i could be wrong) to always come from conservatives.  The GOP talks about “small town values” and “heartland America” and “real Americans” in a very explicit way that obviously means “people from the city have no morals” and “the urban/coastal parts of the US are not really culturally American” and “the people who live in theose places are not REAL Americans.”  They don’t hide it.  Excluding and demonizing entire geographic areas full of people is their explicit message and it comes from everybody from Pres. George Bush right on down to my crazy email-forwarding uncle.

If rural people think that Democrats look down on them I wonder what percentage of that is from individuals saying insensitive things like “white trash,” how much comes from official messages from the Democratic Party (any?  I am honestly curious) and how much comes from Republicans telling them “Democrats look down on you!” over and over and eventually it sticks.

I know for sure that the Republicans think people from San Fransisco deserve heaps of spite and derision because of their background.  I know this because Republican leaders tell us so in no uncertain terms.  Do the Democrats really do that to the rural poor?

I am just thinking out loud here and not trying to justify or excuse anything.  I am not a member of the rural poor so I am not on the lookout for insults toward them and may be totally off base so please correct me if I am. 

If you feel that liberals and Democrats insult you I am genuinely curious to know exactly what is causing you to feel that way.

Seems my question was asked and answered while I wrote it out.  Sorry the above post was so long.

Neogrammarian, my family generally outsourced the butchering of large game, mainly because we lived in town and thus didn’t have a barn (i.e. space to do such a thing, let alone room to store all the necessary tools—the guy who does my stepdad’s deer can even make you ground meat, tamales, sausage, and all manner of carnivorous delights).  Though I also have strong memories of wandering out back to find my PawPaw (Cajuns don’t have Grandpas, they have PawPaws), only to discover a cluster of men in the barn making quick work of half a dozen freshly shot rabbits. 

And, yes, I would love to see a collection of essays all around this topic.  Though I guess some of Sarah Vowell’s work might compare—she’s probably the best-known latteneck I can think of.  Some of Barbara Kingsolver’s stuff heads in that direction, though she manages to be self-righteous and smug from both sides at the same time, which I find kind of unbearable.

“Barbara Kingsolver’s stuff heads in that direction, though she manages to be self-righteous and smug from both sides at the same time”

I just finished “Prodigal Summer” and I totally agree on that one.  Tried to explore the rural vs urban lifestyles issue but kinda insulted both.

I still think “The Poisonwood Bible” was one of the best, fairest, most honest depictions of the experience of being white in Afirca that I have ever come across, and I tend to read pretty much everything I find on that topic.  Seriously, everybody read that book.

Sorry for the O/T.

didn’t have a barn…wandering out back…to discover a cluster of men in the barn…

Yeah, if I’d had a randomly appearing/disappearing barn in my backyard, I would have been a little freaked.  To say nothing of the transiest old men and dead rabbits. 

Thirding (fourthing?) the essay compendium. 

I am wondering what people’s reactions were to Trash, if anyone has read it.

@Opononax lol well, as I’m sure you know, we in the country thought you townies (as remote as the towns might be) were soft and luxuried : )  Ah, the difference some perspective makes, eh?

Sarah Vowell is a treasure.  But I was thinking about a collection of essays from a range of ppl, perhaps who id as feminists, and definitely from a range of geographical regions.  I’ve an academic friend who grew up on the Okefenokee (I butchered that spelling, pax), and while our stories share wonderful similarities, you folks down in the deep Deep South experience things far differently in some respects than my backwoods far Northern family.  I’d love to capture some of that complexity for an audience.

Errr…that’s transient old men.  They may well have been the transiest trans men around, but I certainly wasn’t going for that descriptor.

It is all about lifestyle choice - or the fiction of such.

Bad city people choose to be libruls

Good wholesome small town Americans chose to be real Americans

It gets stupid when city people ride around pretending to be small-town republicans, thinking they can be “real small town americans” for the price of a NASCAR hat and some homophobic bumper stickers.  But they are victims of persecution, you see, because they are real and the rest of us are phony.

Seriously, though, being gay is a choice to these people, so is being poor, etc.  This hides the truth about poverty, declining economy, etc. because sone can always “choose” to live in republican lovely land where men are men, women are women, and reality doesn’t exist.  The whole lifestyle choice take is yet another smoke screen for maintaining the privileges of wealth and birth and race.

@Em, I’m sad to say that Dorothy Allison has publicly said some ignorant, and even bigoted things about northern rural people, and is choosy about which parts of the South she claims and which she does not, and I find it consequently very difficult to read her work without too much bias to comment on it.

I love the Poisonwood Bible, no matter what I may think of Kingsolver herself and/or her other (especially nonfiction) writing.

My above pronouncement mainly comes from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I enjoyed quite a bit, despite her peculiar brand of sneering out of both sides of her mouth.  She leaves me with the same feeling I get from people like Pete Seeger—OK, OK, we get it, you’re the most moral and upright person who ever lived, we’re not even worthy to lick your Very Sensible New England All-Weather Boots (which of course were made of organic and fair-traded rubber, by one-legged orphan albinos in Cambodia), no position that anyone else could ever take on anything would be as valid, legitimate, and Authentic™ as yours.

neogram, thank you for your opinion.  I had mixed feelings on the book myself; she says right in it that it’s full of hate…I felt that a goodly portion of that hate was directed towards you and me and whoever else could get out, and only come back when we good and well wanted to.  More than the distant city slickers, we are her anti-heroes.  Like touyh (sp.?) said, leaving can be a lonely journey.  And like Restless Heart said, you can go home, but you can never go back.

Funny how there are no trolls appearing yet in this thread.

Unfortunately, it is one of the few places that some of our non-banned regulars have something truly insightful to contribute.

Yeah, if I’d had a randomly appearing/disappearing barn in my backyard, I would have been a little freaked.  To say nothing of the transiest old men and dead rabbits. 

Ummm, if you read my comment, you would understand that it was my grandfather who had the barn.  In other words, while we were relatively “civilized” townies, my grandparents and the rest of the family really did live out in the country and had the space and resources (such as they were) to butcher their own meat, and I saw small game butchered regularly. 

Though you would sometimes see people in town who’d do small game in the garage or backyard.  Forgot about that part…

Also, as I’m wandering memory lane with an armload of rabbit carcasses, I should also say that my mom has a lovingly published omnibus of traditional Cajun game recipes and butchering techniques as her coffee table book of the moment, lately.  Which sums up the whole “redneck as lifestyle” concept pretty well, I have to say.

@ Neogrammarian, re your whole post, Sarah Vowell, etc—actually, both she and Kingsolver would be perfect choices for such an anthology.  She’s redneck by way of North Dakota (or is it Montana?), whereas Kingsolver is Appalachian.

@ Opoponax.  heh.  ok, so my first thought is: “wha?  Who doesn’t butcher their own?” but then I remembered that the local butcher offered to do roadkill for folks who didn’t know how to dress their own.  (You have to understand, I’m exactly 1 generation out from hunting-&-foraging for significant portions of annual diet.

I learned a great deal about gross anatomy watching my mother and father butcher the occasional hunting success.  My mother would take the time to say “this is the bladder” or “here’s the heart - look, it fits between the lungs” and such.

I think it says something about the kind of family that I came from, and why they didn’t stay in the sticks and why I never went back (as much as I love to visit).

It was a gentle poke, don’t get bent out of shape, but since you seem to be, let me point out that nowhere in this paragraph do you actually say that there are two different houses and that one, your grandpa’s, had a barn.  It was a perfectly fair assumption that your grandpa lived with you; my gram did and does still live with my family.  Chill.  |=)

my family generally outsourced the butchering of large game, mainly because we lived in town and thus didn’t have a barn (i.e. space to do such a thing, let alone room to store all the necessary tools—the guy who does my stepdad’s deer can even make you ground meat, tamales, sausage, and all manner of carnivorous delights).  Though I also have strong memories of wandering out back to find my PawPaw (Cajuns don’t have Grandpas, they have PawPaws), only to discover a cluster of men in the barn making quick work of half a dozen freshly shot rabbits.

I’m not really bent out of shape, per se*.  I just thought you were taking the piss a little unfairly.  ‘Sall good, though.

I guess, to me (and hey, maybe this is one of those regional things that would interest Neogram), when you say you went “out back” to find someone, you’re talking about land, not a backyard.  Thus probably not the same place I had just described as not having room to butcher a deer.

* the use of which term would probably belong in my redneck/chardonnay-swiller graph!

Well yes, okay then!  Out back to me meant “back yard.”  “In the woods” meant more what you’re talking about, although our neighbors were more easily reached by the road than by huffing it up the mountain.  The only time we really went in the woods to find someone was when there was an emergency and we had to pull my dad off his hunting stand.  When we had the smart dog, we just let the dog go find him, but when we had the dumb dog, it was my job the few times it happened.  My dad did our deer in the garage (we had to tiptoe around the hanging carcass to get in and out of the house).

My dad did our deer in the garage (we had to tiptoe around the hanging carcass to get in and out of the house)

Ew.  As much as I carp on my stepfather and his trigger-happy ways, I am very, very happy he doesn’t do this.

FWIW, Em, I found the remark very, very funny.

Oppoponax, how old were you and how’d you take it?  My very urban then-nine year old (“taxi!” was one of her first words) recoiled from a rabbit in a meat counter, asking tremulously, “Daddy, is that a real bunny?”.  I could sense the other shoppers ever-so-slightly slowing down, waiting for the response.

“Yes, dear, it is.  But that particular bunny, fortunately, was worse than Hitler and deserved to die.” 

That solved the problem by putting the issue right back into a frame that my daughter was familiar with, to wit: my father is a complete nutter.  I got what was once called An Old Fashioned Look from her, and the conversation moved to other things.

Oddly enough, this conversation came up again Friday as we discussed the morality of hunting.  She has a hard time grasping the concept that meat always involved killing, but we who don’t hunt merely outsource our dirty work to others.  [I wish that I could remember the name of the rural feminist who wrote in Ms. (sometime before the fall of 2004) that hunting was the only ethically honest way of being a carnivore.]  I think part of it may be a simple visceral reaction to the bloody work of dealing with carcasses.  I got a similar horrified reaction from her when she discovered that I used to clean grocery store meat departments while in university.

They see it as absolutely barbaric, and a moral stain on anyone who even so much as justifies it, even if that person is not a hunter.

But it’s free-range and hormone-free, so unless the “OMG Barbaric” person is a vegetarian, I’m not sure what their problem is. Well, except that deer are cute. I grew up in a deer-watching family, so I’m not sure if I’d ever be able to eat it myself, but I’m certainly not going to condemn a way of meat procurement that seems to be a whole lot more humane than factory farming.

(I grew up in an area where people hunted, but considering the deer were all contaminated with strontium-90, eating it was a Bad Idea. The Department of Energy had yearly deer hunts to keep the population under control, but the dead deer went to DOE for disposal instead of into venison chili.)

Oppoponax, how old were you and how’d you take it?

About 7, and fully in stride.  I grew up knowing all about “circle of life” and food chain type issues.  Humans are omnivorous, and thus eat meat, which is animals that have to either be raised to be killed or hunted down.  When you grow up in a rural area, it’s hard to develop the binary of meat vs. cute fuzzy animal, in the way that city people tend to. 

Though I was a little shocked at the gore of it (I still am, actually, which is hilarious considering that I’m the offspring of medical practitioners).  But I don’t think I cried, or even said anything.  No explanation was necessary, and especially not of the “these bunnies were very, very bad” variety.  It was in the league of walking in on someone in the bathroom, not seeing someone murdered in cold blood.

I suppose that it ties into the dumb-versus-smart part of the thread, further up, but am I the only one here who has no problem eating beef and chicken because cows & chickens are just so goddamned dumb and feel vaguely uncomfortable (on occasion) about pork because pigs are so comparatively clever?

people hunted, but ... the deer were all contaminated with strontium-90… The Department of Energy had yearly deer hunts to keep the population under control…

At night, when they were easier to see, I take it.

Thanks, Oppo.  To be honest I rather liked my response.  It gave a completely honest answer (as in, yeah, it’s a damned bunny) whilst making it clear that even such things were normal enough to be joked about.  I wouldn’t have tried a real effort to make my daughter believe that the bunny was bad, (a) because it would have been wrong and (b) she would have known instantly I was FOS.

am I the only one here who has no problem eating beef and chicken because cows & chickens are just so goddamned dumb and feel vaguely uncomfortable (on occasion) about pork because pigs are so comparatively clever?

Hm, I’ve never thought of it that way.  Though I have to say I tend to have slight sympathy for cows and chickens because they just seem so sweetly and gently stupid.  I sort of have the sense that if a cow could talk, she’d sound about like the archetypal “I’d give everyone a kitten!” beauty pageant contestant.  Those girls are annoying, but we don’t behead them for it!

Though my vegetarianism (oh, OK, flexitarianism!) isn’t motivated by issues of animal cruelty or the morality of killing livestock, at all.

Unfortunately, no. If they were glow-in-the-dark deer there’d have been a lot fewer car-hits-deer accidents late at night. During mating season, they’d jump into the street without warning, heedless of anything except the possibility of procreation. It was a great way to test your car’s brakes.

I didn’t read through every comment so I apologize if someone else referenced Joe Bageant but I can’t recommend his book “Deer Hunting with Jesus” highly enough.  http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/0307339378?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210956592&sr=1-1

If I could afford to, I’d be walking around with a backpack full of his books, passing them out to every liberal I know.  I’ve never heard a better case for Democrats learning to speak across the cultural divide. 

Joe’s web site is here: http://www.joebageant.com/

“Being from an upper mitwest blue state (Minnesota), I have always felt sort of left out of this whole discussion about “bi-coastal elites” vs “the heartland”.  I don’t live anywhere near a coast but I always feel that I am being excluded from “the heartland” by those who idolize it so much because Minnesotans are not quite so belligerantly conservative on the whole and we don’t say “y’all.” “

Whereas I’ve never lived off the east coast.  I currently reside in Massachusetts, the godless liberal land of gay marriage and universal health insurance, but, uh, there’s about 4,000 people in this town, and last time I checked, the nearest farm was more or less in my back yard.  I can’t even tell you how many farms there are within even a couple miles of here.  But since half of them are organic, I guess they don’t count.  Crimeny, you can even get local milk delivered to your doorstep!

FWIW, one of the terms I’ve heard for the lifestyle of people like the Palins is “high prole”. Especially in the past 20 years, indulging the supposed redneck/working class love of guns, pickup trucks, motorcycles/dirt bikes/ATVs and so forth has become seriously expensive if you’re not using those things as income- or food-producing tools. Which of course is another reason the GOP is so good at stirring up resentment at urban liberals, whose lifestyle seems designed to avoid those costs.

another reason the GOP is so good at stirring up resentment at urban liberals, whose lifestyle seems designed to avoid those costs.

Good point, paul.  New GOP slogan: “If you think instead of buying you hate America!”

The issues y’all are raising on this thread are not unique to the redneck/hipster divide. Both Ms. F and myself come from very posh suburbia and its attendant dysfunctions and cultural characteristics. Both of us escaped to urban hipsterdom, and both of us simultaneously sneer at some aspects of what we left behind and semi-ironically embrace others. For example, I grew up playing golf because it was what one did, don’tcha know, and I still enjoy playing it, though I’m much too ambivalent about it to keep score or to play in anything other than flip-flops.

I think a lot of the “real america” talk that goes on is rooted in the frontier and its place in the american psyche - PARTICULARLY older people who did not spend a lot of time in the United States growing up and therefore got the simplified, provincial, holier-than-thou version of what it means to be an American?

The difference between a redneck and a cosmopolitan is not a simple “attribute”. Beer or latte. Simple cotton cut vs. print silk. or whatever. Because that would be a latte drinking redneck. Same difference.

It’s just person changing one label to another, repackage old win in new bottle.

The big differences lie in world view, perception and meta thinking.  A person from big city are more likely to have rich interaction and bump into a lot of exotic ideas. These affect how one view the world. So for eg. a person from big city would likely more open and enjoy a lot of exotic leisure activities from all over the world afforded by city as cultural center. (exotic drink from far corner of the world for eg.)

Political revolution, absurd entertainment, glitzy wealth, exotic delicatessen, new from of cult and religion,  pain and pleasure, inventions, etc are most likely lies in big city.

People in big city can afford not eating hunted meat and live on liquid diet from the far east. One can ask, what if Jesus doesn’t exist, sky is the limit and ass fucking is ok…  A small city can rarely afford such ideas. The social structure can’t handle it.

——————-

What’s really disappointing about current view is that people still stuck with geographical dichotomy, when internet afford people to interact and exchange entirely different ideas with people from all over the planet.

am I the only one here who has no problem eating beef and chicken because cows & chickens are just so goddamned dumb and feel vaguely uncomfortable (on occasion) about pork because pigs are so comparatively clever?

This seems like a version of something that I call “fish at the limits of sympathy.”  I will eat most meats (including moose, which wasn’t bad), but sometimes I do creep myself out upon thinking about the animal as it existed before being butchered.  But I’ve never had a shudder of guilt about eating fish.  (Unless we’re counting seeing the head-on fish at the market.  But that’s just not fair—you don’t buy chicken with the head still attached!)  It just seems much harder to feel sorry for a fish.

I used to be quite appalled at the idea of hunting until I met a woman who told me that if it weren’t for hunting she’s not sure her family would have had enough to eat when she was growing up.  That sobered me up.  I grew up in the suburbs, where not only did it seem like hunting was completely incomprehensible (until VERY recently I was still totally confused about where it is that hunting even takes place, because we didn’t have “The Woods”) but hunting was never linked to actual subsistence.  It sounded like an expensive hobby—like skiing.

I have to say that the main reason I’ve never understand urbanites’ offense at hunting is because it’s not like deer and rabbits are cute, whereas farm livestock is mainly composed of hideous vile monsters that we just have to kill, because they’d happily eat us if we didn’t.  There’s no difference in cuteness quotient between a chicken and a duck, or a cow and a deer.  In fact, some of the farmed meats that are thoroughly traditional are some of the cutest ones—lamb, anyone?  And most urbanites wouldn’t eat pest animals like squirrel or raccoon on point of starvation. 

If you’re going to freak out about the fact that someone is out there killing cute animals just so we can all eat Big Macs, you have to either go vegetarian or STFU.

As for fish, meh.  I find it hard to get worked up over them.  Oh, and I’ll happily concede that a lot of hunting nowadays is an expensive hobby, and not generally done for subsistence purposes.  Though it definitely can be, and it’s hard to ignore the grocery bonus of bagging something big (unless you are Dick Cheney, in which case it’s probably sort of beside the point).

I agree that to be a real redneck you have to kill your own meat.

shooting one buck means a virtually free* year’s supply of meat.

About 57% of a deer is edible meat (h/t teh google). So you need a good sized buck to get even 100 lbs. of meat. And 2 lbs of meat a week doesn’t go very far.

Not to mention that deer fat is uneatable, and you have to use pork or other fat for cooking for flavor. (Hunter friends have given me “Ground Deer” for chili.)

Ground deer is usually mixed with a small amount of beef for fat and flavor, and often seasoned as well.  Makes a damn good burger, actually.

And while, yes, a whole year’s supply of meat is a bit of an exaggeration, what I know is that the folks in my family who hunt deer typically don’t bag more than one apiece in any given year, if even that, and yet the resulting meat is enough to where they’re constantly foisting it off on other people and trying to come up with new ways to use it or sneak it into other recipes.  This is of course partially because my family doesn’t depend only on the possibility of shooting a deer for our supply of meat.  But still, yeah, a deer is a hell of a lot of meat, definitely enough to mean something for a family that might be struggling.

Though I will again agree that the majority of hunters probably don’t hunt primarily for food, and even those who get big nutritional benefits out of the meat often don’t exclusively depend on it to survive.

You know, when people sneer at my taste, I just try not to associate with those people.  It doesn’t work out all that well when the sneerers are family members or coworkers, but, for the most part, I’ve managed to cull judgmental and negative people from my life.  And, I don’t waste my time worrying about they think of me.  The culture warriors should try it sometime.

As for fish, meh.  I find it hard to get worked up over them.

I was reading a fish biology paper a little while ago that argued that fish don’t have the brain parts necessary to experience pain.  Sure, they can jerk around and move away if something stabs or bites them.  But there aren’t any structures analogous to the ones that give rise to the internal experience of pain in humans.

Gotta love ya Amanda!

As a Colorado Liberal I’ve never been too comfortable with the divisions.

I am an Athiest so there is no way I can vote Republican

I am a crazy “Western Slope-post-Kent State-redneck-hippie-freak who has happily relocated to the urban enclaves of the Front Range. (For those unsure of the cultural reference Post-Kent-State-Freak means…We Shoot Back.)

I like me some biscuits and gravy and also like me a triple espresso. For the life of me I can’t understand why I can’t have both at the same place.

I ain’t got a problem with guns but I damn sure want to make sure that fool down the street can’t get a gun.

And yea, I want to leave my neighbors be to live their own lives so long as they ain’t beaten on their wives or kids.

As John Stewart said: here in Colorado well we ain’t got no middle ground. We are either crazy right-wing Promise Keepers waiting for the Rapture or we are all running around fueling our vehicles with Gorp. He’s got a point there. My car runs on natural gas but I do know someone who runs her car on recycled French Fry grease.

A small city can rarely afford such ideas. The social structure can’t handle it.

Word; I’d only make it “the social structure usually can’t handle it but sometimes rural folks can greatly surprise you”.  This is where some urbanites err, I think.  We tend to forget just how much damned harder it is to experience different, be different, feel different, tolerate different is in the country or in smaller centres.

From Blanche: “A person from big city are more likely to have rich interaction and bump into a lot of exotic ideas. These affect how one view the world. So for eg. a person from big city would likely more open and enjoy a lot of exotic leisure activities from all over the world”

Seems to me that you have a real point, but are aiming it incorrectly. I know plenty of city folk - I live in the Chicago area, who are very deeply narrow-minded and parochial in their own ways. I know more than a few people who seem to equate visiting the suburbs with the sort of life-shattering events that used to involve Conestoga wagons.

And, having spent chunks of my life living rural-adjacent, I’ve known many wonderfully open-minded and richly intelligent small-town people, whether they moved there or were home grown.

I think you have it dead on, though about the idea that the difference lies in that idea of “meta-thinking.”

The way I describe all that is wrong with fundamentalists and the current Republican operating system is the fetishizing of “the one right way.”  Not being able to see that there are other choices and other ways of being, and stubbornly refusing to consider that there ARE alternatives.

Seems to me that you have a real point, but are aiming it incorrectly. I know plenty of city folk - I live in the Chicago area, who are very deeply narrow-minded and parochial in their own ways. I know more than a few people who seem to equate visiting the suburbs with the sort of life-shattering events that used to involve Conestoga wagons.

It works the other way, too.  I live in a small city where some people in the suburbs seem to regard its rather ordinary and safe downtown as some bizarre cross between NY in the 1970s and a zombie movie.

For the life of me I can’t understand why I can’t have both at the same place.

If you’re ever in New York, I’ve got a restaurant recommendation for you.  A small group of friends went in on a bistro specializing in “grandma’s comfort food”, with a modern urban twist.  Comfort food being anything from one partner’s southern granny’s biscuit recipe to coffee just like another partner’s Italian nonna always used to make it.

They also do vintage cocktails, and put horseradish on the cheeseburgers. And the biscuits come with homemade blackberry jam. It sounds weird, but it’s phenomenal.

My stepdad was a religious hunter.

My uncles were deer hunters, but I don’t think anyone in the family, liberals thogh we were, actually hunted the religious . . .

I was reading a fish biology paper a little while ago that argued that fish don’t have the brain parts necessary to experience pain.  Sure, they can jerk around and move away if something stabs or bites them.  But there aren’t any structures analogous to the ones that give rise to the internal experience of pain in humans.

There are multiple things James Rose does not adequately take account of. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2983045.stm http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3673 He has successfully positioned himself as the go-to guy for media stories on fish pain, but his paper on the subject was not published in a biology journal. It was published in a fishing industry journal, Informa PLC’s Reviews in Fisheries Science.

The most we can take definitively from Rose is that whatever fish experience, it is different from what humans experience. But progressives know that difference does not automatically justify dominance, don’t we?

We do not know that a neocortex is necessary to have experiences. We only know that humans have evolved this way. But to focus on this is to forget about the preponderance of parallel evolution that we have observed throughout the tree of life. It is not enough to say that because they don’t feel what we feel, they don’t feel anything worthy of moral consideration. That does not follow. Because pain is adaptive for anything that can move to escape damaging stimuli, it is reasonable to anticipate that pain or something very similar has evolved multiple times and is mediated by unfamiliar pathways in other animals. Parallel evolution is the norm, not the exception.

As Rose is fond of noting, people in persistent vegetative states can react to physical abuse, without being “conscious” of “pain.” This is uncontroversial, but what do we do with this knowledge? We do not use it as an excuse to inflict harm upon comatose people. No one would say it’s acceptable to stab a person in a coma, just because they aren’t conscious of it. There may be other kinds of experiences going on, and these would be worth moral consideration.

Note also that Rose relies upon the purest sophistry, substituting dictionary definitions for ethical reasoning. He says, “pain, as defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain is purely a conscious experience.” Yes, if you define pain in terms of what humans experience, and define humans as the only beings worth of moral consideration, then you’ll come to the conclusion you desire. But this is no different from medieval hierarchies that decree man as a separate creation above animals and below angels. It’s just special pleading. Honest ethical investigation requires a bit more rigor.

Darn you, BadKitty, you beat me to recommending “Deer Hunting with Jesus.”  I just finished it in one long sitting.  I was raised in redneck Arkansas and “grew up” to be a Seattle liberal (I always said I became a liberal when I left home and started to think for myself).  Loved this book ‘cause it explained what I try to tell my friends up here about how conservatives think, and it helps describe the disconnect between blue liberal Seattle/suburbs and red conservative Washington state.

Though I have to say I tend to have slight sympathy for cows and chickens because they just seem so sweetly and gently stupid.  I sort of have the sense that if a cow could talk, she’d sound about like the archetypal “I’d give everyone a kitten!” beauty pageant contestant.   -Opoponax

Ahem…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o4w_IsiKDlQ&feature=related

And

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V7HRF-BhUto&NR=1

(Come on, we can’t begin to discuss happy livestock without these videos.)

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Don’t diss Gretchen Wilson!
Many of us are mixes. I shot guns and bows (not hunting bows, though). I don’t do so now, because I don’t live in the country any more. I have some modest veterinary diagnostic skills, enough to describe the problem on the phone. I like bluegrass and classical music, especially opera. Dolly is just fine by me, including (especially) the inspirational songs. I like subtitled moving pictures, and have been known to use the word “film”. I will drink cheap beer if it is hot outside and I want any old lager-style watery beer, just as long as it is ice-cold. I prefer Guinness in temperate climate. I don’t think it’s right to shoot animals if you don’t plan to eat them or give them to someone to eat. (Excepting stray javelinas and others that enter human territory).

Someone above gave me a good idea for preventing auto-deer accidents. Let’s clone a white-tailed deer with eGFP expression on its white spots - fluoresce gentle green color under strong light.

It was like when I first saw that Newsweek cover - “But I drink beer and love arugula.”

There are many of Indian (from India) descent, including some of my immediate relatives, who can be described using your Liberal Latte characteristics and will vote for McCain.  I’m from Wisconsin, now live in Southern Louisiana and eat meat, including venison, my favorite movie is about deer camp (“Escanaba In Da Moonlight”) and can drink some self-professed Cajun Republicans under the table.  Obama is my candidate.  Just goes to show how stupid neoconservative definitions of “different” are.

All the mentions of the RNC, Paul Krugman and classism distract from the central thesis of this blog post: that Amanda Marcotte is f-ing awesome.  As readers, we must either want to be her or want to make out with her on the trampoline.