I remember James Carville saying of the Paula Jones suit and how he thought conservatives got her to file it that “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find”. I thought that was pretty funny and I repeated it every time the Republicans dug someone up to tell some bullshit story. But I’m not repeating it anymore. I used to use phrases like “trailer trash” and “white trash” and I’m not going to do that anymore either.
Part of it was watching that Richard Pryor video about the n-word that ABL put up a few months ago, part of it was realizing, once and for all, that when people outside the top one percent of incomes fight amongst ourselves about this or that silly difference, we’re just doing the work of our Galtian overlords. As commenter kdaug put it:
I think we get trapped into a false paradigm of “right/left”, “Democrat/Republican”, “Christian/Athiest” all the time. And I think it’s deliberate, propagated by the people who own the media and broadcast it.
The real paradigm: rich/poor.
And it’s always been the paradigm. In all cultures, in all countries, throughout history.
I’m still going to call teahadists every name under the sun as they are truly the unpaid Pinkerton goons or of our era.
New Yorker
OK, but while I ain’t rich, I’m definitely not poor….so why do I seem to want to fight the good fight on behalf of the poor more than they do?*
That article in the Times about Gallipolis, OH a week or so back made me wonder why I even care if these same poor people are going to keep voting Republican because I, 700 miles away in New York, am the boogeyman “other” who went to an Ivy League college and don’t believe in Jesus.
*At least poor minorities know who will fuck them and vote Democrat.
beltane
In my home we refer to those who vote against their self-interest with the generic term “dumbass”.
freelancer
All this race talk is just a deflection from the fact that Prezident Emperor Obama is bombing babies this very minute, some of them in incubators!
BGinCHI
Control the discourse, control the world.
You can tell where the power is in this country by determining who can say anything they want, or do pretty much anything they want, and not pay a political price for it. You can test this by seeing if it holds true for the other side.
Moonbatting Average
I think Jay Gould was thinking small; at this point, half of the working class might happily shoot the other half for free. kdaug has it right, of course but tribalism is so entrenched and encouraged at this point that it seems intractable to me. Not a terribly productive attitude, I know, but I can’t help it.
Waldo
The good news about the battle of rich vs. poor: one side is growing a lot faster than the other.
Linda Featheringill
Good for you to back off of the name calling!
Two things, though:
1. Don’t knock prefabricated housing. I remember some of the “buildings” that poor people used to live in. The trailers are a BIG IMPROVEMENT.
2. Why is “trailer trash” always female? But since you have mended your ways, you don’t have to answer that.
Svensker
So calling Say-rah “trailer trash” is doing the work of Galtian overlords?
Wish I could hear what Richard Pryor would have called her. Loved that man.
beltane
@New Yorker: I confess that I do harbor some degree of prejudice against the ethnic group that calls themselves RealAmericans, or at least I find that their claims of superiority don’t have any foundation in reality. However, since we are stuck with these people living in our country for the foreseeable future, we really can’t afford to write them off. If they are riled up enough no one, not even upper middle-class people living in NYC, will be safe.
Mark S.
@Waldo:
Ha! It’s funny because it’s true.
Sportello
Not sure that rich/poor is the right division. More like the rich vs. everybody else.
Linda Featheringill
@New Yorker:
Ah yes. The deserving poor. As opposed to the undeserving poor.
Comrade DougJ
@Linda Featheringill:
Wha wha? “Trailer trash” always female?
You’re kind of a nut, you know? I’m still calling people nuts when they sound like them, sorry.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
of course, if the battle really is rich vs poor, and you mean it, then you should still hold in contempt, those who sell out their own side, even above one’s contempt for the other side.
i’m not saying, i’m just saying.
Moonbatting Average
@Waldo: Good point, I’ll have to talk to my broker about investing in pitchfork and torch futures
singfoom
@Sportello: I agree with this. It’s the super rich versus everyone else.
Anyone want to decide where the cutoff is?
I’m going with 250K.
draftmama
Thank you because I now live in a trailer, albeit on 10 beautiful acres surrounded by wonderful animules. However since this is Montana and you’all know what WE elected to the state house, its probably pretty spot on….
Linda Featheringill
@Comrade DougJ:
trailer trash always female:
Maybe I associate with the wrong people.
Have you ever snickered and said that some man was trailer trash? Have you ever told a man that he was trailer trash? Have you as a male ever been called trailer trash because someone disagreed with you?
BGinCHI
Doug, you could go with “mobile home trash.”
It’s classier.
Comrade DougJ
@Linda Featheringill:
Yeah, almost exclusively I’ve said it about men. Men are more likely to be poor but conservative. Men are much more likely to get arrested on tv while drunk and shirtless, standing outside a trailer (ever seen “Cops”).
What planet are you on?
rdalin
I think the word “redneck” still works well
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
The Republicans have become masters of channeling the anger of people who (Rightly) feel that they’re getting shafted towards other people who are getting equally shafted rather than towards those who are bending them over. There is plenty to be angry about right now and unless the Democrats pool their intelligence and figure out a counter to the Republican strategy we will continue to hear a about how our hands are tied with respect to improving the lives of anyone but the very rich.
Linda Featheringill
@draftmama:
Your estate sounds lovely. I’m serious. Trailers can be quite livable. I assume you have one that is insulated enough to keep the winter out.
And if you are not a member of the local dominant political group, that doesn’t diminish your worth in the least bit.
MD Rackham
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: I think “collaborating trash” has possibilities.
@singfoom: There are too many variables to be able to define a simple cutoff. It depends on where you live, how your income is generated (labor or capital gains), etc.
I don’t see why we need a cutoff anywhere that low, when the real problem is the very, very top of the scale, the top 1% or maybe even the top 0.1%. Those people are out to fuck over the bond trader making $1 million per year as much as they are our mobile domicile residing brethren.
joe from Lowell
Good on you, DougJarvus.
I once wrote into The Nation over a joke in an article about “This behavior wouldn’t even be welcome in a trailer park!” I pointed out that they wouldn’t have written “…in a public housing project.”
Mobile homes often represent upward mobility. They’re the ultimate starter home for people even too far down the income ladder to get into a two-room house.
Felonious Wench
Carville, like me, came from white trash/trailer trash roots. He says that often, it’s part of his schtick.
And when you look at the wealth here in Texas, white trash and rich aren’t mutually exclusive. Flashy trashy is still flashy trashy.
Molly Ivins got this better than anyone.
Linda Featheringill
@Comrade DougJ:
I live on a planet where people don’t waste brain cells watching cop shows on TV.
But why are you and I arguing? I don’t want to fight with you.
Zifnab
How about “sell-out” or “house boy”? Or “Judas”? Because that’s what Paula Jones and Linda Tripp boiled down to. They took cash and fame in exchange for trying to screw Clinton. And why go after Clinton? Because Clinton’s policies weren’t fucking their friends and neighbors hard enough to suit the GOP.
So they smeared Clinton as hard as they could, and come the year 2000 they finally got what they all wanted. Clinton out. Gore out. Republicans triumphant. Then two endless bloody wars in the Middle East. An economy lain to waste by billionaire banksters. Domestic social programs slashed with the knife over and over and over again, causing kids to go hungry and the infirm to go untreated and mountains looted for coal while skies were thickened with dust and rivers foiled with mercury and waste.
But smearing Clinton really paid off for Jones and Tripp. They got theirs. Fuck the rest of you.
Yeah, that’s not so easy to forgive or forget. Catty remarks from James Carville should be the least of their punishments. Shaming the GOP and anyone that gets near it could do a deal of good.
Comrade DougJ
@Linda Featheringill:
But you are aware that there is an invention called television and that on this invention, they show “Cops”, right?
Matt
I dunno – there’s an additional category in there, “poor but refuse to admit it and therefore vote against their own interests”. We’ve all seen this category: people who can stand in front of their run-down trailer and vigorously defend the need to eliminate the estate tax on millionaires; people like the folks in Gallipolis from the NYT a couple days ago who’ve just *started* to realize the consequences of voting Republican…
bkny
@New Yorker: and the consequences are playing out in wisconsin, indiana, ohio. daily polling is showing there’s considerable buyers’ remorse among the citizens of those states. it’s esp sweet to see kasich sinking;
it’s going to be interesting to see if that wisconsin energy is longlasting to next year.
Draylon Hogg
Fucking hell if you’ve only just realised that divide and rule is a winning political strategy you really haven’t been paying attention.
Zifnab
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes to all of those things. With the exception that the last one was aimed at my clothes, not my political views.
Comrade DougJ
@Zifnab:
Exactly why all the decent people who live in trailers shouldn’t be smeared by comparisons with those two.
General Stuck
I was raised trailer trash, But the hippies saved me.
Martin
@Comrade DougJ: I think it varies by region. Here ‘trailer trash’ is exclusively female and suggests that she’s, well, trashy. The male of the species is ‘redneck’.
I’ve only seen ‘Cops’ on ‘My Name is Earl’. I imagine the real show is little different.
freelancer
@Comrade DougJ:
Pilot? What’s a Pilot?
Josie
@Felonious Wench: So true. God, I miss Molly. Can you imagine her take on the doings these days?
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Agree with Doug here, Trailer Trash is gender neutral every time i’ve heard it.
JPL
@beltane: I always ask those who say they are real Americans what that means. The soldiers are the number one answer and then I ask why they think an eighteen year old enlists? I haven’t asked yet but I really want to ask why they think Sarah’s on enlisted.
The biggest problem I have is when I see those of limited means driving around with their fair tax stickers.
BGinCHI
I lived in a trailer till I was 3.
I had no idea it wasn’t cool and remember asking why other people’s houses didn’t have wheels. It just didn’t seem fair we had so much mobility and they had none.
draftmama
@Linda Featheringill: actually the local dominent group in Helena is liberal, its the asshats out in the boonies who are certifiable. Hunting with spears, guns everywhere, no abortions evah, cut state workers pay by 15%, etc etc….. Yeah the trailer is only 5 years old and we will build a house next year anyway.
Linda Featheringill
@Comrade DougJ:
Yes, I am aware of that.
Two questions:
1. Are you aware that said invention has an on/off switch?
2. Are you aware that there is such a thing as Youtube where you can totally free university lectures on lots of different subjects?
A sample:
http://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses#g/p
I highly recommend Death with Shelly Kagan.
Comrade DougJ
@Martin:
That’s interesting. When I used the phrase, I almost always meant men.
I see where Linda is coming from now.
Comrade DougJ
@Linda Featheringill:
Never seen “Pulp Fiction”, I guess.
BGinCHI
Best interview with Death ever.
freelancer
@Linda Featheringill:
Somebody is not aware of all DougJ traditions…
JPL
Since I live in GA, is it still acceptable to say mountain folk. If you haven’t seen Deliverance you should.
Linda Featheringill
@Zifnab:
Well, then, maybe I have been associating with the wrong people.
My apologies, gentlemen.
PeakVT
I’m still going to call teahadists every name under the sun as they are truly the unpaid Pinkerton goons or our era.
Teahadists, Mubark’s thugs, the Basij – were seeing a lot of this type lately.
singfoom
Props for the David Foster Wallace reference, Doug. Try to work Infinite Jest into a title sometime ;)
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@freelancer:
.
.
1) President Obama is rich. He is in the millionaire class. Oh, and he’s President of the United States and is also its Commander in Chief of the military.
2) President Obama orders drones to murder people extrajudicially every day. The drones don’t know whether they’re killing babies in incubators or mean old terrorists, but both types of individuals are getting equally murdered by them because of President Obama’s orders.
.
.
Linda Featheringill
@BGinCHI:
:-)
kdaug
Appreciate the FP, Doug.
Ben
It’s called “Dialectical Materialism” i.e. explaining history by constant class struggle. It was a theory / philosophy developed by Karl Marx. And it’s true.
The Moar You Know
@Linda Featheringill: Holy shit, are you joking? What the fuck else do you call a man sporting a mullet?
Oh yeah, you could call at least one of them “Billy Ray Cyrus”. Who is fucking trailer trash, he just lives in a much nicer trailer than I do.
Linda Featheringill
@Ben:
Actually, I’ve been smelling class consciousness in various spots lately.
Maybe you can’t tell people about it. Maybe they have to figure it out for themselves.
JPL
The Libertarian Party received no attention from MSM until they changed their name to the Tea Party. Call them Birchers and Libertarians.
taylormattd
Well, ok.
That Carville line is still funny. And proved to be 100% accurate.
Montysano
@Linda Featheringill:
Wow, not me. Any time I’m feeling badly about my lot in life, a quick dose of “Cops” (or some such) cures me. ‘Cause no matter how bad it is, at least I’m not on the teevee, shirtless, face down in the dirt, with a cop’s knee on my neck.
kdaug
@Sportello: And the line is $400M+. Ain’t got that, you ain’t in the club.
BGinCHI
@Ben: I love that it’s the hardcore capitalists (the right, the glibs) who understand capitalism the least.
Actually, I bet almost none of them know that Marx studied capitalism. They think he just studied Marxism, which isn’t about capital (or some shit like that).
taylormattd
@Linda Featheringill: This has to be a joke. In fact, the “trailer trash” line is CONSTANTLY used to describe men, likely at a far higher clip than it is directed toward women. I can’t imagine where you would get a different picture.
schrodinger's cat
Comrade DougJ,
You do sound Marxist now, not that I am complaining.
patrick II
@Linda Featheringill:
Thanks for the link. Those courses look great.
I’m still watching “Justified” on Wednesdays.
Uriel
Trailers are completely serviceable housing for much of country, and for many (especially in the south) represent a fairly significant step up in the circumstances of their lives that required lots of hard work and sacrifice. I remember many people who could only dream of moving into a trailer and getting out of the shot-gun shack slums that stretched for block after block like a corrugated iron hell in the sweltering heat of Mississippi. I remember it, because I actually come from it, on my dad’s side.
I find it endlessly frustrating that a lot of people outside the deep south don’t realize that there are large sections of this country that aren’t that far removed from the favelas of Brazil. A fucking trailer park is a step up, not a sign of sloth.
And as far as whiten trash goes, I really have to reiterate, that when people in the in the south-and not a few in the north- use that word, they mean one thing and one thing only: “white people who act like niggers.” There just being polite about it. Thrown in the word “whigger” into the mix, and 99% of the time, the user will only pause briefly to nod in silent agreement before moving on with the original conversation.
Now, you, the abstract reader, might be saying, “but that’s not what *I* mean when I say that, and that’s fine. I’m just saying that there are a metric fuckton of people who mean exact ally that when they use that word. Make of that what you will.
Sorry- coming from that social strata, it’s a trigger.
Redshift
I think the important difference is that’s categorizing people based on what they do, rather than who they are. No one should feel shy about trashing people who are working against the best interests of the country and for the interests of the ruling class, but don’t get goaded by our Galtian overlords’ “let’s you and him fight” into dismissing whole groups/regions/etc. as “those people” just because some of them are doing that.
BGinCHI
@patrick II: I’d watch Walton Goggins paint his house.
Actually, that’s prolly in development at HGTV.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
I’m descended from a long line of poor people. When I was growing up we were so broke more than once that we had Cheerios for dinner. Hard to look down on anyone except Republicans.
taylormattd
@Martin: Are you serious? There is zero gender specification regarding the term “trailer trash” here in Western Washington.
Man, that’s weird. My apologies to Linda then.
Now I’m curious. Does “trailer trash” have a female only connotation in Arkansas? I’m wondering about Carville at this point.
Martin
@BGinCHI: I grew up in a trailer as well. Dad was in the Navy so we had no money, and then he got out of the Navy and we had even less money. In one of my mom’s recent visits I mentioned that I remember some of the times that we were totally out of food in the house. I (4 or 5 at the time) got what they could scrape together and my parents went without. She was actually hurt that I could remember that – she thought they did a better job of hiding all of that from me. Despondency is really hard to hide. On the upside, it was in that trailer that I can still remember watching one of the moon landings on the tiny B&W TV.
Me
@PeakVT: It’s interesting how teapeople are the thugs, and yet all the violence is coming from the left. The shooting in AZ? Yep. SEIU thugs? Yep. Tea partiers put in hospitals? Yep. Hate speech on a daily basis…from the left? Yep. Daily threats against non-left candidates? Yep. Bullets through the window…of Republicans? Yep. Democratic offices vandalized…by far-left Democrats? Yep.
I know, I know – never screw up a good story with the facts.
BGinCHI
@Incoherent Dennis SGMM: Cheerios, plural?
Luxury.
Why, we had but a single Cheerio.
kdaug
And just to make sure I’m clear about I’m saying.
eyelessgame
My preferred question, to every non-wealthy conservative I know, every time they advocate policies that skew to benefit the wealthy, is “why are you carrying water for aristocrats?”
stuckinred
@BGinCHI: I wish I could find an mp3 of Redneck Greece DeLux doing “We was Snotty Nose Kids in a Trailer Park”!
JBerardi
It’s also the fundamental thematic thrust of The Big Lebowski. As such, we ignore it at our peril.
Comrade Mary
Here in Canada, trailer trash refers to both sexes. And, of course, we had an entire serious documentary on the subject.
I set up my tomato plants in blue recycling bins a couple of years ago, and casually called them “white trash container gardening” to a friend, then backtracked, mostly because I thought it was implicitly racist more than classist. I’m from working-class Québecois stock, I’ve spent time on welfare, though I’ve never lved in a trailer, and I was talking about myself after all, but yeah, I’ve been solidly middle class for many years now, so it’s a phrase I’ve tried to stop using, too.
Linda Featheringill
@Uriel:
Good for you! And I admire your backbone. Don’t apologize for it.
BGinCHI
@Martin: I hear you.
I don’t feel sorry for people who grow up in house trailers (as they’re called where I grew up). I feel sorry for people who grew up in formless suburbs.
Example. Even if you grow up to be as smart and talented as Jonathan Franzen, you still don’t have a goddamn thing to say.
BGinCHI
@JBerardi: I’d only add that it’s also about what you get “when you fuck a stranger in the ass.”
Linda Featheringill
@taylormattd:
Don’t know about Arkansas. I was raised in Oklahoma [hillbilly that I am], about 50 miles west of Ft. Smith.
stuckinred
@JBerardi: “Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos. “
patrick II
@BGinCHI:
I read an interview with Mr. Goggins about being on Justified. He loves the writing and said the trick for doing Elmore Leanord dialogue is to stay out of the way of the writing. I’m not too sure what he meant by that,(in part because Elmore doesn’t actually write the show) but it seems to work.
schrodinger's cat
I think calling another human being trash should never be acceptable or OK. So how come this is accepted in polite society?
stuckinred
Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of
National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.jrg
Dougj, I’m not sure what your point is. Of course the rich trick the rednecks into voting against their best interest, and get us fighting against each other to prevent economic populism from getting a foothold.
…but that does not mean I’m going to roll over and let the hicks start teaching kids that “God did it” is a scientific theory. The dumb asses still need to get called out. If the rest of us roll over, the rich will just find something else to divide the middle and lower classes, but instead of economic populism for our efforts, we’ll get theocracy.
So, fuck it. I’m going to continue to call trailer trash trailer trash.
Uriel
@Montysano:
Yes, ’cause you’ll never find people from staunch, middle class backgrounds- like, say, good suburban college students- engaged in that kind of trashy behavior.
Well, not unless you happen to live in a college town and have functioning eyesight. Although I’m assured when the future mastered of the universe do it, it has a substantially different “quality” to it. Something to do with effusive irony, I gather.
stuckinred
Wow, the Big Lebowski is censured!
Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of NS, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.
Felonious Wench
@Josie:
It’s a crime that she’s not here to comment on the teabaggers, Palin, the current Congress, Birthers, BP, and Poledancing for Jesus. Not to mention the Texas textbook standards commission, Perry saying school funding in Texas is all happy fun no tax increase all good…God, I’d love to have her back.
When I read the latest lunacy, I tend to think “What Would Molly Say?” Makes it much better.
HyperIon
DougJ wrote:
I guess you didn’t read the comments on the thread at the Columbus OH Tea Party site (?) which was supplied by someone (?) yesterday. The topic was the state’s bill to crush the teachers union. There were many comments that started with “I am a member of the Tea Party but I cannot support this bill” followed by articulate explanations of why. Many here remarked on how sane many of the self-identified TPers sounded.
BGinCHI
@patrick II: “Justified” only has one major flaw.
It’s set in, and about, Kentucky, and yet it’s obviously filmed in Southern Cal. Now, you might say “what’s the difference?” But I think it’s keeping the show from really exploring heartland shit like drugs and drug running, corruption, and so on.
If they had balls they’d film on location and let the whole thing get grittier. It would affect the show.
trollhattan
I can’t believe there’s an entire BJ thread about my inlaws (all half-gajillion of them). What a small world.
BGinCHI
@stuckinred: Also, having an amphibious rodent without a permit is….well…it’s…..
Martin
@taylormattd: Yeah, though keep in mind that here in the OC, there’s really no close association with anyone you’d call ‘trailer trash’. Many of the mobile home parks we have near here are down by the beach and can run you $750K or more. Most of the others are retirees and vacation homes for people. Mobile home parks here are actually quite nice.
So any real association with ‘trailer trash’ comes exclusively from the stereotypes presented on TV. Honestly, where I’m from, the rich Newport Beach folks are the ones that get mocked, not the poor.
HyperIon
@schrodinger’s cat:
Maybe because Polite Society is not so polite after all.
Do you mean instead accepted by Very Serious People?
To me Polite Society often = Very Serious People.
For example, people in Polite Society never say “fuck”.
stuckinred
@BGinCHI: After the syringe to the heart in Pulp Fiction possibly the best scene evah!
Uriel
@Uriel: I should mention that that wasn’t meant to be personally directed at you, Montysano. I was just, you know, riffing. I’ll stop now, before I say something I’ll regret- which represents a new and wildly mature attitude towards the Internet, let me tell you.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@BGinCHI:
LOL! Our dire straits were a result of Dad being a career Navy man. The pay system back in the Fifties and early Sixties just plain stank. As dependents, we were supposed to receive a monthly allotment check (A portion of Dad’s pay). The people who handled that routinely screwed up so we would go for long periods of time with Dad out in the Pacific somewhere and no money coming in. In those days they could, and did, turn off the electricity and the water.
The positive is that it left me a fairly resilient person. The negatives were the spousification (I was the eldest of three) and the certain knowledge that our difficulties aged both of my parents beyond their years.
kdaug
@Felonious Wench:
You have invoked The Name. I now bow. (Erased a bunch of shit that was way too revealing).
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat:
Atticus Finch. The term works sometimes.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
Haven’t seen any episodes yet, but plan on catching up (in hopes it fills a small part of the giant gap left by the early spiking of “Deadwood”). Something that bugged me about “Big Love” was the SoCal ‘burb that stood in for Sandy, UT. No place I’ve seen in Utah is that green and lush. I don’t think it snowed until the final season.
bemused
@Waldo:
The harder conservatives work to defund birth control coverage, the faster the poorer side will grow. Funny how that works.
Jennifer
Back in the days of my yout, there were several designations of class here in the south among whitefolks: genteel, common (yet respectable), and trash. Some of it was based on occupation, some on religion, and some on behavoir. Even to some extent on the type of window coverings and lighting in a home: the genteel had uncovered windows framed by drapes and soft lamplighting; the common folk had drapes or shades drawn with overhead lights, and the trash had uncovered, unadorned windows with blaring overhead lighting. Snobbish, yes, but…true. As for religion, the genteel were Episcopalian, Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist; the common folks were Baptist, and the trash were Pentecostal and other variants thereof.
One thing I remember quite well: when I was about 6 or 7 years old some folks from New Jersey moved in next door. Although my parents and my friends’ parents were very careful never to say anything ugly about these folks, somehow, we knew they were trashy. 40 years later and Jersey Shore has convinced everyone else of the same (and my apologies to any of you non-trashy Jersyites reading this – I know you aren’t all like the neighbors or Snooki.)
Personally, I don’t think we can afford to lose “trash” as a pejorative. Look at all the “Real Housewives” – trash. Hell, look at just about anyone on TV anymore, since it’s all “reality” shows – being trashy is a prerequisite to being on TV these days.
On another note, I’ve been pondering of late about how our media masters’ timing seems off – as the middle class gasps its last breaths, all we’re shown on TV are horrid horrid people who happen to all be rich. We’re being served up a heaping helping of “let them eat cake” each and every night on the tube. You wonder how long people will stand for it. But I’ll leave a closer inspection for another time and my own blog.
Uriel
@HyperIon: Well, I’ll stop after seconding this. That comment section was a bit of an eye-opener.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: OK I agree, in that instance it does work.
JBerardi
@BGinCHI:
The first line of dialog in Lebowski is “Where’s the money, Lewbowski?”. Well, we find out:
1. An heiress
2. An embezzler (from needy fuckin’ urban achievers)
3. A pornographer
All of whom are willing to lie to, manipulate, threaten violence, USE violence, etc, to extract what they want of the poor. America, fuck yeah.
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: It’s worth watching for sure.
There should be a network, or at least a production company, that does all shows in their real locations. So little of this country really gets showed in film and TV (not talking reality tv bullshit).
HyperIon
@Uriel wrote:
When you and I both “talked” about this yesterday with Svensker, I forgot to add one more thing: I am most familiar with the variant “poor white trash”.
I’m not sure what that means but in my neck of the woods, my relatives (who interestingly mostly live in trailers) always say PWT. And the implication is that living in a trailer is a step up from being PWT. I mean, at least they have a home. Besides, you can get a pretty nice trailer (or should I say manufactured home) for < 100K$. And it looks like a house…sorta.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Your point regarding using the term for someone with a mullet, a sleeveless flannel shirt, and 15 y/o Ford F-150 is well taken though. Those are the guys who live year round near our cabin in northern WI and drive by it once in a while to make sure its okay.
Uriel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, yes, but it’s important here to remember one of the great truisms of life: no matter how much you try, or how much you want to believe differently, there are exact ally three people you will never, ever be- Clark Kent, Jim Halpert, and Atticus Finch.
HyperIon
@Redshift wrote:
YES! see my comment #88.
Church Lady
Doug, I’m sure that you feel better about yourself now that you’ve decided not to call your economic inferiors “white trash” or “trailer trash”. Perhaps you can spread this idea around to your fellow attendees at the next wine tasting event you go to. I’m sure that all the white trash and trailer trash you rub elbows with on a daily basis will be grateful.
Bob Loblaw
“If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s ‘People History of the United States.’ That book will knock you on your ass.”
We are all Berkeleyites now. Or Oberlinians I guess.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uriel: One can try. But, my point, which I think you got, is that using trash in that sense, as a comment on a person’s character, is different than using it as a class marker.
Church Lady
@taylormattd: Carville isn’t from Arkansas. He’s a coon ass from Louisiana.
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
I for one am proud to be a citizen of a nation where the people living in trailers are now able to look down upon the increasing number of families living in their cars.
Jim Pharo
Our little Comrade is growing up!
I have long been disturbed by the demonization of our political opponents. It’s worth remembering that they are themselves largely victims, and that we will only validate their fears if we are condescending or patronizing. Left-wing smugness is no myth, and it prevents our joining with our fellow oppresees on the other side of the political aisle..
It’s hard not to demonize some of these folks, and of course I mean Michelle Bachmann. But then I remember that once upon a time she worked to elect Jimmy Carter and think that maybe there is enough common ground with her so we could one day get her on our side…
Calouste
@BGinCHI:
You’d think the title of Marx’s magnus opus would give some kind of clue.
Omnes Omnibus
@Calouste: The Communist Manifesto?
Parallel 5ths (Irish Steel)
“White trash” is a phrase that thrives in a medium of class anxiety.
Moonbatting Average
@Comrade DougJ: Awesome Pulp Fiction reference!
dianne
The trashiest people I ever saw were sitting in the background behind Bush when he said “Some call you the elite, I call you my base.” The pasty white faces smirking away behind him were sickening. I would prefer the company of a hard working good soul in a trailor park over any one of those fools.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Linda Featheringill:
Sure. I have certainly heard men referred to as trailer trash.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Has anybody seen AWS? He didn’t sound too good on an earlier thread
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Das Kapital
BGinCHI
@JBerardi: Most of the plot points are gently lifted out of The Big Sleep, with a few others mirroring Chinatown.
It’s certainly got some social commentary, but I don’t think the Coens are all that class conscious or even political.
Zifnab
@Comrade DougJ: Well, there’s a difference between calling every poor American “Trailer Trash” and calling those two particular people trash.
Sometimes “human garbage” really is the only way to describe someone. And shame is a valuable tool in getting people to not do shit they aren’t supposed to do.
But you do have to wink and dog whistle a bit if you want to avoid offending everyone under the $250k income level.
Cris
@Uriel:
Reminds me of a line that I think was in American History X, where the White Supremacist ringleader says to the young skinhead: “Which side are you going to be on? The blacks won’t want you because you’re white, and the Whites won’t want you because you’re white trash.”
Calouste
@Omnes Omnibus:
40 pages is generally not considered enough for a magnum opus.
BGinCHI
@Calouste: They prolly think he wrote it in the capital city.
Uriel
@Omnes Omnibus: I got it. I was trying to be mildly humorous, in a Garrison Keillor kind of way. And failing, I imagine.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Sometimes snark and/or wit and/or attempts at either are just plain unappreciated.
Cris
By the way, if you think $250K is ultra-rich, you haven’t been around ultra-rich. Yes, it’s the top 2%. But it doesn’t get you in the door to the truly exclusive clubs.
BGinCHI
@Cris: That distinction will come in handy when we start rounding up/burning down.
Amanda in the South Bay
Mobile home parks here (SF Bay Area) can be actually pretty middle/upper middle class, since they provide an alternate, sorta home for people who don’t want a condo/apartment (housing costs being astronomical here).
Having said that, and having grown up in a small town, small towns suck, the politics, religion, people suck, and I hope to god never to have to go back to mine except funerals.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: My apologies..
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
@Jim Pharo:
I appreciate your magnanimous point of view and almost wish that I feel the same way. “Almost” because I feel that our fellow victims have fallen into a rigorous tribalism that would see any overtures to them as condescension and a trap. Would that it was otherwise. The events of 911 were a Pearl Harbor opportunity to unite us. Instead, the pols played it to what they saw as their advantage. We are no longer a United States. The sooner that we recognize that and split the nation into like-minded, self-governing portions the sooner we may resolve our differences. As it is, we are looking at trench warfare wherein the rank and file from both sides are savaged without any resolution resulting therefrom.
LongHairedWeirdo
I dunno.
I don’t use “white trash” or “trailer park trash” normally. But I do love:
“Why doesn’t the department of transportation let the KKK do highway cleanup (NB: and therefore, get a sign stating “this area maintained by…”)
Ans: Because the KKK only picks up white trash.”
(if you’re like me, it takes a moment for you to realize that “white trash” doesn’t mean “garbage that is white”)
But outside of that – yeah. Really, you should own people. All people. Cultured, genteel people, and people who are vulgar (in the original sense, meaning “common”); people who love NASCAR and Monster Trucks, and people who like opera, fine arts, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
People are amazing. It can be hard to get through to the amazing parts.
Hell. Think about this: the tea partiers are, in large part, people who care about their country, and can feel that something is wrong. That a great many of them were played by assholes speaks poorly of the assholes, not of them.
singfoom
@Cris: I chose that figure out of my ass. That’s a lot of money, but not super rich.
But get much above that and I think your interests might align with those whose incomes are above you more than those below.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
Ha, Pawlenty used to have a moderate mullet. He kept that for a long time despite all the snickering. I think he finally gave it up when he realized it’s not the presidential candidate look.
patrick II
@BGinCHI:
The first episode was shot near Pittsburgh, and looked great. I’ve been looking at southern cal on tv since watching the lone ranger when I was a kid. Just about anything looks better at this point.
…and a nice touch with the show is the Justified theme song. I hadn’t heard gangsta rap mixed with bluegrass slide guitar before and if you would have told me how good it sounded I would not have believed you.
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat: I have been thinking about him today and have not seen him on any thread.
kdaug
Here’s the funny thing: down here in Austin, I know a lot of people who are getting out of their house, selling off their crap, and buying trailers and/or smaller houses. Granted, this is the game industry/programmer/artist side of the spectrum, but these folks ain’t broke. They just have started feeling like they’re getting ripped off. And they are.
As am I.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: I hadn’t seen the earlier thread. I searched earlier threads from latest to earliest so I could see what you were talking about, so I know that AWS has not been on any threads since the Feel the Trumpmentum thread.
I hope he’s okay. Maybe he will show up in John’s new thread.
BGinCHI
@patrick II: Yeah, the pilot had a very different look. Rural anywhere would be more authentic than Hemet or wherever the hell they are.
Also love the theme song.
Chet
Michael Lind, discussing the post-’68 Dems in his 1995 book Up from Conservatism:
“The affluent white left-liberals who, with their black allies, were taking over the Democratic Party viewed working-class whites and the political bosses who represented them with contempt…(they) felt no inhibitions about describing white working people in terms they would have denounced as racist had they been applied to working-class blacks or Hispanics. For a quarter of a century, the identification of left-liberalism with the snobbery of the white overclass has given credibility to the claims of conservative politicians from Nixon to Quayle to represent ‘the forgotten majority’ against a supercilious ‘cultural elite’.”
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@taylormattd: It’s very, very regional. In some areas, “trailer trash” is used nearly as exclusively to describe women as “stripper” — we’re showing how provincial we are with this.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
it would be nice if redneck, only meant, as jeff foxworthy wants to believe, wonderfully unsophisticated.
that i could deal with.
its when that also means racism, my god can beat up your god, and the rest, what has been pushed upon those other wise wonderfully and willfully unsophisticated people, is the problem.
but as with pain management you sometimes cannot ignore the symptoms, and simply treat the disease.
Paula
I had no idea using this term was still acceptable in this day and age. I thought that using really had fallen into the non-PC camp.
But then, I’m the stage of politically correctness wherein the term “paddy wagon” triggers reflexive anxiety about Irish-bashing.
mclaren
How many commenters do you think will get the “Pinkerton goons” reference, Doug?
Paula
@mclaren:
Is this a serious question?
Comrade DougJ
@mclaren:
They know how to use google, don’t they?
Tax Analyst
@Linda Featheringill:
I’ve heard it associated with both male and female, but admittedly much, much more often towards the female trailerites. I’d say by about 80+% to under 20%.
But I guess it depends on who you hang around with.
I’ve known more than a few people from the South that refer to themselves that way, usually in a humorous tone or context. That does not mean, however, that I feel free to follow their lead.
This does not mean that I will be using this in my application for sainthood. I’ve got plenty of other transgressions that would need to be overlooked before this exceedingly minor positive point could matter.
Comrade DougJ
@Church Lady:
What are you trying to say?
Tax Analyst
@BGinCHI:
Oh, yeah? Well, we only had the discount store brand.
BTW – That’s a total lie. The reality was that I had a fairly well-privileged upbringing, although my father did put me to work in the family business (a car wash)when I was 14 (weekends during the school year and 5 to 6 days a week in the summertime). I made the same minimum hourly pay as all the school kids who worked there part time. It was $1/hr back then (1964), and I worked my little ass off, too. So the folks took care of the “major” expenses, but I bought my own lunch on my work days and if I wanted toys or shit outside of the holiday stuff I got I paid for it myself. I was also able to put some of it away in the bank, which came in handy later when I wanted/needed to break free a little from the “family” business thing.
But I still knew full well that I had a pretty damned privileged little life going. A lot of those other kids working weekends and summer days were actually helping their families get by.
Anne Laurie
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Comment of the fvcking day. Maybe the week.
Well-meaning ‘low information’ citizens get misused by the Koch-sucker Klass, and us Politically Aware People point and make fun… of the victims. Speaking of Gould’s Law…
BobS
@Felonious Wench:When he’s not writing about the criminal enterprise called Wall Street, Matt Taibbi has written insightful articles about the teabaggers, Palin, Congress, etc. that would have had Molly Ivins laughing out loud.@LongHairedWeirdo:@Anne Laurie:It’s probably true that many teabaggers are well-meaning low information citizens getting misused by assholes, but just as many are themselves selfish mean-spirited racist assholes who deserve every bit of the contempt we shower them with.
Tehanu
Check out slacktivist — either his old site at http://slacktivist.typepad.com/, or his new site at http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/. The old site has his archives, including a number of posts about people in trailer parks, [sorry, “mobile home parks”] getting ripped off because they mostly don’t own the land their homes sit on, and how some have managed to buy out the park owners as a group. Inspiring stuff.
The Raven
@Church Lady: Ones class is who one allies oneself with. (I wish I could quote SZKB to this effect–he put the words in Engels mouth, in Freedom and Necessity, possibly the worlds only communist pagan historical romance novel, but I don’t have the book to hand, so I will content myself with quoting James Cobham arguing the point: “No, George. No. You can’t give the chicken to the fox to tend. I was born in a house with a bloody name. I’m a member of that class that gives their last year’s clothes to their servants and thinks they’ve fulfilled their duty to their fellow man. I grew up eating food bought with the labour of men and women my father claimed to own.”)
Solidarity, Doug.
sneezy
@schrodinger’s cat:
“I think calling another human being trash should never be acceptable or OK. So how come this is accepted in polite society?”
Beats me, but I’m with you. It’s not a term I use, and when I hear it from others, I think it reflects poorly on them.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
I grew up in Spokane, but even though I live in another country now, if I want to see home, I’m most likely to see it on COPS. Ah, East Sprague… Actually dated a gal who came up in a trailer while I lived there. She turned out to be a little too serious and straight-laced for me, as a reaction against her folks and what she was surrounded by.
The other thing I think of when I see COPS is the old Bill Hicks bit on it… “I can’t not watch it. I’m like a guy with a sore tooth; I can’t quit touchin’ it”
Paul in KY
@Linda Featheringill: I have heard of males being referred to as ‘trailer trash’. I will agree, though, that females seem to be called that epithet alot more than males.
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: I used to fantasize about slowly boiling Linda Tripp in oil. Slowly…
Paul in KY
@General Stuck: I lived in a trailer (on some Air Force bases) until I was 6 years old.
Paul in KY
@Ben: I think Fredrich Engels also helped devise it.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: Billy Ray comes from a wealthy family. His father (Ron Cyrus) was a state rep. for years.
Paul in KY
@BGinCHI: As a Kentuckian, I would love them to film here & spend money here. We need it.
Paul in KY
@Cris: Agree. 10 million or more is where you have the real serious coin. 100 million is where you start living like a Persian king.
ThresherK
My preferred term is “riffraff”. I apply it to actions and outlook, but not money.
Wally Ballou
@The Raven: “Ones class is who one allies oneself with.”
Yes, and with that in mind it’s rather ironic (or, perhaps, not ironic at all) that the first ones to coin the phrase “white trash” were house slaves in the antebellum South.
Is this really a term progressive-minded folks want to use?