I see the outrage du jour is that the Republicans used professional actors to film an anti-Manchin commercial, and the casting call asked for people who fit the following description:
A Republican ad that shows a couple of regular-looking guys commiserating in a diner about West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) turns out to have been shot with actors, from a script, in Philadelphia.
But not just any actors: “We are going for a ‘Hicky’ Blue Collar look,” read the casting call for the ad, being aired by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “These characters are from West Virginia so think coal miner/trucker looks.”
As a life-long West Virginian, I am not the least bit insulted. In fact, whenever I hear things like this, I hope the attitude spreads and everyone thinks my little slice of heaven is nothing but a bunch of ignorant no teeth redneck hillbilly hicks. Spread the word- it is unbearable here! That way none of you out-of-towners will move here and screw things up like you did to your own damned cities and states. We like knowing our neighbors, leaving the car unlocked, and being able to not worry about our kids while they run around town playing. Stay the hell away.
And just on a technical note, whoever shot that commercial could really use some wardrobe advice. I’ve lived here for 40 years, and no one sits around the bar or diner dressed up in their Sunday best like they are in that commercial. We save the good hats for church and doctor’s appointments.
IN all seriousness, though- West Virginians toss around the word “hillbilly, hick, and redneck” to describe ourselves all the time, and we do so proudly. Although I do remember being on vacation when I was a kid, riding in the back of the station wagon in the seat that faces backwards, and we were driving through PA on the way to Maine and my mother noticed I had my bare feet up ion the window and FREAKED out. “Get your feet down- we don’t want people to think all WV people have no shoes!” I just can’t get too worked up about this.
ajr22
Did you have kids? Or do you just refer to the dogs as your children now?
BGinCHI
Yeah, but, but, Raese, the millionaire who inherited all his dough and has never worked an honest day in his life is out of touch with the working man!
As soon as people find that out they’ll obviously see the light and vote against him.
That we have to talk like this and learn what’s already obvious about candidates says it all about our electorate. And probably our media.
trollhattan
@ John Cole
Darn you all to heck, Cole, who’s buying me a new keyboard?
John Cole
@BGinCHI: Every one in the state knows who Raese is. He’s been running for Senate for four decades.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Maybe John, but if an out-of-stater called you all “hillbillies, hicks, and rednecks” would WVers treat it in the same way homosexuals treat “gay” or the way blacks treat “nigger?” In other words, are you only allowed to do it, or can anyone.
As for the uproar over the ad, it says something that the RNC is running from it.
BGinCHI
@John Cole: And yet the polls show him as competitive, yes?
What gives?
It’s just really hard to take when someone who is so obviously a hack can even compete in a Senate race.
If politics was more like sports, at least these guys would only be able to fuck things up as management instead of on the field.
PS. JC, I wasn’t slagging you. I was suggesting that having to find out that a commercial to understand that Raese is “out of touch” is pathetic.
EdTheRed
Just keep blowing off the tops of your mountains and dumping them into streams, and pretty soon all the city slickers will decide that maybe moving to Vermont instead is worth the extra money after all…
Bender
Meanwhile President Free-the-Slaves puts out a casting call for his next “Town Hall.” Please tell MTV/the White House your favorite issues in advance, so they can script it out properly.
Another for the “If Bush did this…” file.
henqiguai
Yeah, I believe you. Granted, I ain’t been there since ’bout 1970, but back then it sure looked like humans had only recently started moving into that environment. Of course, I had similar problems with what seemed to be the indigenes of Pittsburgh at that time.
Bob Loblaw
This is the least justified fear ever.
David Brooks (not that one)
Apart from the hillbilly thing, part of the negative reaction was that they hired actors to represent Real Murkins.
Huh? WHat’s the big deal here? I thought these “real folks” commercials always use actors. Real folks couldn’t deliver a line on camera convincingly enough. Have I been wrong all these years?
RobertB
If it’s some way to stick it to Raese, I’m all for it.
ajr22
If the only pizza you can get delivered is Dominos, I can’t live there.
Martin
You guys have shoes?
Huh. I had no idea.
MikeMc
“Rubes! So many rubes!”
-Home Simpson
Omnes Omnibus
@RobertB: This, apply it to all Republicans.
trollhattan
@Bender:
“If Bush did it”?!? What, were you asleep those eight years? The only public events Bush ever did were in front of the military, AEI-Heritage, or heavily screened party faithful. No way a DFH ever got into one of his scripted events.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
Dennis SGMM
Ahhh, Huntington and Ritter Park.
Steve
I don’t get the sense that anyone actually likes Raese, so I don’t know what the point is of trying to drive up his negatives. If Manchin loses to a much less popular candidate, it’s because people in WV don’t like Obama and refuse to vote for a D, plain and simple.
General Stuck
Except for my grammar and spelling challenges, I wouldn’t trade growing up in east Kentucky for anything, lots of family problems, but there is a basic sensibility in the soil and mothers milk that I suspect is hard to find elsewhere, and serves one well later on imo. Though for me, in the dark hollows, when it was time to leave, it was time to leave.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Bender: You know, Bender, you might have raised an interesting piece of research, but personally, I’d kick you off this site for “President Free-the-Slaves”.
ETA: Unless you’re talking about Zombie Lincoln, in which case I will have to sign up.
Chyron HR
@Bender:
Congratulations, you’ve come up with a slogan that polls even worse than your Messiah Newt’s “Democrats don’t want poor people to starve to death”.
BGinCHI
@Steve: That’s probably right. Heard Andrea Dumbass Mitchell interview him today and he did not run towards Obama, that’s for sure.
He was Mr. Independent.
dslak
This post needs an IOKIYAR tag, because a Democrat would never be allowed to get away with doing something like this.
joe from Lowell
WTF?
What kind of asshole thinks that’s an insult?
Or, not a massively embarrassing insight in your own shortcomings as a human being?
“Hey, guys, Barack Obama is sort of like someone who freed slaves. We hate him! Right, guys?
Uh guys?”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chyron HR: For some reason, that just pissed me off.
Bender
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Oh, come on, you’re as thin-skinned as President Hubris McPoseur.
Just Some Fuckhead
I have land in McDowell County so I can move there any time I want. And when I do, I plan on changing things ASAP. Outlawing ATVs will be at the top of my list.
Bender
@joe from Lowell:
Really? Really??
That is why we ridicule the Obots.
Tractarian
@Bender:
Because they expose the lunacy of your juvenile name-calling? I suppose that’s a good reason.
Tsulagi
Yeah, those caps do look all shiny new. Not a smudge on them. Like Multiple Choice Mitt’s NRA Life Member card.
Redshirt
Heh. I am chuckling at the notion of someone – anyone – thinking they have to act all fancy when going to Maine. Have you been to Biddeford?
Bender
@Tractarian:
Lunacy? OK, I’ll bite. Name anything Obama has ever done in his entire life that makes him anything “sort of like someone who freed the slaves.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bender: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama were both born in Hawaii, and both were community organizers and basketball players. Tell me that isn’t freaky weird.
Bender
@Just Some Fuckhead: I meant BESIDES that.
BGinCHI
Rahm Emanuel is today’s George McClellan.
Discuss.
John Bird
I like to think of myself as more of a headneck.
El Tiburon
Yeah, about that…don’t worry.
Ash Can
@Bender: OH MY GOD I AM SO GLAD YOU POSTED THIS LINK! It’s SHOCKING! It’s SCANDALOUS! All this time I thought Barack Obama was a pretty good person and politician, and you have proven with this one amazing, incredible link that he’s an absolute, complete, and total phony. I mean, really. A casting call? For an audience of males and females 18 and over? With the express, stated purpose of “[ensuring] that the audience represents diverse interests and political views?” IT’S SHOCKING, I TELL YOU, and this TOTALLY opens my eyes to the truth!
…Um, so Bender, what is the truth, anyway?
Oh, never mind about that! The important thing is that from now on I PROMISE to click on every single link you provide, and I encourage everyone else here to do the same. Because each one of your links tells us so much — about the idiot right wing and its pathetic shills.
Seriously, don’t you ever get embarrassed? At all?
John Bird
@BGinCHI:
Well, I don’t think it makes much sense to single out individuals here, but there’s plenty of Sewards and Greeleys to go around in the Party nowadays.
But not really a McClellan, because can you imagine a movement to nominate Rahm for President in 2012?
Comrade Javamanphil
@EdTheRed: Thankfully, we here in VT have this thing called winter which tends to drive the less hardy away… permanently. OTOH, it does explain why we lead the nation in craft brewers per capita.
As for John’s point, I lived a year in Pikeville, KY and the biggest event of the year was Hillbilly days. To say they were proud of their heritage would be the hugest of understatements and I don’t think they cared one bit if it was some city slicker that said it.
Donald G
Well, the first thing that leapt out at me was that the actors’ accents don’t sound convincingly West Virginian. Then again, it’s probably better that they didn’t even try because it’s hard for a non-Appalachian to do it without a.) getting it wrong, or b.) overdoing it and falling further into stereotype.
Bender
@Ash Can:
Save your fake incredulity. I get it — it’s the old “unless it’s above-the-fold, front-page news, it ain’t news” bit. Declare it a “nontroversy!” Of course, it only applies to your guy, never the other guy (who might’ve, say, played around with witchcraft when she was 16! OMFG! STOP THE PRESSES!). Whatever. Weak.
WereBear
@Donald G: Very true. It’s the subtle differences, which most people really wouldn’t know.
I can do three different Southern accents, but kinda generic. I was always impressed with Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, because she was so regional.
Donald G
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Oh, we had winter in West Virginia, too. It starts to arrive at Halloween, is definitely in place by Thanksgiving and stays until early May. Then we have about two weeks of spring, four months of summer, followed by a month of fall, and then winter moves in again.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Donald G: Call me when you have a blizzard on Halloween and negative 10 as a daytime high for 3 days in a row.
Donald G
@WereBear:
I’m not sure if I can do a proper Southern WV accent, but I was surrounded by the accent for nine years. My young daughter used to have a bit of it in her pronunciations of words like “football” and “kooshball”, but she has since lost it in the years since we moved away.
The one that used to fascinate me was the pronunciation of the world “hills”. The “i” turns into some sort of diphthong or something and it sounds like you’re almost saying “he ills” but somehow turning those two distinct vowel sounds into one combined sound that lasts for one syllable. I don’t know if that explanation makes any sense, but over the years I’ve learned how to approximate that sound, but I’m not sure if I can do it they way a true Mountaineer would.
Donald G
@Comrade Javamanphil:
That ain’t just winter. That’s livin’ in the Nawth, where Santa and his elves keep his vacation home the othah eleven months of the year.” j/k
WereBear
@Donald G: Yes, I know what you mean. I once knew a famous dulcimer player who had spent decades in New York metro; the mountains would sneak out only every so often.
I have a MidWestern accent on some words, though I’ve weeded out the worst offenders; it takes a good ear, now.
khead
@General Stuck:
Preach it.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Good luck with that. Prisons + ATVs = new local economy.
My old man will probably join you in the fight though – if he’s still around when you get there.
uila
Cole, next time you tell us about your home state, I would appreciate if you would include a picture of your hand with middle finger and thumb extended. Then maybe use your other hand to point out your approximate location.
Not entirely sure how you’re going to snap that photo with no hands free, but you barefoot types have monkey toes, right?
BGinCHI
@John Bird: In Rahm’s mind?
Oh mama yes.
Ash Can
@Bender: [email protected]!
Steaming Pile
Oh, and central NY gets about thirty feet of lake-effect snow every winter, and the mercury doesn’t go above freezing from Halloween to Memorial Day.
Jane2
Hah! That’s exactly how I feel about Saskatchewan and my soul sister state of North Dakota….just fly on over cause there ain’t nothing but rednecks and farmers here.
JWL
That sounds a lot like being a native San Franciscan. Remember a few years ago when Bill O’Reilly mentioned the city deserved to be on the receiving end of a terrorist attack? No one I knew cared a rat’s ass about it one way or the other. All the outrage was registered by people outside the Bay Area.
joe from Lowell
John,
I can appreciate the sentiment behind this rant, but it would be nice if you could make the threat of outsiders moving in sound more like obnoxious soccer moms turning your town into bland, suburban hell, and less like you’re bashing cities full of those people looking to steal your hubcaps.
DFH no.6
@Bender:
From Bender, the wingnut with the reading comprehension issues and non sequiturs regarding the responses to his lame-ass “President Freed-the-Slaves”.
Yeah, cuz Christ knows that’s the only ridiculous thing Christie O’Donnell’s ever said or done in public. And so very long ago, too.
You lockstep wingnuts never fail to crack me up – no matter how absurd, fucked-up, hateful, ignorant, or just flat-out wrong anyone on your team ever is (particularly someone in the news and/or running for office) you just have to defend the indefensible. Lockfuckingstep.
Like Michael “Uncle Tom” Steele the other day talking on the TV with Lawrence O’Donnell about Crazy Christie’s laughable claim to have been “privy” (her exact word) several years ago to classified information regarding some alleged plot by China to invade the US.
Steele absolutely would not refudiate that crack-brained claim, telling Lawrence O’Donnell “you don’t know” that she didn’t have such classified information. Of course Steele knows, I know, Bender knows, we all know, that such a claim is completely ludicrous, and is just one more in a long list of items that demonstrate what a totally unqualified for any office (let alone Senate) candidate Crazy Christie is. But defend her you must.
You fuckers are simply amazing. Lockfuckingstep, the lot of you.
JWL
DFH no.6: Not lock-step. Goose-step.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Right, WV is the shiznits, and all the stupid racists in the country are in Arizona.
Did I miss anything?
Bender
And, of course, I could say the same about you moonbats and Ball Juicers. It might not be any more true than your ridiculous drivel, but I could still say it.
But your “point” is totally irrelevant to the discussion. I never defended anything about O’Donnell. Find where I did and repost it.
Batocchio
My reaction to the ad was, who the hell is dumb enough to see it and think those men aren’t actors? The GOP has always liked their fake cowboys and fake rednecks, so reading the ad was good for a laugh. There was nothing nefarious about the whole thing – it was just a little amusing but unsurprising glimpse into the bullshit factory.
anna missed
And John, seeing that you’re the resident authority on WVa culture, has WVa ever got around to naming its new state flower? Seeing that the satellite dish has faded into history?
LikeableInMyOwnWay
deleted
lonesomerobot
the outrage is that it’s coming from an outsider, isn’t it? you’re fine to call yourself (and each other) hicks, but if an outsider does it, it’s still an insult. I don’t think the republican consultant who wrote up the casting description was thinking about all of the blessed freedoms of hickdom, John.
RobertB
@Anna – the dishes are there, they’re just smaller.
/waiting patiently for the toothbrush joke
Svlad Jelly
John, don’t you live up north? You might as well be living in Maryland or something. Down here where I live — literally just a few bumpy miles from THE Don Bob Surber — it’s a vast wasteland of birtherism and bad teeth, paranoia and barely suppressed violence. And there’s tobacco spit everywhere.
Death Panel Truck
That’s exactly how I feel about Californians fleeing their state in droves and flooding into the state of Washington. They wrecked their own state’s economy, and now they’re coming up here to fuck up mine, and I don’t like it one bit.
RobertB
@Svlad – my wife (who’s from Morgantown) used to play that ‘northern, civilized part of WV’ card, until I got to know the area better. It might be “you’uns” instead of “y’all”, but take the accents away and it’s still the same. Don’t let ’em fool you about western PA and southern OH either – you don’t magically appear in Paris when you cross the state line.
/grew up in Beckley and Huntington, so have some redneck cred
Bill in OH
@Bender: Take it from a non-regular here. You think you sound really clever and that you’re giving as good as you’re getting.
You don’t and you’re not.
DFH no.6
@Bender:
It’s in my blockquote from your earlier comment, dumbshit.
Unless of course you were referring to some other wingnut female who “played around with witchcraft when she was 16”.
You really are one dumb motherfucker, you know that?
JRon
In all seriousness, as a genuine born-hillbilly, people acting like the work “hick” is an insult tend to sound a bit more offensive than someone who simply uses the word.
Lihtox
@Bender: Maybe you could start by explaining why you would call Obama “President Freed-The-Slaves”, which still doesn’t make sense to me.