Deer Hunting with Jesus - Dispatches from America's Class War.

[Jim__]

"Deer Hunting with Jesus" is a funny book. A sad, true, funny book.

So far I've only read the first chapter. It brings us into a cafeteria/bar, Royal Lunch, in Winchester, Virginia, peopled with the towns down-and-outers - most of the town. There's Fat Pootie wearing an off-color T- shirt, Dink Lamp whose claim to fame is that in 1963 he beat up the boxing chimpanzee at the carnival, and grossly overweight Dottie who is 59 years old, has astronomically high blood pressure and whose husband earns a living washing cars at the local car-dealership. Dottie and her husband live on about $500/month and do OK, except when an unexpected expense happens during the month; then they skip on buying one of Dottie's critical prescriptions which only helps to worsen her condition.

It really doesn't sound funny. But the author, Joe Bageant, has a talent for seeing the humor in things - and the humanity. For a sample of his writing, visit his website.

For some understanding of red-neck America, read his book.

[Rick Myers]

1. I must read that book!

My sister has lived in Winchester, VA for years and I've been there many times. It's an odd little town!

[kurth]

2. Great book. Riveting and accurate

From Bageant's blog:

Republicans may flaunt their hickeys like high school kids in the locker room, but guilt-plagued Democrats, feeling the smart of the mark of the beast, console themselves that they can banish it at the ballot box, if only they close their eyes and wish upon a star. Thus their comfortable self-delusions that the Tiger Woods of the Democratic Party, the technically black Barack Obama, is somehow blessed with an inner moral compass lacking in the rest of society, and therefore does not bear the damnable mark. Wiser souls, aware that Obama possesses a net worth of several millions, a Harvard law degree and a career born in that venerable political whorehouse called Chicago, assume the Devil's mark is probably located on his posterior where we cannot see it. Another political wish upon a star is that Hillary Clinton, a woman marked by so many hickeys that she looks like a victim of massive hemangioma -- but with botox -- will reform our brutal health care system without pulling up her skirt for the insurance industry. Like she says, there is "no possible governmental solution that does not include the insurance industry."

Of course not. Industry _is_ our government. Our votes merely decide which industries have front spots at the public trough for the next four to eight years. Lately it has been Big Pharma and the credit industry, and what a run they've had. Mandatory mental health screening in schools stuffs more prescription drugs into children. The credit card industry's new bankruptcy laws wring the last drop from consumers, instead of giving them the fresh start our forefathers had in mind when they established debtor's laws. But in a new twist on incarceration, they make one's home the new debtor's prison, a place where we sleep while we work off usury interest payments on debt.

Meanwhile, out there in the vast looms of our government-as-corporation, the fast food industry weaves the Cheeseburger Bill, giving itself immunity to lawsuits as it fattens a nation of steers whose sole purpose is to consume, never to be butchered, except in the wars that protect the corporate cheeseburger. Even on the battlefront, it turns profit on millions of burgers and fries that are served to those who fight the oil and cheeseburger wars. American consumers watch this on TV and see it as comfortably familiar. We cannot possibly be doing so badly in Iraq if a soldier can get a Fishwich, a Red Bull, and a Puff Daddy CD on the battlefield. Right? Which is true enough, if you have been conditioned to see a Fishwich and a CD as a symbol of liberty and the utmost accomplishment of the republic -- if you see it as "our way of life." And indeed it is that. Oblivion with an order of fries.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/01/dispatch_from_t.html

[The River]

3. All of His Essays

are worth reading.
His words cut through the BS that is politics.
It's a business. Corporations buy politicans and then
sell them to the voters. Either party, doesn't matter (much).

[RamboLiberal]

4. Saw this one in the bookstore - one I definitely want to read

Always amazes me how the Repukes get these people to vote against their own best interests by running up the flagpole issues that have no effect on their everyday lives.

[MountainLaurel]

5. Definitely want to check this out

This folks he knows in Winchester sound a lot like my family, who love about three hours away in WV. Class divides are a huge issue that don't get enough attention.

[truedelphi]

6. Really interesting website

WIllbe oredering his books