The Rednecking of America: Is it inbred?
Can it be cured?
Like your fourth family intervention or filming a sloshed David Hasselhoff shoving food into his craw, only keen self-awareness can truly stem the tsunami of shit-kickery ushered back into vogue by the Bush Jr. Era. An Etch A Sketch war with an ever-shifting end game, a new Gilded Age of noblesse lavishness, racist propaganda disguised as isolationist public policy, paranoid fear of science — these are just the tallest tent poles in the Carnival of Crackery we’ve spent the last eight years enduring.
It’s still the incidentals that are often the most galling. Watching country singers stampede over each other to be the first to coin the most embarrassing agitprop “We’ll put a boot up your ass!” anthem to help kick start the Bush War was stomach-turning.
Witnessing even a few moments of star-spangled slut for authority Sean Hannity practically deep-throating Uncle Sam as he declared his puerile love for the nation was grounds for the North American Continent to issue a restraining order against his fat ass.
Having to bite through the rage as one more frosted blonde republican political strategist characterizes New York City — just seven years prior emblematic of American stoicism — as a hotbed of clove-smoking, beret-wearing pinkos that had it coming will channel the most tolerant person’s inner Madam Defarge.
If there’s a wily spanner in the works who can turn Medusa’s gaze back upon her, it’s Sacha Baron Cohen, whose Borat was the perfect indictment of all the rancor endemic beneath the merit badge culture of flag-pinned, bumper-stickered, yellow-ribboned Neo-Patriotism.
In the scope of lily white hysteria, when one minority reaches a certain level of public acceptance it must be replaced with a new terrifying Other. Gays are the new blacks and with this in mind, the chameleonic Cohen staged his latest petri dish prank on the He-Man Queer Haters Club.
The setting: Arkansas Mixed Martial Arts cage-fighting bouts dubbed “Blue Collar Brawlin’” and “Red, White & Blood”. The marks: thousands of unwitting extras answering to the lure of “Hot Chicks, $1 Beer & Hardcore Fights”.
What they got was Cohen’s alter ego — entertainment reporter Bruno [left] (essentially Cojo with a less put-the-lotion-in-the-basket vibe) — presiding over a grudgefest that culminated with two male opponents ripping away one another’s gear, grappling in underwear, and kissing their way down (waaaaay down) each other’s torsos before a wildly appreciative audience that hurled cheap beer, cheap seats, and cheap outraged epithets.
Wrestling in its various forms has always been a none-too-subtle means for America to symbolically exorcise its dread of difference in the most infantile conflicts imaginable. From the south of the Mason-Dixon line style known as “rasslin’” to the mainstream WWE, if the most-hated fighter of-the-moment isn’t a caricature of a foreign devil Arab, then it’s a given he’ll be a gay dandy in a floral print dress who’ll embody the domestic Horror of the Nancy.
Flamboyantly ringleted “Gorgeous” George was the 50s-era archetype, followed down through the decades by Twisted Sister-style “Exotic” Adrian Street, shotgun-rouged Adrian Adonis, Divine-inspired trash glam Goldust, Playgirl-featured cross dresser Vito LoGrasso, tag teamers Lenny & Lodi who were billed as “The West Hollywood Blonds”, and most egregiously, klieg light-blond duo Billy and Chuck, who staged a sham gay wedding.
Crew-cut, chiseled John Cena — whose aesthetic is ubiquitous in gay porn — has proven highly popular among women and gay spectators, yet is often derided by straight male enthusiasts as being too soft and pretty for the arena, not enough of a teeth-gritting muscle ogre whose hypertrophy overrides the fact that he’s sporting the gay muscle boy bod.
This is what Kathy Griffin cannily termed as “aggressive ignorance” and Cohen, with his almost preternatural ability to focus in on and ultimately reveal with laser precision his participants’ revulsions veiled under evasive double-talk, casts a withering eye on the myth of the New South.
As Borat, his famed “And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!” line was delivered at a Virgina rodeo and at his own mortal peril to a crowd of blustering patriots whose jingoism taken to its facile vertex left them appalled and confounded; here he’s letting the Homo (-eroticism and -hostility) take its rightful place in the center of the ring where it’s always been.
Wrote one drunk and/or functionally illiterate spectator of Cohen’s shenanigans: “He is one sick bastard and your [sic] right going to make MMA look like hicks but at least we aren’t cocksuckers like Borat!”
In Bushspeak, this is as perfectly-drawn a moral line as you’ll ever get.
Shawn, babe, SHAWN, all I can say, as is usually the case when I reply articles appearing on this site, is AMEN, so true! I wrote on white-trash and its’ vernacular for a grad thesis…great topic (I focused on the thirties through the fifties, with Steinbeck’s’ “Grapes of Wrath” and Caldwell’s “Tobacco Road” as main texts)…We should talk…I’m currently working on a similar project, with slightly different aspects, for a sociology thesis (one with a current time frame)…
Later,
ceg.
WTF? “White trash”? Twenty years ago I was arguing with friends that “white trash” is racist–it implies that everyone else is trash. Haven’t we progressed? Jeez, dudes, get on with it.
No, BlackPride, that’s not what I meant at all…whitetrash is a literary term, or category if you will, like queer theory, black studies, women’s studies, etc. etc.. It is not meant as a derogatory term or meant to be imflamatory at all…read Tobacco Road and you’ll understand what I mean..have a great day guy.
Later,
ceg
I have no idea what I just read.
“Haven’t we progressed?”
Well let’s see: televangelists still preach that natural disasters are God’s punishment like the Church did in the Middle Ages, the “Jena 6″ case reaction had pickup trucks with nooses come out of the wood work, still-President GW was elected based on his ability to clear brush and drink beer, the new McCarthyites are defining “real” Americans based on religious affiliation and race, Neo-Victorians are wringing their hands about the downfall of respectable society as if it were still the Jazz Age, there are continued widespread attempts to discredit Evolutionist Theory long after the 1925 John Scopes trial, John McCain panders to legitimize the Confederate Flag, Yellow Journalism is all the rage, the rhetoric used to demonize gay marriage is identical to the kind used to argue that marriage was a sacred covenant between two people of the same race in the 50s, the paranoia about Mexicans infiltrating the U.S. is just warmed-over Yellow Peril hysteria, and the first African American to be a major party’s presumptive nominee for President is cast as a usurper conspiring to enslave the white race in a plot apparently borrowed from “Conquest of The Planet of The Apes”. Plus, I spent my whole senior year with “Fag” carved in to my locker like I was Dawn Weiner or Jerri Blank.
I think all this may just qualify as retrogression.
That’s alright Steve, I don’t know what I have just read either.
America= NOUN = Insanity – WAR-see Wars=Dead good guys-see ASSASINATIONS=Rigged elections=Can’t take it but can DISH IT OUT=THE LAND OF THE FREE -RACIST HOMOPHOBIC_WARMONGERING BASTARDS=Read your CONSTITUTION-AMERICANS ARE THE TRASH OF THIS PLANET.Do something about it!!!
ROBIN & STEVE PRAY FOR BRAINS!
What’s the difference between white trash & trailer trash? Is it white trash who live in a trailer?
I hope for lots of reaction shots of the crowd. Guys clutching their girlfriends for protection from the dick stiffening gay vibe. The ones screaming the loudest will be the ones day dreaming and jerking off to it later.
Originally coming from Joplin, Missouri, only 75 miles or so from Ft. Smith . . . wow! Great publicity for gay lib . . . where can you view the film? couldnt find it on YouTube. Greetz from over the waves
Um, White Trash is a completely offensive term, not to mention totally classist. Way to throw one group under the bus while trying to raise up another.
Oh please. It’s the most “Go U.S.A!” segment of the country while also being its worst representative. You can’t deny that it’s always at the forefront of opposing civil rights for anyone else while waving the flag for freedom as an empty symbol. If you’re someone whose had to grow up with this kind of life and ran like hell in the other direction the first chance you got, then you know this criticism is dead-on.
Yes Trip, you are correct…I ran and escaped…there can be a life afterwards…but, I do try to not criticize, or even worse, judge…even if it’s only to myself…that’s just as bad as saying it out loud.
ceg.
There’s nothing wrong with saying a section of society doesn’t represent you as long as your view is based on actual evidence and not just paranoia or propaganda. There are African Americans (Bill Cosby takes flak for it) who hate the ghetto lifestyle glorified in rap music and pro sports. There are women who cringe at seeing young girls give into bimbo culture. There are gays who despise the minstrel show types that are all over TV. If Bush as President is supposed to represent the U.S., then it’s scary that there’s a segment of the population who still believes a borderline retarded, barely literate, marble mouthed and graceless Southern stereotype makes a damn fine leader.
Yes Trip I 100% agree. The most offensive thing I find in my frequent travels around the US is the “proud to be ignorant” movement that has become a regional identity in many parts of the country. One mid-western farming state sends representatives to Washington DC that have been voting AGAINST the best interests of their entire state population for over 20 years. The residents don’t care if their jobs are shipped out of the country and that all the farm subsidies go to corporations and millionaires. At least gay marriage isn’t legal there.
ggreen wrote: “The residents don’t care if their jobs are shipped out of the country and that all the farm subsidies go to corporations and millionaires. At least gay marriage isn’t legal there.”
And that, my friends, is the diabolically brilliant perversion of logic that has enabled the GOP to continue to tighten its stranglehold on America, right down to our last pleading gasps. And Trip, I wholeheartedly second your points. What I find most ironic about the “America-firsters,” as I call them, is that despite all of their jingoistic bumper stickers and t-shirts reminding us that freedom isn’t free, if they were cornered and asked to enumerate even a few of said freedoms (sans the ones pertaining to speech and, of course, bearing arms), I’ll wager that all you’d get is a blank stare and a moment of silence.
As I bitterly remind my (would-be) husband all the time, who cares if my job was sent to India on the eve of a recession, or that the specter of Big Brother looms over my every phone conversation, or if healthcare–even with insurance–is so expensive that I suffer for as long as I can before getting that mysterious lump checked? Who gives a shit about all of that minor crap, as long as we’re safe from the fags?
There actually was a letter in my local paper just the other day wherein the writer lamented that America would most certainly fall into destruciton if it were to not only elect a Muslim president, but elect one with three whole Muslim names.
Genius.
Bobby asked a good question
What is the difference between trailer trash and white trash?
They can and do overlap, but White Trash is a world view that revolves around being ignorant, provincial, nationalistic, and viciously pious; Trailer Trash is a socioeconomical/geographical caste where those who resent or lament their lot in life crave escape and therefore turn to the very things (higher education, journeys to the Big City, lapses in religious observance, abandoning troubled family situations, and “alternative” lifestyles) that White Trash will regularly villify in order to keep people in line.
Having grown up as the latter, this is the distinction I’ve come to know.
I think David Cross states it best : “We’re in a state of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride.”
Check out the rest of his letter to Larry the Cable Guy here.
What bothers me most about the exalted leaders of this demographic is that they’re rarely sincere. They’re usually grasping at the reigns of power or a larger paycheck, and the willfully ignorant redneck masses are too thickheaded to notice.