Tom Wolfe: 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'

R.A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Sun Nov 7 10:38:15 PST 2004


My mother's family's name is Sanders. It's Scots-Irish.

Apparently, I like to have my "rock fights" on the net...

:-).

Cheers,
RAH
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<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-1347653-524,00.html>

The Times of London


 November 07, 2004

 Focus: US Election Special

'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'. . . and so the Democrats
blew it
Tom Wolfe on the elite that got lost in middle America

Over the past few days I've talked to lots of journalists and literary
types in New York. I've grown used to the sound of crushed, hushed voices
on the end of the phone. The weight of George Bush's victory seems almost
too much. But what did they expect, I ask myself.

 They don't like the war and the way the war is going, they don't like Bush
and they don't like what this election says about America. But where's
their sense of reality?

 The liberal elite showed it was way out of touch even before the election.
I was at a dinner party in New York and when everyone was wondering what to
do about Bush I suggested they might do like me and vote for him. There was
silence around the table, as if I'd said "by the way, I haven't mentioned
this before but I'm a child molester".

 Now, like Chicken Licken after an acorn fell on his head, they think the
sky is falling. I have to laugh. It reminds me of Pauline Kael, the film
critic, who said, "I don't know how Reagan won - I don't know a soul who
voted for him." That was a classic and reflects the reaction of New York
intellectuals now. Note my definition of "intellectual" here is what you
often find in this city: not people of intellectual attainment but more
like car salesmen, who take in shipments of ideas and sell them on.

 I think the results in Ohio, the key state this time, tell us everything
we need to know. Overall, the picture of Republican red and Democratic blue
across the country remained almost unchanged since last time. The millions
of dollars spent and miles travelled on the Bush and Kerry campaigns made
no difference at all.

 But look at Ohio and the different voting patterns in Cleveland and
Cincinnati. Cleveland, in the north of the state, is cosmopolitan, what we
would think of as an "eastern" city, and Kerry won by two votes to one.
Cincinnati, in the southeast corner of Ohio, is a long way away both
geographically and culturally. It's Midwestern and that automatically means
"hicksville" to New York intellectuals. There Bush won by a margin of
150,000 votes and it was southern Ohio as a whole that sent him back to the
White House.

 The truth is that my pals, my fellow journos and literary types, would
feel more comfortable going to Baghdad than to Cincinnati. Most couldn't
tell you what state Cincinnati is in and going there would be like being
assigned to a tumbleweed county in Mexico.

 They can talk to sheikhs in Lebanon and esoteric radical groups in
Uzbekistan, but talk to someone in Cincinnati . . . are you crazy? They
have no concept of what America is made of and even now they won't see that.

 So who are the people who voted for Bush? I think the most cogent person
on this is James Webb, the most decorated marine to come out of Vietnam.
Like John Kerry he won the Silver Star, but also the Navy Cross, the
equivalent of our highest honour, the Congressional Medal.

 He served briefly under Reagan as secretary for the navy, but he has since
become a writer. His latest book, Born Fighting, is the most important
piece of ethnography in this country for a long time. It's about that huge
but invisible group, the Scots-Irish. They're all over the Appalachian
mountains and places like southern Ohio and Tennessee.

 Their theme song is country music and when people talk about rednecks,
this is the group they're talking about: this is the group that voted for
Bush.

 Though they've had successes, the Scots-Irish generally haven't done well
economically. They're individualistic, they're stubborn and they value
their way of life more then their financial situation. If a politician
comes out for gun control they take it personally. It's not about guns,
really: if you're against the National Rifle Association you're against
them as a people.

 They take Protestantism seriously. It tickles me when people talk about
"the Christian right". These people aren't right wing, they're just
religious. If you're religious, of course, you're against gay marriage and
abortion. You're against a lot of things that have become part of the
intellectual liberal liturgy.

 Everyone who joins the military here thinks, "Where did all these
Southerners come from?" These people love to fight. During the French and
Indian wars, before there was a United States, recruiters would turn up in
the Carolinas and in the Appalachians and say, "Anyone want to go and fight
Indians?" There was a bunch of boys who were always up for it and they
haven't lost that love of battle.

 My family wasn't Scots-Irish but my father was from the Shenendoah Valley,
in the Blue Ridge mountains in western Virginia, so I know the kind of
folks Webb is talking about.

 They do like fighting: many's the time I was visiting there and I'd get
taken down to town to watch the rock fights on a Saturday night. All the
men would hit the bar, drink beer - the only drink you could buy out there
- come out of the saloon, pick up rocks, throw them at each other and then
go home.

 Bush, despite his wealthy and refined lineage, in terms of family and
where he went to school, manages to come across to people like that as one
of them. He walks like them, he talks like them, he likes cattle and he
says he likes stock car racing, the most popular sport in the United
States, not that you'd know it from reading the New York papers - they
don't cover it.

 There's an annual race in a little place, Bristol Tennessee, a place full
of Scots-Irish, that draws 165,000 people every year, 55,000 more than go
to the biggest football game. Bush reflects this America - the real America
- and that is maybe what the liberal elite and his critics abroad can't
stomach.

 He honestly seems to believe in God, whereas Kerry says, "I'm a Roman
Catholic so I must believe in God." It's as if he turns to James Carville
(the Democratic strategist) and says, "Don't I?" It obviously doesn't play
a part in his life.

 The values of middle America don't play well in New York. Among American
writers, with few exceptions, you don't say anything patriotic and you
don't say anything generally good about the country.

 I must finish now because I need to get to Kennedy airport to wave goodbye
to all those writers and journalists who've told me they can't take another
four years of Bush. Triumphalism is not my style but I can't help an "I
told you so" smile. Oh, by the way, most of them are leaving for London.
Heaven help you when they get there.

 Tom Wolfe was talking to Margarette Driscoll

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'





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