Wow. Considering that I am currently deep in the Heartland of America, hanging with some really amazing people, I find this really offensive.

As election time approaches in America, Barack Obama’s historic candidacy holds much of the world in thrall. Yet there’s one significant sector of the US voting public that has so far proved resistant to the Democratic candidate’s charms. The great American redneck – that rifle-toting, Bible-thumping, truck-loving caricature devoted to beer and motor sports – has already tripped up Obama once, and he may do it again before November’s presidential poll.

Joe has a great deal to say about rednecks, God and guns, and the way that Democratic idols like Obama have failed to connect with what he calls “the white ghetto of the working poor”…

…A few more people arrive, and most of them seem to have stepped from the pages of Bageant’s book. One man is wearing a stars-and-stripes bandanna and has tattooed biceps wider than my thighs. His neck really is bright red from the sun. Someone else sports camouflage deer-hunting overalls. There are several Harley-Davidson T-shirts straining over barrel-shaped bellies. Yet the crowd is embarrassingly sparse, and McCoy, who is in his eighties, hobbles around looking glum. Joe and I talk to his daughter, Judy, and she confirms what we suspect: McCoy is charging an extra $5-a-head entrance fee towards his bandstand fund, which, with the soaring price of petrol, is keeping the redneck hordes away…

…“A lot of it is their own fault,” Tom says. “They couldn’t wait for their new car, their new house, and if you asked them how they would pay for it, they’d say, ‘We’ll get lots of overtime.’ But now there’s no more overtime and they can’t afford the repayments and they’ve lost their credit, their cars and a lot of them are losing their homes.”

Most, if not all, of the “rednecks” I have met have actually been rather wealthy. Yes, they like guns and some enjoy motor sports. They’re Christian. They work hard for the money they have, instead of inheriting it like a Kennedy. They enjoy their life and their land and they love their country. Does that make them white trash?

It’s pretty much guaranteed already that anyone sucking off the public teat is going to vote Democrat anyway. Anyone who can’t hold a job will do likewise. So I’m willing to bet Obama already has the trailer park crowd sewn up. But to refer to “rednecks” in such a way as to disdain how they got those necks - by working hard in the great outdoors of this beautiful country - is pretty insulting.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Election 2008, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.