I know this because Mika Brezinski told me. I don't think there's anything serious to address in her point. There are a lot of hours to fill. Gotta say something. One interesting notion is that we're seeing a kind of mirror-image of the Left in the 60s and 70s. Or maybe not, I wasn't around then and my reading on the era isn't as thorough as it should be. But my understanding is that a large part of our problem--or the New Left's problem--was that we got weighted down in theory, and lost touch with actual people.
I get the same impression whenever I hear people pull out this hamfisted notion of Real America. It's like there are no people in "Real America"--just cartoon cut-outs yelling "Don't take our guns." It is, as I said yesterday, the Al Sharpton analysis--distilling millions of complicated people through the lens of one person who happens to attract a lot of ink.
The worst part of the "Real America" analysis is that while it means to slap down "media elite"--much as the old radicals were aiming for the corporate elite--it's offers nothing but elbows for the Everymen it claims to uplift. It turns him into a cartoon and fetishizes him. He is not a person. He is the beer track.
I don't want to say much more. I fear that I may become what I inveigh against.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Who better to tell us what real people think than Mika Brezinzki ? She's just been out in the realest of real America - a book tour with Joe Scarborough. The real Joe Scarborough. The raw reality of that really epic journey opened her eyes. She's got De Toqueville cred...maybe even Charles Kuralt. Every time she blinks it's like Dorothea Lange or Walker Evans is snapping a picture. The woman is awesome.
don't know who any of those people are, except joe doucheborough unfortunatly...but the sarcasm is well recieved...well done sir!
also, 2 points..one, apparently, being pro-life in this setting is being unequivocaly american...and being pro-choice seems to be an elitiest un-american view...i didn't know that...
two, if people really connected with her as much as they did, why didn't they vote for her when they had the chance?
How in the hell does Palin represent "real Americans" when as a Gov. she makes a six figure salary. But, that's right she just quit that job and now she is out of work, so in that respect she really is "real". What is she gonna do now? file for unemployment. but, wait she can't do that because she QUIT her freakin' job. Real American Palin- the woman that quit a great gig, will write a book, go on a speaking tour and then will probably land a talk show on the "real" fair and balanced network Faux, with a million dollar salary, no doubt. Real my a$$....
It's quit simple:
Real American = intended audience for Southern Strategy and its progeny.
I think this is exactly right. Ditto the point that TNC and other commenters are making about the essential 'condescension' inherent in this approach. Everything on cable television news gets shoehorned into this neurotic interpretation of the so-called culture wars, red-state-blue state etc. and all the discourse subsequently debased and dreadfully dull and ever more pointless. But it creates conflict and its what they know. Its what they get paid to hump everyday. I think it was Rush Limbaugh's much younger cousin who wrote a piece in Slate some months back where she said that he once told her that you can have a pretty lucrative career in America if you're prepared to have half the people hate you. Palin has this in spades. I see it in myself. See The Daily Beast piece today about the kind of money she could command when she goes the media route - which I think was her most desired destination all along. Sarah's going to sell out and take the money - all the while preening about how selfless she is being in the process.
So tell me more about the liberal media. In these moments I like to play 'what if a Democrat?'
What if a Democrat had stood before the country and the world and attempted to make the case that the way to not be a quitter is to quit your job as Governor? Imagine that Morning Joe chatter? Fox News would be in seventh heaven.
(A whole other subject entirely I know - but 'what if a Democrat' upon hearing the news that 'America was under attack' chose to sit stunned and clueless for a full seven minutes in front of a class of pre-schoolers? Bill O'Reilly would have had a stroke.)
I'm with you TNC. If I have to hear one more thing about real America or real this or real that, I'm going to explode. How did we get to a point where people in the cities aren't considered real Americans? More people live in cities than anywhere else. In fact more people live in urban areas now than in any point in history. Didn't this whole thing about real America versus fake America get destroyed when McCain/Palin lost to Obama/Biden?
I find comments like these to be very condesnceding and elitist, because they assume that if you make under a certain amount or live in a certain place you are a certain way. Even worse this idea also rests on the notion that these "real Americans" can't better themselves. They are too stupid or simple to grow and progress, they will always be gun toting, Bible-thumping, know-nothings. No matter what person does they are just a hick from a small town. I'm from a small town and have been offended by this notion for a long, long time.
Thats what I loved about the Obama campaign, the message was just the opposite. It didn't matter where you were from or what your background was, if you worked hard enough you could make somethig of yourself. You weren't fated to be a certain way based only on your environment.
is this one those dave chapelle skits..when keeping it real goes wrong???
I agree with you and TNC. This essentializing of America is remarkably hard to accept. I've been to enough places around the country (city and rural) to see and hear and experience with all my senses how genuinely vast and varied this nation is. It's definitely turning our discussion of ourselves into a 2D parody.
But I think it's important to recognize one thing. This essentializing has now focused on a population (this "real" America) that is most likely to embrace it as a rhetorical/emotional technique, and in turn to wield it upon others. To be a representative of America, the realest of the real, is no small honor. And as much as this mythic stereotyping may please those it seeks to represent, it does them no good, nor the people who will involuntarily get sucked into it based on superficial similarities instead of genuine shared convictions. That's what is so crazy. I can't imagine what effect this is going to have other than to render them even more completely irrelevant AND self-important. Which will only heighten the feedback cycle of essentialism.
People on the East and West coasts aren't 'real Americans' either, no matter what kind of life they lead. Vermont is a bunch of latte-sipping hippies, as long as you don't actually travel to anywhere in the state but the Burlington waterfront (and you don't pay much attention while you're there). Washington state is nothing but Seattle and a few suburbs.
People who live in cities aren't "real Americans," coast or not.
This rhetorical trope is another term for anti-cosmopolitanism. It's based in fear and hatred of difference, a suspicion of spaces in which black, brown, and gay people exist.
A bit of a non sequitur, perhaps, but you brought up the name and it kind of fits the media whore billing that could be applied to Palin. Sharpton was certainly johnny-on-the-spot being the face of black America this morning on the news. Do you think that will be enough for him, or might he climb into the casket with Jackson during the nightmare that the ‘memorial’ promises to be for a photo op? Seriously, can’t black America impeach that guy?
Sarah Palin: when keeping it real goes wrong.
LOL!!!
Hahaha. Exactly!
Tres drole, Monsieur Calvinsgoatee!
She's not really sorry if we don't like the term "Real Americans". What a liar. On the other hand the urban/rural divide is not going win enough elections for the GOP to remain credible on a national stage, so I'm all for them embracing that as the bedrock of the party. Let those morons hang themselves.
I know I've said this before, but cities and the rural areas surrounding them have had a rivalry for as long as there have been cities. When they work together they can conquer the world. When they don't, they'll get eaten. I can almost imagine Palin in ancient Macedonia saying how those Athenians aren't "real" Greeks.
Well put. Cleon the demagogue once tried to exile Aristophanes because of an allegation that he was not sufficiently "Athenian". One would guess that Cleon, who was by all accounts a persuasive speaker, did not want to be upstaged by an intellectual pest. Thus has it always been.
For entertainment value maybe somebody in the press could get round to asking Palin who is a "Real American" and who is not.
You know you've stepped over the line when Joe MF-ing Scarborough has to handle you.
The "Real America", "Pro-America" bullshit has always been part of right-wing discourse. Think back to Nixon's Silent Majority bullshit. But I think maybe a more serious error here is the kind of mindless insistence underneath it all that America is still a 'center-right country'. You can win elections appealing to the "Real America" when they comprise most of the electorate. But those conditions are changing. Racial/ethnic minorities comprised over 30 percent of the electorate in Nov 2007 (up 13 percentage points from 20 years ago) and went overwhelmingly for the Dems. Appealing to the "Real America" is no longer a winning electoral strategy. I guess I just don't understand what they think they can accomplish by repeating this.
And so what most people are (nominally) pro-life now? The truth is that abortion is no longer a white-hot, cultural issue for large swaths of the populace. Abortion doesn't drive the votes anymore, and I'm beginning to suspect it never really did.
I wonder about this too dragnet. I think there is huge distinction between people answering that they are 'pro-life' on some survey and the desire to repeal of Roe v. Wade with all the implications which would flow from that. Would they still be 'pro-life' if they saw women being hauled off to prison for having abortions? I wonder about this.
More like reel America, those duped by the unaware media. The unaware media that lets too much slide under the door.
"Get back Loretta, get back Jo Jo ... get back to where you once belonged ..."
"Do you remember, your President Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay
Or even yesterday?"
"Could it be that it was all so simple then, or has time re-written every line? If we had a chance to do it all again, tell me would we . . . could we?"
What happened in the 70s that changed things had to do with the economy, the upshot of the Viet Nam war, and the backlash against the civil unrest in American cities. First of all, the blame for the war, despite Nixon's extreme hand at the end--invasion of Cambodia and bombing of Hanoi, fell at the feet of Lyndon Johnson. This was the first world wide humiliation of America and its place in the world. America does not like to view itself with much humility, and we had gone from Kennedyesque optimistic idealism to Lyndon Johnson's sour failure in Southeast Asia. Democrats never recovered.
Secondly, Nixon's silent majority upon which this sense of who is a real America was fueled by the first inkling of a new kind of racism that was disturbed by the idea that white males were losing their place in the world or at least in economic America.
But above all, it was the economy stupid. After a decade of unprecedented prosperity in America, the cost of the war and more importantly, the meteoric rise in the cost of gasoline and the inflation it engendered (along with President Carter's prudent view of American foreign policy--the only President who did not invade a foreign nation in the 20th century) and promotion of tightening our belt vis a vis energy by lowering the speed limit and putting on sweaters indoors went counter to our by then spoiled silly national mentality to which Reagan with his tax free morning in America pablum and sabre rattling American exceptionalism was just the right snake oil.
At the same time, it wasn't so much that the left couldn't appeal, but that much of the left was tuckered out fighting battles from the margins as it had through the civil rights and Viet Nam era. Despite its victories and prescience, this element of the left remained marginalized. And, at the same time the Democratic party leadership, seeking to avoid being painted by the same brush, became the party of spinelessness on one hand, and by contrast with the Republicans who had a single mantra--big guns, no taxes, and no regulations--Democrats found themselves splintered upon a thousand tiny crises created by the Republican bait and switch.
What is happening in conservative circles today is the upshot of the failure of Republican policies. But as with the Dems, it has begun with war and failure, an incorrect reading of the attitudes of the American populace about racial and ethnic issues, and above all money. However, while the left was stuck with a mamby pamby middle of the road leadership that went in a hundred different directions, Republicans today have distilled into one lump failure of frighteningly extremist blarney.
Is it me or Mika is getting dumber and dumber by the day? I can't stand looking at her anymore, all that dribble about "real" America, and how we have to go carefully into healthcare reform,and the debt! Since when does she worry about things that can't affect her life? That woman give a bad reputation to blonds, and i like blonds!
She's getting dumber every day. Sitting next to Joe Scarborough for a living will do that to you...
Our founding fathers were in large part, urban, educated and elite.
Does Mika believe New Yorkers, Chicagoans, DC residents and Bostonians haven't fought and died for our country, or the sacrifice of a soldier from the Bronx who dies in Iraq is worth less than his fellow soldier from Idaho because the latter is unfamiliar with bodegas and the B and D lines?
People who peddle this "real America/Americans" BS never, ever actually tell you who the "unreal Americans" are because it might cost 'em some votes or viewers some day.
I don't know if any of our historians here study the media but it would be fascinating to hear how this "every-man" image, largely created I think for George W. despite his WASPY roots, came to be such a powerful presidential meme. It seems that before this people ran for president by pointing to their accomplishments which distinguished them as part of an "elite", as in elite fighting force, class of men. It seems an unfortunate by product of the idea that we should all have opinions about all matters of politics that we now believe that we are all qualified to make real political decisions. This is a failure of our democratic/educational system that people often don't understand degrees of complexity/specialization at a time when we are ever more dependent on specialized experts.
I wonder if this has to do with the way white males had to relinquish the mantle of being the best, most accomplished, etc. -- because a) others were accomplishing the same things and b) to do so would be demonstrably racist. The still felt that they were "real" America, so emotionally they had to come up with some other traits to identify as their own so they could claim the mantle of "best" and the people who *should* be leading the country. They don't think of it as racist and exclusionary, but...
Thank you. The words "real America" are stand ins for "white America". They just can't come out and say it anymore like they did when they first implemented the southern strategy.
True, and would go even farther by saying that by "real America" they mean "white, uneducated, christian, gun toting, science denying, america".
You forgot "rural" as in "rural white America". Remember, those city slickers aren't real Americans, either.
Mostly gets it, but not totally. There are chunks of "White America" that aren't part of "Real America." 89% of Massachusetts is white, and so is 70% of Northern Virginia. Neither one of them are in "Real America," if what some of the Republicans say is true. It's not just about race, though race does have something to do with it. If you look at what parts of "White America" are excluded from "Real America," you'll mostly find that it's the places that have high population density - the coastal and inland big cities.
Tel- I think "white" is part of the definition, but not all of it. I think the important part is "like us," as in a way to make themselves the real bastions of honor and the carriers of the mantle. So being white is a (mostly) necessary but not a sufficient condition for being "us."
Since I don't have cable and watch virtually no TV I don't have much idea who Mika B is and what her views are. I do know who her dad is and I kinda like him.
I do know that I apparently am an "unreal" American. I was born in Chicago, served in the military, went to college and have moderate political views...........I'm clearly NOT a "real American".
Mika, however, with her Manhattan and DC elite breeding is a "real" American. All apparently because of her views on abortion and Sister Sarah Palin.
If you really want to figure out which parts of "America" are REALLY "AMERICAN" in Palinspeak you need to look at relative rates of methamphetamine usage.
Wasilla is the meth capitol of Alaska.
The Red states generally have much higher rates of meth usage than those "unreal" parts of America. In fact if you break down meth usage by county you will find that McCain/Palin carried virtually all the counties with higher rates of meth abuse.
Therefore, logically, REAL Americans abuse meth and love Sarah Palin.
That's keeping it real as the kids might say.
Me personally I'll stick with my Guinness and Craigslist hookers. That's how we self medicate in the unreal America.
thank you Irishpirate! I have been trying to think of just who soon to be ex gov. Palin reminds me of and you hit it on the nose: Sister Sarah from "Elmer Gantry!" She even looks a little like Jean Simmons. George Babbit is, of course, are all those consersative pundits who want her to bring her tent show to "Zenith" aka the lower 48. Ahh, but who is her traveling salesman/evangelist "Elmer?"
"Who is Elmer" ???
Bill Kristol certainly doesn't have the necessary charisma...
I think I likely got the "Sister Sarah" comment from a video I saw of Palin and that crazed African "witch doctor" preacher at her church in Wasilla. My memory is that he called her "Sister Sarah".
Of course I have seen the movie "Elmer Gantry" so that is a possibility also.
To paraphrase a line from the movie I think Palin is so popular with men on the right because of their desire to "fill her with the spirit".
Lulu Bains: Oh, he gave me special instructions back of the pulpit Christmas Eve. He got to howlin' "Repent! Repent!" and I got to moanin' "Save me! Save me!" and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps!
In trying to understand why Republicans/conservatives go in for this sort of thing, I keep coming back to one article on "What Makes People Vote Republican". It's written by Jonathan Haidt, a liberal-leaning psychology professor about trying to understand some of these dynamics. It's got a lot going for it, and a few things going against it, but these are the paragraphs that really stood out for me:
Later in the article, he says his studies have shown that self-identified liberals measure morality along (for want of a better term) axes of harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, while self-identified conservatives respond to those PLUS ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
I personally don't think that these things are moral considerations -- and I don't feel that they are, either. So it was pretty eye opening to see that, empirically, there are people who do. It helped me understand one of my friends in particular... and at least to see that dynamic happening in the political discourse around me.
So, to get back to the point... I think the whole "Real America" thing is an expression of these other three moral axes, particularly ingroup/loyalty, but probably with elements of the other two. From my point of view, it's impossible to really understand their righteousness about all this stuff, but at least now I think I see that to them it really does feel like a moral issue.
(I)t offers nothing but elbows for the Everymen it claims to uplift. It turns him into a cartoon and fetishizes him. He is not a person."
I love this. I would even go so far as to say it's beautiful if it wasn't so sad. What is the Southern Strategy offering the Everyman these days beyond bluster, nostalgia and lots of bad food. After reading Walter Kirn's NYT review of Nick Reding's 'Methland' I wonder this even more. Wasilla after all being the crystal meth capital of Alaska. And at the risk of my cartooning I would ask has Everyman in small town America now fried his nostrils and synapses on meth trying to work his three jobs? Now that he has no house, no healthcare and a huge debt?
To pick up on the argument that Citizen E is making above - have not the larger macro-economic policies of the Republicans gone very far to hollowing out the core life of the people of small town America that they profess to love so much? And this not at the root of much of the tea-bagging rage? An anti-globalization from the right. But I shouldn't say these are just Republican macro-economic policies as they are as much Democrat. "Corporate" - might be a better word.
Can the traditional 'Southern Strategy' as we've known it really channel and represent this rage anymore? The Republican establishment might think it can. The cable new jockeys might hope it can.
I don't think it can. I think we're moving into something else now.
And just to be fair I don't know if the establishment left has much of an answer for any of this either. However, if anyone manages to give Everyman affordable, possible and sustainable healthcare I think that would amount to something very important.
Maybe I'm alone around here in finding the loyalty/respect/sanctity dimension entirely normal, and in fact the basis for most ordered societies. Everyone who has ever followed an honor code is living on that dimension. And in fact it's just the surface manifestation of what is really a harm/care moral code underneath. You do these things to care for family, show respect for elders and the community, and so forth because you care about them and don't want to harm them. It's just communal and based on group norms, rather than individual and reasoned from first principles in each specific case.
Now, when a system like that has some extremely legitimate flaws, for example treatment of women or minorities or gays, the question is how you change it without creating complete chaos. That's the challenge. Some people are economically and socially secure enough to carry their whole social order in their heads regardless of what is going on around them, but most people need to see things worked out in family life and communal institutions. This isn't a pop psychological need. I'm talking about people who may end up homeless if the extended family network isn't functioning, or who may not have any social ties at all if the church doesn't fill that gap. And, of course, there are those of us who think church has some important content in its own right. None of this is unique to rural life, either. It happens anyplace that is cut off from the outside world, including some urban areas. And even some people who have broad experience of the world choose it because it is satisfying and meaningful in many ways.
If you want to change that world, there are two possible approaches. One is to smash everything and let the chips fall where they may. If you think old institutions and authorities are completely useless or counterproductive, that's the way to go. It does have a huge human cost, though. But there's another approach -- recognizing that the institutions have value, but that they need to extend their harm/care rationale in certain specific ways. And then taking the time to persuade those institutions to change. This seems a lot slower than the smashing approach, at least at first, and it's less satisfying to young people who want to assert themselves against their elders.
But I think it's more likely to stick in the long run. I mean, it has worked on my dad.
I don't think there's anything wrong with those things, and if they work for you, that's great. In fact, I like most of those things - I do believe in take care of each other. I think the problem comes in assuming that people who don't do those things are immoral. Is it immoral to be gay? Is it immoral to not be part of a church community? Is it immoral for a woman to be the head of household and a man to be the stay-at-home parent?
I think those things are choices, and that some of them will work for some people, even most people -- but if they don't work for me or you it's not immoral. It doesn't mean anyone else has to stop wanting to be a stay-at-home mom.
I might disagree that choosing to "respect elders" in principle is a harm/reciprocity morality. I think there's a difference between not harming people and actively "showing respect." That to me implies that you are setting a group of people above others regardless of their personal actions. Unless you feel that to choose not to interact with people you have no connection to is harming them.
Anyway, I don't think there's any component of smashing in any of the things I wrote, and if you read the article I linked to, it's in the context of respecting these other axes of morality, taking them into account and incorporating them into the liberal approach.
I guess my point is that I think -- and feel -- that as long as you aren't harming other people, whether or not you are part of a group or whether or not you are "pure" (and how you define pure) is none of my business. Because of that, it was hard for me to understand other peoples' righteousness and outrage about people not being part of the group, if they weren't hurting anyone. (And given the research in that article, I think it's clear that I'm not the only one.) In any case, I now feel like I have a better understanding. Maybe it's just me.
I've always found irony in that the REAL Americans (southern and western) who look down on us city-dwelling liberals are also more likely to co-op 9/11 for political reasons.
May I also point out that according to dingbats like Palin and Mika B., those who suffered most from 9/11 (you know, the people who died, the firefighters and ambulance drivers, the parents, kids, loved ones from NY, Boston, and DC) were apparently not real Americans. I don't like anyone using 9/11 as a prop, but frankly, if it's going to be used, shouldn't it be East Coasters, and especially New Yorkers?
The mythical Real American has changed over the years. Watch old movies, particular World War II movies that were made during or shortly after the war. The cast will include an all-white group of soldiers from across the nation, including a Country Hick, a City Slicker, a College Boy, a Jew With Glasses. And most importantly, an Ethnic Street-Smart Urban Guy. Probably from Brooklyn. Tells stories about going to the Polo Grounds with Pop. Sixty years ago, that guy was the Real American.
Today's Real American is a deracinated (i.e., we don't think of him as ethnic) white suburbanite without an ounce of street smarts who drives a pickup truck or SUV, don't take no lip from minorities, and knows by God the differences between shotguns, rifles, pistols and revolvers, and has at least two examples of the above four.
Personally, I prefer the clever World War II-era Real American over today's cow-like, proudly belching Real American.
"Real America/Real Americans" is an appeal to those that have a nostalgia for the 50's myth of the US. Not just "rural" but also the old simple suburbia of Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. Back before things got complicated with the Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution, back when father worked and was able to support the family, have a car, a house with a yard and wife at home taking care of the kids. Back when there was no racism (in the minds of people in white segregated communities) because they didn't hear about it on TV or the radio.
It is an appeal to an America that never existed outside of fantasy, which is why it is so powerful in their minds because they think that if somehow they could just return to those values that reality would become like the fantasy.
Just out of curiosity - how many of you listen to country music?
You lookin for a poll?
I listen to Taylor Swift. They market it as country, but it's pop.
Maybe a better way to phrase your question is: How many of you listen to radio stations that market themselves as "country"? I'll bet the percentage is in the single digits. Does that make us un-American?
First of all what difference does it make?
For the record this card carrying urban, coastal, liberal (Portland, Oregon can't get much bluer) has on his iPod: Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Ralph Stanley, Wilco, Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, Cowboy Junkies and some Ray Charles country.
No I'm just totally curious. I barely listen to country at all. It just seems that you can get a good idea of someone's politics based on their music.
I went to my first country music festival early this summer and it was actually a lot of fun. But there is definitely an element of jingoism I find distasteful, though. To me, it inches dangerously close to a kind of white power thing. Wish I could be more articulate but I had to post this real fast.
yeah...conservatives like the kind of pap "country" put out by Nashville. You know, the big hair, 'boot in yer ass', Lee Greenwood teeming refuse.
we with musical and ideological standards can enjoy real country music and/or alt.country, some of which was described by eric k above (speaking of which, just got the new Son Volt...nice), tho I do protest re: Wilco in the past decade. My anti-Tweedy animus knows no bounds.
regardless, I'd be wary of conflating music with politics, except in the category of those who tend to like their music superficial (regardless of genre) would also tend to prefer their politics the same way. It ain't a big leap from Kenny Chesney, to US Weekly, to Sarah Barracuda.
Acromion
I think that you may be right in some cases. But I think that a person's political beliefs can be different than their cultural tastes.
I myself am politically conservative in a free market libertarian sort of way.But if i told you my cultural tastes you would think that i was a flaming liberal.
I can believe in free market economics AND still like Laura Viers and Laura Gibson [Both singers from Portland Oregon.. more or less indie folk singers].
I think that is the problem nowdays. We have reduced all of our issues down to which clique you belong to.It's like that 80's movie "The Breakfast Club".
Our democracy is too important to be trivialised like that.And I wonder about people who must always toe the party line, whether they are Democrats or Republicans.
And for the record ,I like old country and bluegrass better than New Country music.
A non denominational amen to that, brother.
A Patsy Cline greatest hits CD has been in my car for months, but I also think Ella Fitzgerald was the greatest singer who ever lived. What does that make me? Someone who loves really good singers.
If you want a quick schooling in some of the contradictory politics associated with "real" country music, check out Merle Haggard. He famously did some jingoistic stuff in the late '60s, but he thought he was doing it tongue in cheek, while his record company over-promoted it as part of the era's culture wars. His songwriting is, in fact, reflective of his own hard time in prison, his Steinbeckian family background as dust-bowl refugees and migrant workers, his total identification with hard-scrabble types. He's written some of the most class-conscious music of any American songwriter (if you'll pardon the old-school terminology), including a song sympathetic to modern-day Mexican migrants, an anti-Iraq war song and an "interacial love song" that his record company didn't release when he wrote it because it conflicted with the image they were pushing at the time. Haggard had kind words for Hillary during the run-up to '08, wrote a song about letting a woman take the reins - which would have seemed very "lefty" until Obama picked up steam. Now when Merle sings his vintage lyric about "we don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee", he grins and adds, "That's about the only place we didn't smoke it." Interesting guy - great songwriting - some of which competes with Woody Guthrie in celebrating marginalized workers and a great bluesy voice and band. Of course, the other guy in a similiar vein was Johnny Cash, who cut across all demographics in his appeal. Put out a great album of songs about American Indians that was about as politically cutting edge as it gets. And Willie Nelson almost goes without saying. Recently did a nice album with Wynton Marsalis. Of course contemporary mainstream country mostly sucks, but there are some alt-country types like Steve Earle who are very, very different from the stereotypes. Also check out Iris Dement for a woman with a killer old-school white gospel sound and plenty of attitude that will appeal to most "lefties." Of course, Emmy Lou Harris has been doing good stuff for decades and decades that doesn't fit the commercial country mold.
Thanks for the music tips. I'm in a rut and I really need some fresh stuff to listen to. I think I'm gonna start with good ole Emmylou. Everything I've heard from her is just fantastic and so soulful.
Never heard of Merle Haggard. I'll have to check him out, but I've never been a fan of political music.
I'll agree with what eric k said. I personally like some of the more rock-type country, like ryan adams and johnny cash. Also try Neko Case, Cross Canadian Ragweed.
can i just say that i really, really like your comparison of this to al sharpton's frequent attempts at being The One Black Spokesman. that's on point.
MR Coates has written many good posts but this is defintly one of his best ones.
I especially like his comparison to the political left in the 70's. And I have felt for a long time that the political right has been presenting a cartoon version of white blue collar Americans.
It's as if the Republicans study blue collar Americans by watching proffessional wrestling or old episoides of "Hee Haw".All they seem to know about black people is what they see on the gangsta rap videos they catch their kids watching on MTV.
During the 1970's many well meaning upper middle class white liberals tried to help out the inner cities of America.But they were often niave and knew nothing about the people in the inner city [not always ,but often].
So often they misrepresented them or thought that the criminals were somehow fighting the system by mugging old ladies.Or they listened to the loudest voices in the community instead of the most sensible ones.
MR Coates is right about the political right doing the same thing today .They are listening to the most ignorant members of rural and white blue collar America and thinking that these idiots speak for the rest of us.
This shows the political rights ignorance of "real Americans more than anything else.
All of us [ whether black or white] know the loser who never has had a job and is a hateful pain in the ass.Every neighborhood has a few guys like that.But seeing these guys get on tv and claim to speak for all of their community is sickening.
Thank you MR Coates for writing such a good post and not buying into the belief that all blue collar Americans are racists or morons.
I apoligise. In the last sentence i should have wrote white blue collar americans. The term blue collar Americans is used so much in the media to mean white people that even i make the mistake sometimes .
One of the funnier things about this election was watching the Mccain campaign refer to northern Virginia as "not the real Virginia".Intersting enough John MCCain grew up in northern Virginia and went to a prep school there.Not only does he live there now while the Senate is in session. But i read that his brother lives in northern Virginia as well.
Northern Virginia is full of republicans who wax poeticaly about the "real Virginia" and "real america".
They also claim that Washington is full of yuppies and has no working class blue collar Americans. Washington DC and P.G. County [a suburb of DC] have plenty of blue collar neighborhoods.They just happen to be black and latino neighborhoods.
"Real America"? Well, I guess a lot of people do quit their jobs when they get tough.
Now a days we are told that the person you want to vote for is the folksy one, the one that you would prefer having a beer with. I have many folksy friends that I enjoy drinking beer with and enjoy their company, but when the heck did that ever become a qualification for running the most difficult and complex office in the world?
Along the lines of what TNC is saying, it's harmful because we liberals, no matter how smart and worldly we think we are, can fall into the same danger of making assumptions about all conservatives based on a media stereotype. So, if we make those assumptions, we may never bother to have certain conversations that might change a person's ideas or stances. And as someone who has had several conservative friends, I know that over time, it's possible. And dare I say it...I've learned a lot from my conservative friends, too.
Also, I would be careful not to assume much about a person based on musical preferences. As pure pop performers and songwriters, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Garth Brooks, and Tim McGraw are among my favorite country artists. But as a musician of 30 years, I also sing and play more erudite brazilian jazz. And guess what? My conservative friends who listen to country also really dig the brazilian stuff I play, even though I sing it in Portuguese! Then again, it's hard to dislike Jobim...a good melody is a good melody in any language!
Great reading from Joe Klein --
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/07/06/sarah-palins-america/
7/6/09 * Sarah Palin's America * posted by Joe Klein
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1840388,00.html
Sarah Palin's Myth of America * by Joe Klein * 9/10/08
Although it is fun to rant and rave over such a stupid comment, I'd rather talk about why Mika said it.
I don't think she believes it.
I think she said it for the same reason Brian Williams talks about watching NASCAR or Chris Matthews starting that bullsh*t about “W” being the kind of guy you want to have a beer with.
Privileged media personalities are scared to death of being called liberals, who are out of touch with mainstream America. Of course, they are out of touch with mainstream America. Not because they are liberal but because they are privileged media personalities.
The right-wing thinks they are in touch with mainstream American, that people who think as they do are “real Americans”. Of course, the right-wing in America is collectively getting more and more French fries short of a Happy Meal every day Obama is in office.
Who defines "Real America"? Seems to me that the Republicans want to own the term and apply it to their own members. If that is the case, it is nothing more than an empty political term. Why is Palin representative of such a group, because she made it up?
From the outside (I'm writing from Europe) it very much looks like she represents a sort of Third World America: ignorant, intolerant and radical. It's real, allright, but I don't think it's representative of the USA in a whole. I think we had a wonderfull taste of that in the last presidential elections. And it was a clear example of a positive and inspiring impact that the USA can have in the world. Palin and her fans, in the other hand, represents the worst that your great country has to offer us...