Poor, White and pissed

[harrison]

Poor, white and pissed
A guide to the white trash planet for urban liberals

By Joe Bageant
Online Journal Contributing Writer


February 22, 2005—If you are reading this it is very likely that you are a liberal, maybe even an outright screaming burn down the goddam country commie—-in which case I say, "Come sit by me comrade! (Especially if you are a blonde.)

Like most lefties you probably live in a urban area, or someplace with reasonable cultural diversity. More than likely you are educated and can read this without moving your lips. Maybe you even live in the freethinking People's Republic of Berkeley, or bustle along under the fabled lights of Manhattan where you can see independent films and buy such things as leeks and soy milk at your grocery store.

I, however, live in a town where it is easier to find chitterlings, ponhaus and souse in the grocery store than a leek . . . and where Smokey and the Bandit still plays to packed movie houses year after year. My hometown's claim to fame is the 1983 "Rhinehart Tire Fire" in which some five million discarded tires burned for nine months, gaining Winchester, Virginia national news coverage and EPA superfund cleanup status. The smoke plume was visible in satellite earth photos, the cleanup took 18 years and the fire stands as my hometown's biggest event of the Twentieth Century. As for intellectual life, this is a town where damned few residents ever heard of say, Susan Sontag. Even though our local newspaper editor did manage a post mortem editorial on her, which basically said: "Goodbye you piece of New York Jewish commie shit!" most people reading the paper at their breakfast tables around town were asking themselves, "Who the hell is Susan Sontag? They would ask the same thing about Daniel Barenboim or Hunter S. Thompson because those figures have never been on Oprah. Our general ambience was well summed up by a visiting Atlanta lawyer who looked around town and observed: "Dumb lordee I reckon!" This, from a guy who's seen a lot of dumb crackers. Laugh if you want, but this is the red state American heartland everybody is talking about these days.



http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/022205Bageant/022205bageant.html

[Misunderestimator]

1. Oh no... not again...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3143774

[mongo]

4. didn't see this first time around

waiting for the other thread to load.

From someone who lives and works in Joe's America, I have to say he is right on the money.

[Misunderestimator]

5. Well, that thread had a lot of discussion...

[mongo]

6. That's putting it nicely....

[Career Prole]

2. That's good stuff, that. Thanks! n/t

[toymachines]

3. so is that where the springfield tire fire originated

the simpsons relates to everything

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. The real tragedy of this article is that America has no legislative memory

nor does the author. Cutting and pasting my response from the original thread:

The community of Winchester remembers Smokey and the Bandit more than they remember the history of legislation that has kept them where they are.

I will take this article legislatively point by point. The author plants little stories within but never gets to the real issue which is WHO MADE THEIR LIFE THIS WAY?

The first event the author sites is the Rhinehart Tire Fire. The whole point of Superfund legislation was that so business would pay for the communities they spoil.

As of 2002, Virginia was scheduled to get $16,ooo. The site has cost 10 million to clean since 83. The local newspaper who defended George Bush as a "uniter" on cultural issues claims the site is nearly cleaned but environmental advocates disagree:

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?ContentID=2165&Page=2&subnav=&project=&colorback=ffffff

http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/020723/Area_fire.asp

http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/land/site.tcl?epa_id=VAD980831796#threats


Now, in exchange for liberal advocacy of an issue that SHOULD be close to the hearts of the inhabitants of Winchester, how are liberals rewarded whether they have a latte in their hand or not?

We are called "treehuggers." We are told that we don't respect the notion of private property (Rhinehart had a bazillion tires on his private property that despoiled the entire community.

Our advocacy of this issue DIRECTLY benefitted the people of that community. What do they remember? That we desegregated their schools and stand for protecting the rights of all Americans including gay people. They CHOSE a culture war over their own air and water.

Nationally we at least number a quarter of white U.S. workers, thirty five million in all by the government’s own shaved-down numbers. Nobody knows for sure in a nation that calls millions of $7-an-hour janitors and marginal people working “contract labor”, with no insurance or benefits, “independent businesspersons” and “entrepreneurs”.

That may be true, but a janitor in the "people's republic of berkeley" makes 6.75 per hour if they are getting minimum wage and get's 5.15 in Virginia. That janitor in berkeley might still belong to a labor union making far more since California is not a right to work (for nothing) state and Virginia is.

He discusses the ire of living without health insurance or working at 67 in order to afford healthcare.

What did Virginia calle her? Hitlery? What does Winchester think of Jesse Jackson? An advocate of unions?

Yet most of the poor people in the United States are white (51%) outnumbering blacks two to one and all other minority poverty groups combined.

There are far more white than black people in America, that's why. Proportionally there are more poor black families, but the author doesn't hesitate to play the race card even if doing so is EXACTLY what has resulted in the poor staying exactlty where they are.

Consequently we find many books/studies focusing on ethnic minorities, but few credible ones about our defiant native homegrown poor. To my mind, it is impossible to be tenured and have street cred, but then I am just a prejudiced redneck prick from Winchester, Virginia, otherwise referred to as “Dickville”.

3 words "Nickled and Dimed." : It's short and the author doesn't use any big words like that commie Susan Sontag.


Consequently, liberals are much more familiar with the social causes of immigrants, or even the plight of Tibet, than the bumper crop of homegrown native working folks who make up towns like Winchester. Liberal America loves the Dalai Lama but is revolted by life here in the land of the pot gut and the plumber’s butt. Can’t say as I blame them entirely, but then, that is why God created beer. To make ordinary life more attractive, or at least stomachable.

Again see my first point. HIS FUCKING COMMUNITY BENEFITTED FROM OUR ADVOCACY!!! How goddamn hard would it be for him to tell us that?


They cannot understand a career limited to yanking guts out through a chicken’s ass for the rest of one’s life down at the local poultry plant (assuming it does not move offshore). Being born working class carries moral and spiritual implications understood only through experiencing them. It comes back to street cred.

Gee that's funny. Tyson and Wal-Mart were sponsors of Arkansas' right to work laws. Who voted for them on the ballot when the time came due?

A good start on healing this rift might be this: the next time those on the left encounter these seemingly self-screwing, stubborn, God-obsessed folks, maybe they can be open to their trials, understand the complexity of their situation, step forward and say, “Brother can I lend you a hand?” Surely it would make the ghosts of Joe Hill, Franklin Roosevelt and Mohandas Gandhi smile.

Sure it would. And I'd gladly sit there being called a Jewish dyke or getting lynched for offering my support.

Before I am asked the more specific question, “What the fuck do you think middle class liberals should do then?” I’m gonna answer it. ORGANIZE! Quit voting for that pack of undead hacks called the Democratic Party and ORGANIZE! Howard Dean is just another millionaire Yale frat boy. ORGANIZE!

Reminder to the author, Joe Hill got the death penalty in the mindset prevalent then that is once again making a comeback. Howard Dean MAY be a frat boy but HE WAS THE ONE TALKING about WHITE GUYS WITH CONFEDERATE FLAGS ON THE BACK OF THEIR TRUCK . I personally objected to the code talk but it's simply proof that the author has not only his dick-in-yhe-dirt but his fucking head.


and to add to my original post...at the time of his death, Martin Luther King was speaking about LABOR RIGHTS as civil rights and not just speaking to black people. For all his work on economic justice, the author's poor white neighbors who have probably never read a labor or economic speech by King refer to him as Martin Luther Coon....I wish it were easy to hold my tongue..but the author would rather pit white against black and blame liberals than to acknowledge that it was liberals that got his chicken ass gutting comrades an 8 hour day..a 40 hour work week..lunch breaks and overtime

[Blower]

8. And DON'T forget--

A "clean air act" passed by Congress which provided a loophole for SUVs(courtesy Zell Miller)...and a few years later under Bush, a tax break for the rich to buy more SUVs.