Wonkette
Your editor was just reading (re-reading, actually) John Steinbeck’s humorous snapshot of America in 1960, Travels With Charley. When your editor’s lunch (beer) was done, the bookmark was placed between pages 110 and 111 of the Penguin “Steinbeck Centennial Edition,” about how simple folk needed their two things to hate.
On these pages is a conversation between the author and a shopkeeper in a small Minnesota town, the conversation stimulated by Steinbeck’s wondering why everybody seemed to have no particular opinion about anything, or at least no particular opinion they were willing to share with a passing stranger. Steinbeck asked the shopkeeper what “channel” the frustrated people would use, for their simmering rage about basically everything.
“Well sir,” he said, “we’ve got a murder now and then, or we can read about them. Then we’ve got the World Series. You can raise a wind any time over the Pirates or the Yankees, but I guess the best of all is we’ve got the Russians.”
“Feelings pretty strong there?”
“Oh, sure! Hardly a day goes by somebody doesn’t take a belt at the Russians.”
…
I asked, “Anybody know an Russians around here?”
And now he went all out and laughed. “Course not. that’s why they’re valuable. Nobody can find fault with you if you take out after the Russians.”
…
“You think then we might be using the Russians as an outlet for something else, for other thing.”
“I didn’t think that at all, sir, but I bet I’m going to. Why, I remember when people took everything out on Mr. Roosevelt. Andy Larsen got red in the face about Roosevelt one time when his hens got the croup. Yes, sir,” he said with growing enthusiasm, “those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians …. Know what I’m going to do? Next time Andy Larsen come in red in the face, I’m going to see if the Russians are bothering his hens. It was a great loss to Andy when Mr. Roosevelt died.”
At least a man who raises hens is doing something useful. Try raising chickens, teabaggers! Then you can, uhh, hand out tasty farm-fresh eggs, to protest this president for being half-negro.
By the end of this book, your editor recalls, the humor is done and there are quite a few people willing to yell their opinions, at crying little schoolgirls, because John Steinbeck is in the South during the desegregation battles. At some point, shouldn’t all these people have died, of old age? Where is the supply of 45-year-old racist rednecks coming from? Is there a factory somewhere? Sure, their numbers are in steep — and one hopes, permanent — decline, but the fact is, somewhere, beer-bellied 45-year-old illiterates with considerable opinions about “our rights” are being newly minted.
Travels With Charley [The Atlantic]
They will never be extinct because the phrase “Look out nigger, the Klan’s gettin’ bigger!” is lots of fun to say.
Ken, you are just trying to make us feel bad by telling us you read, like, books and stuff. Damn you, Reader.
Racist rednecks in the south are a self-replicating system. It’s passed down from generation to generation like the nonsense about the Glorious, Lost Cause. You’ve got to have someone to blame for your own inability to better yourself (since you’re not going bust your ass to get a higher education). The Catholics were good for a while but now it’s back to the regulars, the blacks & the Jews. And of course the new immigrants, the brown ones in particular.
“Yessir, back in them days people got what they worked fer; the gummit didn’t just had it out to ‘em. Folks was closer to God then too.”
I’m not sure where they’re reproducing but maybe we should start treating them like any pest and attack their food sources: Palin rally parking lots and AM talk radio. They’ve already started treating Michael Steele like a pellet of rat poison we tried hiding in the RNC.
I thought we covered this a couple posts back when we were remarking on how the stupids always have a million kids and the eeleetists, maybe one?
Hmmmm. Farm-fresh eggs.
Part of Reconstruction should have been sterilization.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking read!”
Dman Libruls with yer book learnin.
And sure as shootin’, an ad for Steinbeck books pops up on the left.
Be interesting to see what other ads can be snared by post subject. Lets have a big discussion about something really dumb, like Coke vs Pepsi, or Camaro vs Mustang.
Lascauxcaveman: Have you seen the NAKED WOMEN around? I keep looking out for NAKED WOMEN but lo and behold, there are no NAKED WOMEN to be seen. What can we do about this curious lapse of NAKED WOMEN in Wonkette ads? Perhaps more NAKED WOMEN would help.
The whole ‘controversy’ about the Plan B pill and the reason the wingnuts are all uppity about abortion is for this reason exactly- they are afraid of dwindling numbers in their ranks
I feel like I just went to a very lovely American Literature class lecture right there. Ken, have you ever thought of becoming a professor? If you were my teacher, I’d never skip class so I could sleep, like I did w/ my real Amer Lit Survey.
AnnieGetYourFun: Be sure to ask for the brown ones.
chascates: Don’t forget the lesbians and teh other gayz.
LittlePig: And now the Civony ad appears. Coincidence? I think not.
They’re my parents? (Except that they’re 55 because I haz teh olds)
I think I finally got through to my mother on the torture issue. I had to use a rape metaphor.
Ah, torture and rape, good old fashioned family conversatin.
“Where is the supply of 45-year-old racist rednecks coming from?”
Well see Ken, sometimes when a redneck and his cousin care for each other very much, they do a special dance with each other and make a baby redneck. But not until they are adults; at least past 6th grade. And they know that the only form of birth control that really works is prayer.
An Amsterdam iPhone app? That is SO ME!
chascates: its not just the South. Racists are in every state and every country.
Yes You Can Own A Piece of History: Also hippies.
Also.
JMP:
You forgot to mention the special ingredients of a quart of Old Crow, some chewing tobaccy and pork rinds.
Fox n Fiends: Very true. They just seem more obvious down here if we don’t have more of them.
Maybe we should just go back to hating the Spaniards. Remember the Maine! was our previous Never Forget.
Iggy Plop: And the Kaiser for that matter.
bago: Haha, with my mom (a classic Republican Old) I just write a libtarded letter to the editor (the always publish mine, just to fair-and-balance out the olds, I guess) and mom reads the letters column religiously.
Then she calls me to me up and disowns me, again. Keeps dropping off those checks for my kids’ piano and voice lessons though
Dr Tobias Funke: Yeah Plan B is a big treat to American Dumbocracy. The white trash kids see just enough teevee to question whether they really want to grow up poor and stupid. Lots of the attractive folks on teevee are actually portrayed as being ’smart’. The kids know Plan B can bail you out of a sticky situation relatively painlessly.
Lascauxcaveman: Heh, I type like a caveman or sumpin’
treat = threat
the (usually) = they
I’m sure there are others.
Don’t be worrying. The NeoCons continue to mutter foul words about Roosevelt, both Elinor and Franklin.
If AIPAC hadn’t manage to swell the NeoCon ranks, they’d still be calling FDR “Jewsevelt”.
magic titty: If you replace “Look out” with “Don’t snigger”, it’s even funnier.
Well I guess Roxbury is South Boston, but how do you explain East St. Louis?
Fox n Fiends:
Yupe. See “Ohio Militia - End of Times”. You don’t have to go any farther than the 4th slide.
http://www.freewebs.com/ohiomilitia/
bago: They’re my parents? (Except that they’re 55 because I haz teh olds)
Your parents are 55? I’m surprised they are still sentient. Mine are in their late 70s and miraculously still walking around and breathing and stuff.
Where were we? Oh yeah, racists. In my own extended family I have noticed that the men who are unashamed of their racism (use the n word at Thanksgiving dinner, for instance) seem to pay less attention to personal hygiene, have fewer or strangely-directioned teeth and spend the great majority of their time with other men, for purposes of backup (”yessir, them niggerz had it comin’, Billy Sue.”) How they reproduce is a mystery to me.
Especially memorable, is the part of the book where some redneck mistakes Steinbeck’s brown, curly-haired poodle for a n-word (I can’t even type it) sitting in his truck.
Red neck-ism, or Chronic Cervical Inflammation, is caused by the force with which reality keeps striking them squarely between the eyes. The recoil causes the flesh of their necks to abraid, other symptoms include the inability to speak in anything other than gibberish, a moribund interest in watching people drive very fast in a circle and of course the desire to have carnal relations with your immediate family.
Conservatism is not the same thing, of course. That’s a willingness to spout ideology you know to be bankrupt. The poor Red Necks don’t realize this, which results in more high impact encounters with reality.
They eventually all move to compounds and go homo in an effort to avoid the flying reality, It’s sad actually.
S.Luggo: Jesus Christ, do they need someone with HTML experience. Oh wait, that would imply someone with an IQ slightly above room temperature. Sorry!
The adds on my page are all about some “colon cleaning regimen supplement”, which I thought was an ironic Wonkette colon kind of thing at first, but turned out to be the collective wisdom of the horde clicks.
The spiders can pick up on the butsecks now.
Be vewy afwaid.
From Politico.
As might be expected, the comments are everything. A proposal to have the Democratic Party renamed the “Democrat(sic) Socialist Party”. Disturbingly, not all Republicans are on board:
“This was engineered by a bunch of people who ought to be involved in College Republicans, not the RNC,” complained a well-connected Republican sympathetic to Steele. “It’s not that they’re not well-intentioned, but it’s just juvenile.”
Obviously a RINO.
I’m not sure how well these folks are going to hold up over the next 4 years. Strangely, being crazy is not the ballot box draw it once was.
Lascauxcaveman: really? all i’m seeing is ads for gay porn and boxed wine…
as usual.
Cut back on public education, export jobs and let stupid teenagers breed. You’ll get a bountiful crop of voting rednecks. Sell them guns, booze and gaudy cars on credit to keep them entertained and too broke to do much. If the herd gets too big, start a war. Preferably in some place they can’t find on a map and where the people don’t speak muruhcan.
I blame double wides. Not to go all Earthday on you, but per square foot, those things give off an incredible amount of toxic fumes. Some people breathe that shit their whole lives. No amount of going outside to feed the dogs makes up for a lifetime of sleep surrounded by particle board, wall-to-wall, fake paneling, Formica, fluorescent lights, and a TV that never goes off.
I’ve been to one of the factories, in West Monroe, LA - they still use Johnny Reb as their high school mascot. Had a big fight there a few years over a physics (!) teacher who her started class with prayer.
Basically nothing a small thermonuclear device wouldn’t cure.
Jukesgrrl: Ahhh and the rumble of the whole thing when the heater goes on. Plus nothing else sounds like a trailer door being slammed shut (check out the sound effects on George Jones’ The Door). And the wind making it flex during a strong spring breeze.
Takes me back.
I’ve actually been thinking about Travels With Charley a lot lately.
A whole lot.
http://books.google.com/books?id=r00AYFBX5cEC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=steinbeck+secession+texas&source=bl&ots=qP3bxNbvdC&sig=5Ttgt-bBgvT8bG_gRREUQD3OMyQ&hl=en&ei=8BHxScWkHqK0NbuN5c4P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
Steinbeck definitely had the right idea. He simply should have pursued it.
Oh, Ken, you silly goose. They hated Nigrahs. Some things never change.
At least a man who raises hens is doing something useful. Try raising chickens, teabaggers!
Most of the teabaggers seem to be redneck welfare queens who worry that other people having jobs will cause inflation and chip away at their 34% fraudulent disability payments.
DollarStorePregnancyTest: Gay porn and boxed wine? The ad server musta thought this was RedState…
chascates: Jukesgrrl: ATV/four-wheeler mishaps will marginally reduce the fried-bologna sammich-eatin’ set just a bit; here’s a two-fer, in less than 24 hours in the same geography:
The Winchester Star | Two area men die in crashes
Trooper Gray said that he believes alcohol was a factor in the accident, and it’s possible that the surviving ATV driver could face charges of driving under the influence or operating an ATV on a state highway, which is illegal.
The narrative writes itself…tragic comedy gold ensues.
Double-wides in Ozarkian Tornado Alley, in le printemps…smell the carnage!
Mr. Layne: I sense a disturbing thread of age-ism in your post. I mean really, everyone knows that the crank gene is not expressed until at least age 60. After that, they’re all just mummy shufflers anyway.
doloras: magic titty: And go figger, white sheets are de rigueur.