Wednesday, August 28, 2013

THE CULTURE WAR ON BASIC CABLE.

While you hipsters were debating the cultural significance of Miley Cyrus, at the Washington Times Charles Hurt was drawing kulturkampf from the fetid well of Honey Boo-Boo.
America, if you want to know what the establishment media and the beneficent federal government think of you, tune your television sets in to “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”
?
It appears that no one on the program actually works for a living, other than to exploit the child in beauty pageants. Now, of course, they are exploiting the whole family with the show on the “Learning” Channel, an entity that, by the way, was founded by the federal government in 1972 to educate the poor masses. 
As with most government programs, the result is incestuously stupid, lazy and hopeless people who cannot roll themselves off the bed long enough to find a job and buy a better house that doesn’t rattle violently every time a train goes by.
While under the guidance of "the beneficent federal government" the network did supply wholesome educational fare; but after it was privatized, first under the ownership of the Financial News Network and then the Discovery Channel, it became a kingdom of crap. Hurt fails to mention this, probably because it would suggest a vastly different object lesson than he intended.

But Hurt still has the "establishment media" to blame, and in his view Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo is not offered as entertainment to attract viewers and advertisers, but as a shaming spectacle to let the rubes know with what contempt the establishment views them:
Honey Boo Boo and her fat clan is what liberal Northeast and West Coast elites think of most Americans — especially Southerners and rural people. That is because in their vast and cloistered ignorance they have never met any normal Americans nor traveled past the Potomac River. They have never been to a rodeo.
If only we could get TLC execs to a rodeo, maybe they'd change their ways. (TLC did have a rodeo reality show, but that was in 2006; presumably it was driven off the air by the Democratic sweep in Congress.)
But there is hope yet. 
The great thing about America and the genuinely promising thing about the onslaught of modern technology is the stunning degree to which the elite’s long-held monopoly on media and culture is shattered. The barbarians are at the gate and can no longer be kept out. 
Those barbarians, of course, come in the form of “Duck Dynasty.”
Ah, Duck Dynasty -- the current conservative cultural touchstone, and one that is not a product of the establishment media, but transmitted from a barn with "A&E" painted on the side by ham radio operators.  Hurt's exegesis adds nothing much to the now-customary yap about how the Robertsons are everything that's right with America, but he does have a wow finish:
In one episode aired recently, the patriarch observed: “Uptown living, you’ve got to call 911. Where I am, I am 911.” 
Truly, an observation worthy of Alexis de Tocqueville or the Federalist Papers.
This suggests a new direction for the Tea Party; instead of handing out copies of the Constitution, they can hand out DVDs of Duck Dynasty, and maybe other offerings from the same production company, such as Shark Hunters, Sole Survivor, and Auction Hunters,  which I'm sure also have a story to tell about America -- probably the same one Mencken had.

Me, I prefer to celebrate America with a Beverly Hillbillies marathon.

150 comments:

  1. sharculese10:32 AM

    I'm not going to dig through his archives for proof, because he is a gross crazy person, but guess what currently-Orthodox not-so-crypto fascist thinks Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is absolutely a triumph of rural culture over the secular elites.

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  2. Ellis_Weiner10:37 AM

    Innit cute when they try to be smart? As I was reading I thought, in the brain of my mind, "Oh, but surely he did the minimal, third-grade-level research necessary to be sure that TLC is still owned and run by the government." Dummy me!



    Speaking of which: Honey Boo-Boo? "west of the Potomac"? Surely this is a parody of wised-up, smart-guy, right-wing insight. And I think he's serious! HA HA, the joke's on m--


    What?

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  3. sharculese10:48 AM

    All our national politicians are born in Washington and never leave. Didn't you know that?

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  4. The great thing about America and the genuinely promising thing about the onslaught of modern technology is the stunning degree to which the elite’s long-held monopoly on media and culture is shattered.


    ...Basic cable?


    I've said it many times before: If these guys are going to keep whining about the culture and bragging about their influence, it might be time for them to actually...y'know, do something. There are tons of people out there producing their own content, including evangelical Christians who are getting into it with a passion. But movement conservatives just can't pull it off - they're satisfied to just take credit for things that other people have done.


    Okay, so maybe you guys aren't that creative. The fact that your cultural vanguard is represented by the increasingly moribund Declaration Entertainment speaks to that. But what about patronage? What about funding people with good ideas, but without the means to follow those ideas? Surely your entire movement isn't creatively bankrupt. Where are all the right-wing movies and shows on Kickstarter or IndieGogo? Why aren't the culture critics scouting the web and local publications for people with potential?


    Seriously guys, if a few low-tier Internet celebrities can get Warwick fucking Davis to appear in their production of Meme: The Movie, I don't see why you guys can't do the same thing.

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  5. "...but as a shaming spectacle to let the rubes know with what contempt the establishment views them."


    OK, I just can't keep up... I thought that "shame", and the bringing back thereof, was what was going to rescue society from the degraded cesspool that it has become under librul rule and elevate it to the shining city on the hill of conservative hopes and dreams. You know... we must shame the poor into getting off the dole and being happy with sub minimum wage jobs; shame the sluts into not murdering their babies in the womb, and dressing modestly so they will never be raped; shame the feminists into getting back to the kitchen so that more jobs will be available to their men. Et fucking cetera. Apparently the only thing that will save us is to have President Ted Cruz appoint Charles Hurt to head the Ministry of Culture, and then painting the cast of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo in blackface and moving them to the South Bronx.

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  6. bekabot10:53 AM

    I'm so rural I don't even have a hometown — I live in an unincorporated district. (Although the nearest thing I have to a hometown hosts rodeos all the time.) But I humbly suggest that if you want cloistered northeasterners to think of backwoods types as "normal people" it's not a good idea to adduce "Duck Dynasty" as your evidence. That's all. Now I am exhausted, and will retire for the day. {Grabs at smelling-salts and stumbles back to fainting-couch.}

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  7. sharculese10:57 AM

    Where are all the right-wing movies and shows on Kickstarter or IndieGogo?

    Here you go: http://yourkickstartersucks.tumblr.com/post/56926979439/this-fiction-follows-the-perils-and-adventures-of

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  8. "Me, I prefer to celebrate America with a Beverly Hillbillies marathon."


    Not bad, but do you think this wingnut zygote Hurt has ever heard of Li'l Abner?

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  9. brandonrg11:09 AM

    So, not having cable, I've never seen Duck Dynasty (or Honey Boo-Boo, for that matter). What is supposed to be so conservative about it?

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  10. Jeffrey_Kramer11:11 AM

    They have never met any normal Americans nor traveled past the Potomac River. They have never been to a rodeo.


    This is a masterpiece of found poetry. "They have never been to a rodeo"... it provokes, it tantalizes, it aches for some connection with the point it implicitly, purportedly illustrates: the banishment of "normal Americans" from "their" lived experience. How is this connection supposed to operate, you ask yourself; in what bizarre symbolic landscape does "having been to a rodeo" constitute this sacramental communion with "normality," and its absence betray some radical emptiness of spirit? How can the most proudly beclowned of all activities serve as metonymy for the "normal"?


    I have met many Americans, of so many flavors of "normal." I have crossed the Potomac River, and recrossed it, countless times. But I have never been to the rodeo. What am I, then?

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  11. brandonrg11:16 AM

    "Normal Americans" seem to be about 10% of the country once you cut out the entire east and west coasts and major urban areas in the rest of the country.

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  12. Charles Butthurt: Honey Boo Boo and her fat clan is what liberal Northeast and West Coast elites think of most Americans — especially Southerners and rural people.

    Methinks the turd doth protest too much. Forget a condescending "media establishment," here's what I think he's really worried about:

    More People Watched Honey Boo Boo than the Republican National Convention

    More People Watch Honey Boo Boo than the Entire Fox Prime Time Lineup

    As Roy deftly points out, shorter Hurt: Redneck that make rednecks and Republicans look bad? A media plot. Redneck shows that make rednecks and Republicans look good? Authentic American culture finding its way past the snarling media gatekeepers to the yearning masses.

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  13. sharculese11:17 AM

    It's about a family that got rich by selling duck calls and now gets to goof off on their palatial estate doing rich people things, except rich rural people things. Also they're openly Christian (praying before meals and such) so obviously the show enrages us secular elites.


    The funny thing is that it's kind of an open secret among non-insane people that Duck Dynasty is basically an unscripted sitcom. The people are real, but the scenarios are either invented by the producers or exaggerated reenactments of things that happened offscreen, and most of the zingers (probably including the one Hurt approving compares to de Tocqueville [seriously, I don't know what the fuck] are written for them).

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  14. brandonrg11:19 AM

    Huh. Not sure why I'm supposed to be hating that? I mean, aside from my general dislike of all of those types of shows.

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  15. PulletSurprise11:21 AM

    What if I went bass fishing in the Potomac without technically crossing it?

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  16. redoubt11:26 AM

    What Butthurt's really complaining about, of course, is that those


    incestuously stupid, lazy and hopeless people who cannot roll themselves off the bed long enough to find a job and buy a better house that doesn’t rattle violently every time a train goes by
    are, according to this show, white, and therefore aren't supposed to exist. (PS: this is the "real America" that they mouth off as being so fond of.)

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  17. Squarely Rooted11:27 AM

    "...they have never met any normal Americans nor traveled past the Potomac River."
    Beyond the general wackadoodleness of this is the specificness of "the Potomac River" is laughably wrong. As someone who currently lives on the far, "normal-people" side of the Potomac River, I will note that it is Northern VA that won that state for Obama two elections in a row.
    What a doofus.

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  18. Ellis_Weiner11:31 AM

    "Surely your entire movement isn't creatively bankrupt."


    True, but only to the extent that you can't be creatively bankrupt if you were never creatively productive, in business, or profitable in the first place. Name one public conservative (American) who has created anything of value. Fine. Now name two more. Aha!

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  19. chuckling11:39 AM

    Where I am, I am 911.”



    Public Enemy has a song for that.

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  20. XeckyGilchrist11:39 AM

    But but but look at how much of the land area is red!

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  21. BG, ribbons in my hair11:40 AM

    I live in Gomorrah on the Hudson (don't credit me, a good friend coined that). I don't watch Honey Boo Boo. I don't know anyone who does. I don't know whether or not these people represent "typical" Southerners or "typical" Americans. However, I would guess that they are getting handsomely compensated by the network, not the government. And I would be thrilled if I never saw their ugly mugs again (along with pretty much everything else on TLC). But people like Hurt, who are perfectly wiling to paint Northerners with a broad brush while simultaneously complaining that's what we're doing (without a shred of actual evidence), really give me a pain in the ass.

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  22. chuckling11:44 AM

    Funny how people who live in glass houses are the ones who most enjoy throwing rocks.

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  23. XeckyGilchrist11:44 AM

    This leaving out of one teeny little completely essential fact is a wingnut favorite. Here it's "oh, sorry, didn't happen to mention that TLC was privatized somewhere in there."


    cf., today, all the "MLK was Republican!" stuff. Which, even if it were true, leaves out the inconvenient fact of the Southern Strategy after MLK's time.

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  24. Jeffrey_Kramer11:44 AM

    What we need to do is make Jupiter the 51st state, give resident status to six or so reliable Democrats, and then the power of the blue-red map will be ours!

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  25. Jeffrey_Kramer11:46 AM

    It all depends on whether the nearest rodeo is on your side of the river or not.

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  26. XeckyGilchrist11:46 AM

    Now, that's hardly fair. Since that screenshot was taken about four weeks ago, that guy has raised another $50 toward his $4,800 goal.

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  27. PulletSurprise11:49 AM

    For the love of all that is holy, don't tell Hurt about Squidbillies.

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  28. XeckyGilchrist11:51 AM

    And whether it has an Obama clown.

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  29. PulletSurprise11:55 AM

    Presumably, he's referring to police service and not firefighting.

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  30. I wish there was room in today's Republican party for communists, which is what they say MLK was when he wasn't out Republicaning it around.

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  31. They have never been to a rodeo


    For Republicans everything comes back to tying a leather strap around a horse's balls for a more exciting ride.

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  32. It's that classic "noble savages" routine you get from establishment types when they try to understand "normal" Americans. "Rodeos - that's where those people go, right?"

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  33. Kurzleg12:17 PM

    “Uptown living, you’ve got to call 911. Where I am, I am 911.”



    I suppose he's his own emergency room doctor too. "I need quart of JD, stat!"

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  34. Spaghetti Lee12:31 PM

    You could pretty much say the same thing about Honey Boo Boo. Really, only an idiot would trust everything they see on reality TV as the unvarnished, unaltered, objective truth. Luckily, Charles Hurt is just that kind of idiot. If he looked closer, I think he'd find all those elite media types are laughing at him.

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  35. Gern Blanston12:39 PM

    “Uptown living, you’ve got to call 911. Where I am, I am 911.”

    My recollection of the Federalist Papers is that they represent more or less the opposite of what that quote suggests. The Federalists (and esp Alexander Hamilton, who wrote most of the installments of the FPs) believed in a strong central government and the subordination of state and local govt actions to the national (ie, how you say, Federal) govt's prerogatives. And they were, as such, viciously opposed by the Republicans, who believed in more or less the opposite set-up...to the extent that they believed in having a national gov't at all.

    Don't know anything about this Charles Hurt, but I assume he refers to something like the Federalist Papers because it's some kind of old-timey thing he's heard of, and therefore just generically correct and patriotic, like Independence Day.

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  36. BadExampleMan1:05 PM

    "evangelical Christians who are getting into it with a passion."


    I would TOTALLY watch the hell out of CruciFixers.

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  37. Mooser1:14 PM

    "It's about a family that got rich by selling duck calls and now gets to goof off on their palatial estate doing rich people things, except rich rural people things."
    Except that I would never compare "Wildwood Flower" to a duck call, but the Carter family sorta did that, but with a whole lot more taste..

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  38. hellslittlestangel1:16 PM

    Wonkette (those bastards) had a link yesterday to this new right-wing Arts and Letters site:

    http://www.bigdawgmusicmafia.com/


    It's about as ugly and stupid as you would expect.

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  39. Mooser1:16 PM

    bekabot, try bathing your temples in Eau-de-Colgne and reclining in a darkened, quiet room. That always works for me.

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  40. OtherJimDonahue1:19 PM

    "incestuously stupid, lazy and hopeless people who cannot roll
    themselves off the bed long enough to find a job and buy a better house
    that doesn’t rattle violently every time a train goes by"

    You know, I'm pretty sure doing this show IS their job. They're getting paid to do it--it's not a cinema verite documentary by the Maysles brothers. Given the show is a hit by basic cable standards, they're probably doing rather well. Ain't that the American dream?

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  41. Mooser1:19 PM

    "But movement conservatives just can't pull it off - they're satisfied to just take credit for things that other people have done."
    Even so, there is still a lot of work to be done. I have been waiting for years for the book which will trace today's conservative ideas to their original or ur movie, TV show or pulp fiction magazine.
    A sort of concordance, if you will. I won't, you can bet on that.

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  42. M. Krebs1:22 PM

    Little known fact: "I have never been to a rodeo" was in the original version of Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic before they changed it to "I have never met Napoleon."

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  43. ADHDJ1:25 PM

    "American God Don't Make No Junk Pickers"

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  44. coozledad1:26 PM

    What I've seen of the Honey Boo Boo stuff doesn't mesh with the bitter Calvinist trash I have to interact with here in Person County, NC.
    The honey Boo Boo folks are capable of some empathy and surpirsing multidimensionality compared to your average hick Baptist, whose reality show might generate broad support for a eugenics program. Hurt hasn't been down here, or if he has, he's a lying son of a bitch. He'd also know that according to those real Americans who let the Baptist imam tell them how to vote, he's at best a fucking yankee.



    Not. One. Of.The.Tribe.

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  45. BigHank531:33 PM

    Why is Honey Boo Boo still living in a double-wide? Because her mom is stuffing all those royalty checks into a trust fund, since she knows the music will eventually stop.


    The duck-fuckers were worth $30 million before they started peddling reality-show crapola tie-in t-shirts at WalMart, so it's no wonder the conservative wankers are all too willing to get down on their knees and kiss ass: they're really rich.

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  46. Fats Durston1:33 PM

    What, you don't remember Federalist Paper no. 9, "The Palmer/ Brighton English Coach Flintlock Blunderbuss as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection"?

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  47. Spaghetti Lee1:40 PM

    So, is this step one in further shrinking The Base from 'rural white southerners' to 'rich white rural southerners'? Man, they must really hate winning elections.

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  48. Halloween_Jack1:56 PM

    Now, of course, they are exploiting the whole family with the show on the “Learning” Channel, an entity that, by the way, was founded by the federal government in 1972 to educate the poor masses.

    Oh, snap! No love lost for TLC since they cancelled Sarah Palin's Alaska, but then, that show made the mistake (from the konservakulturkampfer's perspective) of, you know, showing the reality of "Caribou" Barbie's life. From this reviewer:

    Most of the show's escapades bear scant resemblance to the activities of most outdoors-oriented Alaskans. In fact, about half of the Palins' "adventures" are guided trips aimed at mass-market tourists. You won't find many Alaskans on those theme park rides, which require no skills beyond a pulse and the ability to open your wallet.

    In particular, the caribou-hunting trip--allegedly to fill the Palins' larder--was
    staggeringly expensive; they could have bought several chest freezers stuffed with sirloins for that price. Plus, Ms. 2nd Amendment can't shoot. Oops!

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  49. PersonaAuGratin2:15 PM

    And whether it's pronounced "ro-dee-oh" or "ro-DAY-oh."

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  50. The_Gloves_Are_Off2:20 PM

    I would be most interested to see the ratings for Honey Boo Boo by local market. I would bet that they're much higher in "real America" than in those those liberal elite bastions....

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  51. JennOfArk2:26 PM

    I don't know what he's bitching about; Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is positively highbrow compared to the 132-lb scrotum.

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  52. Hurt's solemn prouncifyin'is simply more of the "country livin' is good and true while city livin' is evil and corrupt" schtick that Republicans like Palin use to try and incite the rubes to action (great linked article, by the way).

    For a good laugh, take a look at the photos in this article of the Duck Dynasty families BEFORE someone told them they could make a ton of money acting like hillbillies on tv. They look like they could be windsurfing in the Hamptons with John Kerry - and given the dough they've got, they probably were. So much for "real" America.

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  53. merl12:32 PM

    Does he think that he can win people over by insulting them? Or is he insulting the right wing rubes? Either way it sounds counter productive. Or maybe I just don't understand whatever the hell it was that I just read.

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  54. merl12:32 PM

    A fucking Communist, that's what it makes you. ?? I've been to rodeos, they're a lot of fun. At least they were to 14 year old me.

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  55. lawrence0904692:38 PM

    There must be a dartboard for What to Bitch About Today with a wide wedge labeled "Teh Coastal Elites" in Charles' office. What's the hook? Ooohh, Duck Dynasty! Because it really makes liberals mad. Because. This reminds me of when I had to explain to my in laws that no, liberals weren't upset that the Palin kid was winning on Dancing With The Stars. That I, at least, consider it a dumb show for dumb people and I don't care who wins. I am completely indifferent to Duck Dynasty, not offended by Lizard Lick Towing, though I would like that half hour of my life back. And I have lived in Arizona for most of my life and never went to a rodeo. Nor would I. I remember when there were three TV channels and nothing but Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, and other cowboy crap wall to wall. Except the one hour Star Trek came on, on UHF. The whole wild west mythology is just that. Fake, and racist.

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  56. Bizarro Mike2:46 PM

    No, no, he's referring to his ability to transform into a Porche 911. This is a power you can select when your net worth climbs above $10 million. Money's like XP and there are some pretty sweet class powers you can pick at the high end.

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  57. Mooser2:51 PM

    "Money's like XP"
    You mean it's no longer supported?

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  58. Mr. Ziffel3:12 PM

    Fuck Duck Dynasty. I've got a piano-playing pig, bitchez!

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  59. Bigby3:13 PM

    "Well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the
    stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you
    got today's (talking points)?"

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  60. M. Krebs3:18 PM

    How's Arnold gettin' along these days?

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  61. LittlePig3:19 PM

    Cousin Arnold is one talented feller.

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  62. dstatton3:20 PM

    "...the stunning degree to which the elite’s long-held monopoly on media and culture is shattered."


    Does this mean they're going to stop complaining?

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  63. LittlePig3:20 PM

    That whole 'vast wasteland' thing is looking pretty prescient these days.

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  64. It appears that no one on the program actually works for a living, other than to exploit the child in beauty pageants.


    Hello, appearing on Honey Boo Boo is their job now, and they're making more than they would bagging at Piggly Wiggly.


    Steve Doocy also appears on a show that portrays Americans as brainless boobs, where are the calls for him to get a job?

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  65. LittlePig3:23 PM

    That would be 'The Turner Diaries'

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  66. M. Krebs3:24 PM

    I have never been to a rodeo, but I did attend a monster truck show once. Boy, talk about your real goddamn Americans.

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  67. TomParmenter3:26 PM

    You know, 'Beverly Hillbillies' was immensely popular with real hillbillies. They loved 'Hee-Haw' too.

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  68. LittlePig3:27 PM

    Oh well, it was time for an earworm change anyway (the day's selection had been 'Year Of Jubilo').


    "..and the myrtle so bright with the heavenly dew /
    the pale amaliter with eyes of bright blue..."

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  69. You say that now, but the 132-lb scrotum has yet to get its own show.

    Hmmm... the 132-lb scrotum is playing Hamlet in a "Shakespeare in the Park" production, with Miley Cyrus playing as Ophelia.

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  70. TomParmenter3:29 PM

    Over the years, the line from 'Spirit in the Sky' has changed from 'Never been a sinner, never sinned' to 'Yes, I'm a sinner, committed sins'. Norman Greenbaum explained, 'I was young when I wrote it, didn't know anything.'

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  71. TomParmenter3:31 PM

    I didn't like those ropes they tied around the nuts of the 'bucking' broncos and 'wild' bulls.

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  72. brucej3:32 PM

    "The Salad Bar at Applebee's" is and remains the pinnacle of this sort of nonsense.

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  73. LittlePig3:32 PM

    She certainly could put the O in O-feel-ya.

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  74. A lot of DWTS were pissed at the votes for Palins' uncoordinated offspring because of her mother, so they did piss some people off, just not their 'target' audience.

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  75. LittlePig3:36 PM

    And, as I'm always amazed to discover, Newton Minow is still alive.

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  76. brucej3:36 PM

    Under the original rules money WAS XP...

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  77. redoubt3:43 PM

    Agree. (I mean, isn't the show basically 21st century Hairspray?)

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  78. ... but a lot of junk punchers!

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  79. PersonaAuGratin3:43 PM

    I'm old enough to remember when you could tune into "A&E" and watch something that was a reasonable facsimile of "A" or "E."

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  80. MikeJ3:46 PM

    Are you saying god didn't make Jamie Moyer?


    Oh, picker, not pitcher. Nevermind.

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  81. redoubt3:53 PM

    "Beverly Hillbillies" AKA Joad Petroleum

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  82. Halloween_Jack3:56 PM

    Holy crap, they're even all wearing white and beige outfits--they remind me of the Breaking Bad episode where Walt and Skyler are going to the birthday party of his old friend and ex-business partner and they're the only ones not wearing shades of taupe.

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  83. MRC2103:57 PM

    Honey Boo Boo's dad has had a blue-collar, hard-hat job for years in chalk (kaolin) mining. Besides his day job, he's a volunteer fireman. The mother is a stay-at-home homemaker who balances the budget and keeps the family fed by clipping coupons, huinting down bargains (including buying food at auctions) and even cooking roadkill. She also collects child support from her other childrens' fathers (the current paterfamilias is only the father of Honey Boo Boo) who are, in their turn, supporting their kids.

    These are two hard-working people who are far from hopeless and are actually (in the person of the mother at least) pretty savvy.

    Why Hurt chooses to call them by these names says more about him than about them.

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  84. gainsayer3:57 PM

    Never tastier, I imagine.

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  85. redoubt3:59 PM

    Nor do they glorify the "free" market.

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  86. LittlePig4:28 PM

    The Beverly Hillbillies was immensely popular across the board, with season 2's "The Giant Jackrabbit" still the most watched half-hour situation comedy.


    "Hee Haw" wasn't remotely in the same league, and I say that as someone born in the Ozarks.

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  87. LittlePig4:34 PM

    "Wildwood Flower" as remembered by Dick Spotswood for the NPR 100 in 2000. A great piece of radio.

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  88. Mickey_Zellberg4:38 PM

    I grew up on the wrong side of the Potomac and I'll tell you right now: they're fat there. Fat as fuck.

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  89. Amusingly, Doocy is the smarter of the two guys. Brain Kilmeade's job is to create that appearance.
    ~

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  90. JennOfArk5:08 PM

    No shit. Doesn't he realize that if it weren't for poor white trash they'd have no base at all? I mean, besides the 1%...and even Republicans are good enough at math to have figured out that you can't win an election (or steal it cheaply enough) with only 1% of the vote.

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  91. Don't worry, they only used the kinky bulls. It was entirely consensual.

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  92. Jon Hendry5:11 PM

    Somehow I feel the end of Hurt's life will be like Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green's. Only instead of long-vanished natural scenery projected on a screen as he dies, he'll be watching Hee-Haw.

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  93. Jon Hendry5:16 PM

    Hurt would probably be shocked to find out that in gay-marryin', medical-marijuanain' Connecticut, there's something called the Goshen Fair, in rural & rich Litchfield County, where there's a rodeo, and tractor pulls, and such like.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Jon Hendry5:17 PM

    Pfft. Hurt's the 215* Pound Scrotum.


    (* estimate)

    ReplyDelete
  95. Jon Hendry5:26 PM

    Or stuffing a bit of ginger (or a live eel) in the horse's ass.

    ReplyDelete
  96. mortimer20005:26 PM

    Where I am, I am 911.

    Rudy Giuliani says that, too, and he doesn't even have a dynasty.

    ReplyDelete
  97. "I am 911"


    Good line, Officer Dredd.


    Conservatives get high off the slightest whiff of authority, and then they just want to bogart the shit out of it.

    ReplyDelete
  98. satch5:45 PM

    Ooh, ohh... are there corn dogs too?

    ReplyDelete
  99. Halloween_Jack5:45 PM

    Hell, just unlocking the ZZ Top alternate appearance pack is sweet.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Jon Hendry5:45 PM

    Indeed. All your fairground staples.

    ReplyDelete
  101. TGuerrant5:57 PM

    "I've Never Been to Me"


    Made it to Billboard's Hot 100 in 1982 and was a #1 hit in Australia, Canada, the UK, and Ireland.


    It got Czeched as Já Slyšel O Ráji the following year and Finned as En tunne itseäin the year after that.


    Honey BB could rock the pageant planet with a fresh cover, adding in, of course, More Duck Call.

    ReplyDelete
  102. TGuerrant6:00 PM

    Daylight come and me wan go home

    ReplyDelete
  103. TGuerrant6:08 PM

    Superb deduction.

    ReplyDelete
  104. PulletSurprise6:09 PM

    "Where, oh where, are you tonight?Why did you leave me here all alone?I searched the world over, and I thought I'd found true love,You met another, and PFFT! You was gone!"

    ReplyDelete
  105. Aaron Evan Baker6:12 PM

    Can there possibly be a rock-bottom, dumbest example of right-wing cultural Stalinism ever? Probably not--but this is pretty deep in the trench.

    ReplyDelete
  106. TGuerrant6:12 PM

    And the first rodeo I ever went to was on the east side of the Potomac - Frederick, Mary(blue)land. I guess being a pundit is really tricky. Facts and stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  107. TGuerrant6:14 PM

    It's not sounding so much like Dangerous Catch with feathers as I had hoped. Gonna put off turning on the tv a little while longer.

    ReplyDelete
  108. That's not an eel, that's a Neal.

    ReplyDelete
  109. They're speaking another dialect, Moose old chum.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Taking their stuff was the most important aspect.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Jeffrey_Kramer8:55 PM

    And of course there was Shakespeare's "Rodeo, Rodeo, whatfor are you, Rodeo?"

    ReplyDelete
  112. satch9:11 PM

    "National Review seeks an (experienced!) Social Media Coordinator, to take the message and talent of NR and NRO
    deep into Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and any other place on the World
    Wide Web where right-thinking folk gather and communicate."


    Umm... shouldn't they be trying to recruit some a' that there "talent" stuff first?

    ReplyDelete
  113. BigHank539:54 PM

    Christ, I hope Mickey Kaus doesn't hear about this.

    ReplyDelete
  114. TomParmenter9:59 PM

    A Great Cultural Document: 'Field and Stream' and its readers review Palin's hunting show.

    http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/gun-nuts/2013/02/sarahs-shooting

    ReplyDelete
  115. BigHank5310:00 PM

    Why would you ever want to let facts get between you and another column filled with simmering resentment?

    ReplyDelete
  116. BigHank5310:04 PM

    How many years did it take you to sober up? Or has it become the sort of memory that can produce instant sobriety?

    ReplyDelete
  117. BigHank5310:10 PM

    You're thinking small, B^4. I'd cast Miley (and her tongue) as Hamlet his very own self, and let the 132-lb scrotum play Ophelia, Claudius, Horatio, and --most memorably-- Yorick.


    I mean, I know it'll be a trainwreck, but the house will be packed.

    ReplyDelete
  118. BigHank5310:14 PM

    Somewhere, the guy who pumps the contents out of those septic-tank vacuum trucks is pricking up his ears: he knows how to handle a firehose filled with liquified shit.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Mr. Ziffel11:38 PM

    THAT WAS A LIE, I TELL YOU! AN URBAN, or as the case may be, A RURAL MYTH!

    ReplyDelete
  120. TomParmenter12:16 AM

    Land o' Goshen!

    ReplyDelete
  121. Another Kiwi3:36 AM

    Goldarn it, ya cain't trust no one to be a proper rube no more.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Jeffrey_Kramer3:55 AM

    I've been to rodeos, they're a lot of fun.

    Jesus, man, don't say it out loud; Big Learning Channel is watching you. If they find out you're guilty of Thoughtcrime on that scale, they'll lock you in room 101 and subject you to the most horrible thing you can imagine, like a Learning Channel marathon.

    ReplyDelete
  123. Only if you read it backwards.

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  124. I have met many Americans, of so many flavors of "normal." I have
    crossed the Potomac River, and recrossed it, countless times. But I have
    never been to the rodeo. What am I, then?


    There's the seed of an awesome pastiche on Nerval's "El Desdichado" in there, but I lack the skill to create it.

    ReplyDelete
  125. Halloween_Jack9:24 AM

    You have to love an article that starts out with, "In my previous post, I was surprised that no one defended John McCain against my accusation that he’s at least partly nuts".

    ReplyDelete
  126. Yeah, there were tractor pulls at the Brooklyn, CT fair last weekend, too. The Durham, CT Fair is the largest volunteer-run agricultural fair in North America. And those are the town fairs, never mind the Eastern States Exposition in Massachusetts. But small-scale Northeastern farmers, some of whom even employ draft horses when the terrain warrants it, are just a pack of elitists, because some Washington TImes bumlicker who wouldn't be able to tell which end of a Holstein was which has declared a family of rich Southern phony-baloney poseurs as representing real America. Which could actually be a point, if he weren't celebrating it.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Halloween_Jack9:43 AM

    Well, my grandpa, who literally lived on a farm his entire life, loved Hee Haw, although frankly I think he more or less ignored the cornpone humor and watched it for the music.

    ReplyDelete
  128. JennOfArk9:43 AM

    Or a partial verse, updated for GOP use:
    "...if it weren't for po' white trash, we'd have no base at all.
    Doom, despair, and agony on me."

    ReplyDelete
  129. You know, I'm pretty sure doing this show IS their job. They're
    getting paid to do it--it's not a cinema verite documentary by the
    Maysles brothers. Given the show is a hit by basic cable standards,
    they're probably doing rather well. Ain't that the American dream?

    HCG recipes phase 2

    ReplyDelete
  130. Tsk tsk - don't you know if you are a Rethuglican TPer "pundit" you don't actually need to have read the Federalist Papers (assuming of course they can read) you just have to know the name, and cite it (poorly) all the time. Such a person can rest assured their intended audience has never read them.

    ReplyDelete
  131. "Well I've been to one World's Fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard come over a set of earphones"

    ReplyDelete
  132. tigrismus8:31 AM

    liberal Northeast and West Coast elites ... have never ...
    traveled past the Potomac River.



    And let me tell you, for folks not living inside the beltway that takes some doing.

    ReplyDelete
  133. tigrismus8:34 AM

    the “Learning” Channel, an entity that, by the way, was founded by the federal government in 1972 to educate the poor masses.


    I blame president McGovern. And also the fact that nothing has changed since 1972.

    ReplyDelete
  134. FlipYrWhig2:03 PM

    They look like lesser Romneys.

    ReplyDelete
  135. Richard Landon10:20 AM

    Mr. Hurt also displays his own ignorance, without realizing it. What a knucklehead.

    ReplyDelete
  136. Phoenix Justice10:29 AM

    I have cable and I have never seen either Duck Dynasty or Honey Boo-Boo. I just have no interest in either show. What is scary, is that Duck Hunters gets more viewers than Breaking Bad. And they are on the same freaking network!

    ReplyDelete
  137. Phoenix Justice10:36 AM

    From the West Wing, Season 3, Posse Comitatus:

    Sam: He [Gov. Ritchie] said that this was how ordinary Americans got their entertainment.
    Toby: I've been to 441 baseball games at Yankee Stadium. There's not one person there who's ordinary.


    I that sums it up pretty damn well.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Cthulhu081810:42 AM

    I don't need to go to the rodeo to know bullshit when I smell it.

    ReplyDelete
  139. Cthulhu081810:46 AM

    And then they bitch endlessly about the broken glass and drafts.

    ReplyDelete
  140. Jingo3:57 PM

    Get a job Steve Doocy

    ReplyDelete
  141. parsec7:48 PM

    Having spent my childhood in Texas I've seen a few rodeos. One time my father got concerned when he saw me and my brothers playing like we were rodeo clowns. He earnestly lectured us that this was not to be a serious career choice.

    ReplyDelete
  142. AlanInSF8:16 PM

    In that Duck Dynasty features wealthy, well-educated and formerly clean-cut guys pretending to be unkempt backwoods yahoos so as to make money off gullible southerners, that's pretty much the conservative movement in a nutshell

    ReplyDelete
  143. make Jupiter the 51st state,


    Jupiter, Florida? Where Burt Reynolds used to live? Heavy.

    ReplyDelete
  144. TomParmenter5:06 PM

    Let's not forget tax rebel and man of the house, Snuffy Smith.

    ReplyDelete
  145. TomParmenter5:06 PM

    Roy Clark and Buck Owens are in the first rank of American musicians.

    ReplyDelete
  146. barkermr3:32 PM

    What the matter with those who think being poor is a mortal sin, I can not understand any of this and not going to try either. As for these Reality Shows I rather not watch them they tell to much about how as a people we are willing to risk life and limb and most of all human dignity to for the sake of money. It teaches how to cheat back biting and any other despicable thing you can think of. Who compares a Television show with real life anyway, the word here is MONEY, these people are getting paid, and we helped by watching that dumb stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  147. Henry Larsen8:12 AM

    "...have a story to tell about America -- probably the same one Mencken had."

    Unfortunately, that's not what Mencken said. From the online _Britannica_:

    “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

    H.L. Mencken, in Chicago Tribune

    [This seems likely to be the basis for the quotation often attributed to Mencken: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”]

    ReplyDelete
  148. edroso10:00 AM

    Good point! Mencken's target was bigger than America. I do notice that he didn't exempt us.

    ReplyDelete