O Sister! Sarah Palin and the parlous politics of poor white trash
2009; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/s10624-009-9090-0
ISSN1573-0786
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
ResumoA few days after the second election of George W. Bush to the US executive office, a bit of discursive flotsam entitled the South wound its inevitable way through the drifting currents of cyberspace and landed in my inbox. Penned by an anonymous, self-described northeasterner on an aptly named blog called Annotated Rant, it comprised a bitter diatribe defending liberal Yankee politics against the hypocrisy of southern conservatives (Anonymous 2004). Arguing that the northeast is in practice a paragon of all the virtues?from self-reliance to patriotism to family values?the latter claim to hold dear, it posited the south as a sanctimonious, freeloading relative who should've been allowed to leave the clan more than a century ago when it threatened to disown its northern cousins over slavery. The piece didn't actually say fuck the rednecks, but it ticked all the boxes: southern, poor, gun-toting, bigoted, jingoistic, right-wing. It concluded with a pointed swipe at the Republicans, effectively linking the GOP to poor white trash: And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off. Four years later, the Angry Urban Liberal contingent turned its redneck radar north. The nomination of Palin, sitting governor of Alaska, to the Republican vice presidential candidacy sent liberal writers from the lofty offices of the New York Times to the humble laptops of bedroom bloggers on a frenetic treasure hunt for redneck aspersions, excavating the American cultural landscape for a time honored denigrating discourse glossed by the thin veneer of hillbilly appreciation laid down by O Brother! Where Art Thou, the second coming of Johnny Cash, and the folk revival that ushered in the dawn of the new millennium. While America's journalists burned the midnight oil churning out wry headlines, from Baked Alaska (Collins 2008b) to Palin and McCain's Shotgun Marriage (Rich 2008) to Grizzly Politics (Collins 2008a) to Northern Underexpo? sure (Dionne 2008) to Sarah Palin: A Trojan Moose Concealing Four More Years
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