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18 comments:
Hey Len,
The Bush administration thinks we're all rednecks..or, at least it HOPES we are....
I went into a riff on this over here:
http://mwprogressive.blogspot.com/
Great read, hizzoner...thanks for the link.
In the film “Easy Rider” there is the never-to-be forgotten scene in which the three riders, Wyatt (Peter Fonda), Billy (Dennis Hopper) and George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) are on the road in the Deep South, and stop off at a café in a small town, to get something to eat. Because they look like hippies - and so are everything real Americans shouldn’t be – the waiter ignores them, and they are the objects of hostile remarks coming from a group of local-red necks sitting at a near-by table.
The three riders get the message, and, with stomachs still empty, depart the town quickly. When they are preparing to sleep at the roadside later that evening, they talk about what happened in the café, and wonder why they should have evoked so much hostility. George (Jack Nicholson) says it’s because they (Fonda and Hopper) represent freedom to them (the men in the cafe).
Yes, because the redneck is unfree, imprisoned in ignorance, and encased in an emotional straightjacket (not unlike most of us men, come to think of it) he hates anything and anyone who reminds him of this - like gays, foreigners, and independent women.
Christopher, I think you hit upon it. It is, I suppose, only natural that the truly free are resented.
Your point raises another issue which somehow got blurred by the rise in popularity of Country and Western music. When I was very small, "western" music was not really "country" at all. The music of the "Sons of the Pioneers", and "Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys" , for example, bears little resemblance to another genre --"blue grass". Western is "western" and blue grass is definitely "eastern" and "south".
I did not associate what came to be called "Country and Western" with "red neck" mentalities i.e., intolerance and/or bigotry until the early sixties when some C&W artists began to react negatively to Rock music --at the same time increasingly identifying with Civil Rights and the peace movement. After all, it had been only recently that Elvis Presley, as southern as one gets, had embraced both Rhythm & Blues as well as white and black gospel music. In the middle sixties, Merle Haggard seemed to have gone the other way, appealing to the musical equivalent of George Wallace's natural constituency.
By the time "Easy Rider" hit the screens, "hippies" were having none of C&W which they identified with southern bigotry and narrow mindedness.
FuzzFlash sez...
John Lennon, singer/songwriter/peace activist/, indeed a man who possessed one of the finest intrinsic bull-shit detectors of the twentieth century sang on "Working Class Hero":
"You think you're so clever and classless and free.
But you're just a bunch of fuckin' peasants to me....."
Tough, biting?....sure, but one can't cloak the message with subtlety when dealing with hardcore bigots.
From the album,
"Chock Full Of Country Goodness"
by the Amazing Rhythm Aces, words and music by Russell Smith.
"REDNECKS UNPLUGGED"
"All my redneck buddies drinkin' longneck buds
There's nothin' like a cold one in a frosty mug
You can drink it from a pitcher, drink it from a jar
You can drink it in the back seat of somebody's car
Workin' all week hangin' drywall up
Tonight they're crusin' in Bubba's truck
They're just rednecks unplugged
CHORUS
Mind your manners don't touch my hat
Keep your hands off my woman 'cause I don't like that
All in all we're a friendly bunch
But if you're lookin' for trouble better bring your lunch
We love nascar races, monster trucks
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Flatt and Scruggs
rednecks unplugged
Bobby works from nine to five
Chokin' to death in a coat and tie
But
Bobby's not thinkin' 'bout all of that bull
Bobby's got his mind on a tractor pull
He'll be gettin' plowed will all of his buds
Gettin' that white shirt covered with mud
He's just a redneck unplugged
CHORUS
Hey, we work real hard and we play hard too
We put a whole lotta heart in everything we do
Keepin' that shoulder right to the wheel
We're america's best, the real damn deal
Mom and dad, and uncle doug
Old aunt Edna, cuttin' the rug
Rednecks unplugged
Rednecks unplugged"
Len you write, "By the time "Easy Rider" hit the screens, "hippies" were having none of C&W which they identified with southern bigotry and narrow mindedness."
Then along came a beautiful East Coast fuck-up called Gram Parsons who found some Flying Burrito Brothers and a nightingale named Emmylou Harris; they proceeded to acoustically prospect for hearts of gold. John Sebastian suggested what a beautiful day it was for a daydream. By the time The Stones got acquainted with a bunch of Honky Tonk Women in Bakersfield CA, C&W had regained some cachet with a wilting generation of flower children. Many embraced "the music", but few adopted redneck persona or attitudes.
Wonderfully observed comments, christopher i.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vra9VSvA7zE
:D
hi cowboy...
I like existentialism (go see "Wages of Fear" when you finish reading Formale und Transzendentale Logik) and cowboys (go see "Heaven's Gate" before you ride off to Johnson County, WY)I also like the original redstateupdate-
www.redstateupdate.net covered 6 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 25 most censored stories in 2006 with humor and prescience, and posted a new gwbush comic every week since 2005-
www.redstateupdate.net
funny, frightening, free
and 'it's all true'
particle61
Fuzzflash sez....
By the time The Stones got acquainted with a bunch of Honky Tonk Women in Bakersfield CA, C&W had regained some cachet with a wilting generation of flower children. Many embraced "the music", but few adopted redneck persona or attitudes.
Definitely another landmark in the history of rock.
Thanks to Vierotchka for the link to another great "Update". Hilarious stuff. These guys remind one of the old "Hudson and Harrigan" team --originally on KILT-AM in Houston before moving on to the West Coast.
After, I graduated from high school, I moved South for a year. This was during the civil rights era. This eighteen year old was shocked with what I, heard and saw.
White people so racist firmly believing that black people were not as intelligent as whites. Can you believe it. I argued in defense, firmly knowing that this were not true.
After my year long stay in Florida I moved to Georgia for four months, before heading out to So. Ca.
Living in the South truly matured and deepened my view of civil liberties for all people.
About a year ago, my sister did some research on our ancestors and on a 1882 census it stated that my great Grandfather was mulatto. Needless, to say I really had a good laugh. For all these years, this light haired, blue eyed gal didn't know.
But, perhaps in my heart when I stood up to others in the south, perhaps, I did know.
When I found out, I shared this at work, and one co worker just kept repeating, I would have never known
and neither did I.
To Diane b: Whenever two or more “races” live side by side over many generations, the result will always be that, over time, each person belonging to each “race” will have people of the other “race”, or "races", among their forebears. Consequently there will be countless millions of “white” Americans unaware that some of their ancestors over the last 300 years were of African descent.
I speak as a blue-eyed light-haired “white” boy originally of colonial African background, with ancestors who migrated from Europe and settled in Africa over 300 years ago, and, consequently, I have never had any doubt that among my own forebears are "black" or "brown" Africans.
For anyone interested in “racial” attitudes of even the relatively recent past, I recommend Sinclair Lewis’s novel “Kingsblood Royal”, published in the late 1940’s, about a “white” doctor, with the internalized “white” attitudes of small town America of that time about “race”, and proud of his aristocratic European lineage, who discovers in the course of researching his family genealogy, that he’s, horror of horrors, 1/32nd “negro”!!!
Christopher, thank you for the recommendation of what sounds like a great book.
You are right are forbears, are a mixture of a variety of races in this Country. Which truly is what makes this Country Great!
I am quite proud of my Great Grandfather, I figure from the census he was born in 1824, way before the Civil War. He probably traveled the under ground rail road to reach the Northern border near Canada. He said on the census he was Canadian.
I really respect him for the challenges he faced.
Len, thank you for The link To"Restoring American Democracy", I learned a great deal.
Unity 08, appears now from my new understanding, is using the something similar to the Borda, method of voting. I hope Borda is spelled correctly.
Last night when I shared thoughts about my Grandfather, I used the word mulatto, I was tired and it was quite late so I did not explain why I usethe term mulatto, it was written that way in the 1882 census. I do not used that term. I am very sorry and I hope I did not offend anyone, for it was not intentional.
Diane, I am sure no one took offense --especially in context. My own ancestors, on both sides of the family, were often called much worse. We all came from someone and, given the course of history, almost every clan, tribe, race, or ethnicity has been hated by some other clan, tribe, race or ethnicity at one time or another. One day, we'll all have a "coke" and teach the world to sing. Until then, we muddle through as best we can.
LMAO! Yeah, I've seen these guys before...redneck satire. BTW; if Bush and cohorts thinks we're all rednecks, all I've got to say about that is: It takes one to know one! Have a great Sunday.
These guys remind me of an old radio team that I used to work with at KILT AM/FM in its golden age. The team was Hudson and Harrigan, about whom someone should write a history. I worked with the original "Mack Hudson" who migrated from Houston to the LA/San Diego market. At about the same time, I was partnered with Lee Jolly on KILT-FM. The show probably presaged Jon Stewart or even Keith Olbermann. In other words, I put on the news but the pair of us had a lot of fun with it at the expense of the people who were making the news.
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