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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2012 / Real Americans Don’t Slop Hogs

Real Americans Don’t Slop Hogs

by Tom Levenson|  October 25, 201110:24 pm| 93 Comments

This post is in: Election 2012, General Stupidity

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Apropos of Doug’s post on Fox’s latest defense of addiction, lung cancer and related afflictions as badges of Real ‘Murkin-ness, here’s a completely pointless appeal to actual data.  I know that this won’t make a dent in the public discourse, but I get so damn sick of being told that my 53 years of coastal life are somehow hopelessly out of the common run.

To recap: the Fox News (sic!–ed.) personage defending the Cain guy’s on-air nicotine jones argued that those living “real lives” (as opposed to my own transparently fake one) embrace the death and destruction that follow the trail of discarded butts.  First on her list of such real Americans were farmers, as opposed to that terrifying scourge, the coastal elites.

I’m a farmer’s nephew.  I have [ineptly] driven a tractor as a summer hand, when that aforesaid uncle sucked it up, made nice to my mum, and allowed me to “help” him during the harvest.  I’ve shoveled grass seed into sacks (equipped with just about the only farm implement I’m actually qualified to wield, a shovel). I got nothing but admiration for those with the gift or the capacity or the sheer stamina to farm for a living.  For myself I’m desperately glad that after my teens, I never had to work that hard with my back and hands.

In which expression of gratitude I am not alone.  The actual farm population — working farmers, not folks who live on (relatively) big patches of ground — amounts to a rounding error within the total US tally: one percent or less of American workers are farmers.  Combining wheat or running cattle may be iconic.  It just doesn’t occupy very many people anymore — at least not in any industrialized society.

It’s been that way for a while.  Rural life last claimed half of the US population more than ninety years ago.  By the late 1990s, fewer than one million Americans claimed farming as their principal job.  As of 1997, just 46,000 farms out of over 2 million listed accounted for 50% of all agricultural sales.

That translates into the fact that no one — defined here as very few — actually fits the romantic image of the American family farmer anymore.  That image of a spread large enough to support a family and small enough to be run by one has not entirely vanished into myth.  But assuming, (generously) a 20% margin on sales, farm income at or above the $50,000 level flowed to fewer 10 percent of all farms, again in data from the end of the last century..

All of which is to say, as I did through all that 2008 blather about Sarah Palin’s ability to channel the experience of what was in fact a distinct minority of Americans, that Real Americans live in cities and suburbs. In fact, contra that Foxbot, half of all Americans live in coastal watershed counties.*  We may not all be elite** — but there are a whole lot of us.

Yup:  I am that guy muttering obsessively, “quantum leaps are really small.“***

*To be sure, for the purposes of that calculation, Detroit is a waterfront community.  Remember: Duluth is America’s westernmost Atlantic port.

**Though we are, of course, all above average.

***Don’t even get me started on “decimate.”

Image:  Jan van Goyen, Peasant Huts with a Sweep Well, 1633.

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93Comments

  1. 1.

    Linnaeus

    October 25, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    *To be sure, for the purposes of that calculation, Detroit is a waterfront community. Remember: Duluth is America’s westernmost Atlantic port.

    There’s a reason for the term “Third Coast”.

  2. 2.

    Gex

    October 25, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    The phrase “small town values” was first used in print the year that a majority of Americans lived in cities.

    I don’t look down on small communities or people that work the land. But they don’t need to be mythologized and used to bludgeon the rest of us and tarring us as not-real-Americans.

    But of course if you push back against this myth, you become an elite that looks down on them.

  3. 3.

    Spaghetti Lee

    October 25, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    Yes, yes, and yes. And I say this as someone who grew up in a family farmers as well (extended family if not immediate). Only 1 in 5 Americans live in rural areas at all, as I recall, and it’s shrinking. But maybe that’s why exurbia is so attractive: lets people maintain the myth of being the rugged American outdoorsman (the wilderness, for limited values of such, is only a 15-minute drive away, after all!) while having all the conveniences of big city life. Conveniences paid for, of course, by the people actually living in the big-city part of the urban area in question, which our real-Murkin, Fox-watching suburban wingnut no doubt hates and fears.

  4. 4.

    Jenny

    October 25, 2011 at 10:32 pm

    The funniest part is that Fixxed News studio isn’t located in “real america” but at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan.

    And Megan Kelly wasn’t wearing overalls, but rather a $5,000 outfit with a $1,000 hair cut and color job.

    If they love “real america” so much, move the studio to tornado alley (or atleast to the Bronx).

  5. 5.

    RossInDetroit

    October 25, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    Detroit is a waterfront community.

    MI has more total shoreline than any state but Alaska.

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    October 25, 2011 at 10:33 pm

    @Spaghetti Lee: One in six, actually (about 51 million out of 308 mil as of the 2010 census.)

    And that number is continuing to tilt toward the urban side of the scale.

  7. 7.

    beltane

    October 25, 2011 at 10:34 pm

    Don’t be surprised if Fox starts incorporating an updated version of Stalinist era propaganda posters featuring images of well-fed, but cigarette smoking, Real American peasant farmers happily toiling away on their collectivist farms.

  8. 8.

    Spaghetti Lee

    October 25, 2011 at 10:36 pm

    @beltane:

    They could call it “Capitalist Realism.”

  9. 9.

    Monkey Business

    October 25, 2011 at 10:37 pm

    Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about Big City Values? Things like inclusion, resourcefulness, community, innovation, etc.?

    I can’t be the only one that’s ever thought of this.

  10. 10.

    Spaghetti Lee

    October 25, 2011 at 10:37 pm

    @Tom Levenson:

    More room for me, the way I see it. So long as I have internet access, I honestly don’t mind how small my eventual hometown ends up being.

  11. 11.

    General Stuck

    October 25, 2011 at 10:39 pm

    I was mostly raised on my grandparents farm in east Ky. My grandpappy made most of his money off a pair of moonshine stills, and he would take me out as a sprout to help with slopping the hogs. Except on the way, he would stop to take a snort or two from several strategically deployed jugs to keep a step ahead of my tee totaling jeebus loving granny. By the time we reached the pig stye, gramps was feeling no pain, and was up for some entertainment. So he would mount me on one of several 400 pound hogs to ride them bronco style, and throw me off into the pig shit. I loved it. Grand pappy loved it, and I think even the hogs did a little. Not the women folk though, so I just told them tripped on stick and fell in some shit. I don’t think they believed it though.

  12. 12.

    RossInDetroit

    October 25, 2011 at 10:39 pm

    My great grandfather was born on an Amish farm in 1887, homesteaded another farm in MI and died in the late ’70s when I was in college studying computer programming.
    A line of farmers going back millennia pretty much ended in 1927 when he threw my grandpa out of the house at age 16 for playing guitar in a Country band.

  13. 13.

    beltane

    October 25, 2011 at 10:40 pm

    @Spaghetti Lee: That’s a good one!

    Also, where I live at least, small farms tend to be organic farms, owned and operated by hippies. Do hippie farmers count as Real Americans?

  14. 14.

    Citizen_X

    October 25, 2011 at 10:43 pm

    @beltane: Fox is an updated version of Stalinist era propaganda posters. The techniques for propaganda haven’t really changed, just the media used.

  15. 15.

    Tom Levenson

    October 25, 2011 at 10:44 pm

    @Monkey Business: You aren’t. See, e.g. Jane Jacobs late work Systems of Survival.

    It’s not her best book, but she expresses clearly her view of what might be called cosmopolitanism as an essential virtue.

  16. 16.

    David in NY

    October 25, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    I know a handful of actual small farmers. For every farm, there’s a married couple, one of whom holds down a job in a factory, as a teacher, etc. In reality, farming is just the second, and less reliable income.

    And when, say, the man is found to be having an affair with the woman’s best friend down the road, well, there goes the farm, too. Out of which I got some great, cheaper-than-usual lamb chops and some free leaf lard from one steamed lady.

  17. 17.

    magurakurin

    October 25, 2011 at 10:47 pm

    @Linnaeus: Indeed. There is even a cadre of insane, cold-water fanatics who surf the Great Lakes. A quick google search of Great Lakes surfing will produce some frightening images of cold, cold surfing conditions. But, it does bolster the point. I mean, they got surfers, it’s a coast.

  18. 18.

    scav

    October 25, 2011 at 10:47 pm

    mmm.
    Grew up in village of fewer than 500. check.
    Educated in three room schoolhouse with bell. check.
    Heated house with wood stove. check.
    Santa Monica in probably under 2 hours. check.

    Damn. Very nearly made it to real personhood there. Even had to walk uphill in the snow to get to school — alas, only one way so I fail there too.

  19. 19.

    Violet

    October 25, 2011 at 10:48 pm

    @beltane:

    Do hippie farmers count as Real Americans?

    Of course not. Can’t believe you even asked.

  20. 20.

    RossInDetroit

    October 25, 2011 at 10:49 pm

    Two guys I went to high school with are farmers. They raise row crops on 4,000 leased acres.
    They have robot tractors that run perfect rows while the operator sits in the cab and watches display screens.

  21. 21.

    David in NY

    October 25, 2011 at 10:49 pm

    @RossInDetroit:

    MI has more total shoreline than any state but Alaska.

    Thank you. Nobody believes it, but it’s true. Learned it in 7th grade Michigan history (and geography). And Alaska wasn’t really a state yet, so we were still first.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 25, 2011 at 10:50 pm

    ***Don’t even get me started on “decimate.”

    You can get me started on that. Pisses me off that I can’t use a perfectly good and useful word meaning roughly “one in ten,” because I know that only about one in ten thousand would know the right definition. The other 9,999 would think I was just using a fancy word for “destroy” or “demolish.”

    And yeah, I’m a ores tiptop ist (edit: Damn You, Auto Correct!)

    (ahem) And yeah, I’m a prescriptionist on this one. I know most dictionaries allow the common definition. I don’t really care.

    /she’s such a pedant

  23. 23.

    Walker

    October 25, 2011 at 10:52 pm

    Well, if you count Farmville, there are plenty of farmers out there.

  24. 24.

    David in NY

    October 25, 2011 at 10:53 pm

    @RossInDetroit: And Ross, there’s a book, “The Last Farmer,” I think by a guy whose parents, German Lutheran stock, worked a farm in the Thumb while he went off to U of M, then to write for Rolling Stone, then came home for a while. You might like it. Guy has a German name, Klein or something.

    Ed: Sorry. Howard Kohn. It’s good.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 25, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    Duluth is America’s westernmost Atlantic port

    Only since 1959, though, right?

  26. 26.

    Linnaeus

    October 25, 2011 at 10:56 pm

    @magurakurin:

    Hell yeah, it’s a coast, and we’re getting near the time of year where things can get really nasty out there. If folks don’t believe that, well, Gordon Lightfoot would like to have a word with you.

  27. 27.

    Keith

    October 25, 2011 at 10:57 pm

    By the late 1990s, fewer than one million Americans claimed farming as their principal job

    Maybe she was talking about weed. Do we really know what Cain’s chief(!) of staff was smoking/toking? It would be irresponsible *not* to speculate.

  28. 28.

    magurakurin

    October 25, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I suppose one could say you are fairly less than pure. Isn’t the “real” meaning of decimate to kill one in ten of a unit of soldiers, prisoners, etc. Not sure it ever just meant 1 in 10 of anything.

    The earliest English sense of decimate is “to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit).” The extended sense “destroy a great number or proportion of” developed in the 19th century

  29. 29.

    Linnaeus

    October 25, 2011 at 11:00 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Only since 1959, though, right?

    Maybe not Duluth, but a lot of other Great Lakes towns had a mule named Sal long before 1959.

  30. 30.

    magurakurin

    October 25, 2011 at 11:01 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: there is a Trivial Pursuits question in there somewhere.

  31. 31.

    amk

    October 25, 2011 at 11:01 pm

    Isn’t all real farming done by those darned job stealing immigrants now-a-days ?

  32. 32.

    waratah

    October 25, 2011 at 11:01 pm

    My son and daughter asked grandfather if they could earn spending money for a trip to Six Flags. He said they could haul the fresh baled alfalfa bales from the field and stack them in the barn. They worked very hard and he paid them the same amount he would have an adult worker. My daughter had problems when she arrived at Six Flags when she looked at the prices of each ride and said do you know how many bales that will cost. They chose not to farm for a living but I think they would not trade the experience of farm life growing up.

  33. 33.

    David in NY

    October 25, 2011 at 11:01 pm

    @Monkey Business: Big City values:

    “WHEN I was a child, about sixty years ago, the city’s publicly owned radio station, WNYC, had a wonderful announcement that it would transmit every hour on the hour: “This is Station WNYC, New York City, where seven million people”—at some point in the early 1960s it became eight million—“live in peace and harmony, and enjoy the benefits of democracy.” I was thrilled by this language; I can see now that it formed my first idea of New York.”

    Marshall Berman, Dissent, Fall, 2007.

    They still say that, eight million and all.

  34. 34.

    RossInDetroit

    October 25, 2011 at 11:04 pm

    @Linnaeus:

    Hell yeah, it’s a coast, and we’re getting near the time of year where things can get really nasty out there.

    Like we care. This is why Great Lakes sport fishing boats have twin V8s and can run for port at 30 knots when a squall line appears. And RADAR, Loran, GPS and anything else that will keep you above water.
    Then there’s crazies like my 76 year old dad and his buddies who will be trolling rivers for steelhead in an open boat in January.

  35. 35.

    Dougerhead

    October 25, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    Good post, I grew up in a farming area and farmers work their asses off. They’re not dumb or chain-smokers, either. Fuck Megyn Kelly.

  36. 36.

    drkrick

    October 25, 2011 at 11:07 pm

    @magurakurin: The Romans used it for units that had been judged cowardly or insubordinate in battle. They would divide the unit that was to be decimated into groups of 10, who drew lots. The soldier in each group with the short straw would be killed by his comrades. Officers were dealt with separately, and often more severely.

    On the other hand, the more recent definition has been accepted so widely for so long that it’s hard to argue it’s wrong. At some point, usage overrules all.

  37. 37.

    jefft452

    October 25, 2011 at 11:12 pm

    @Monkey Business:
    “Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about Big City Values? Things like inclusion, resourcefulness, community, innovation, etc.?”

    They used to have a word for people who acted like people who live in cities – “Civilized”

  38. 38.

    S. cerevisiae

    October 25, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    @Linnaeus: I was 10 and living on the north shore of Lake Superior when the Fitz went down. That was a hell of a storm. My family were fishermen, captains and boatbuilders on the Great Lakes and you learn to respect them or you end up dead.

  39. 39.

    Rick Taylor

    October 25, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    Yup: I am that guy muttering obsessively, “quantum leaps are really small.“***

    Quantum leaps are really small, but they’re also discontinuous. It makes sense to me to use them as a metaphor when describing some sort of change which we imagine does not and cannot go through intermediate stages.

  40. 40.

    eric

    October 25, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    I thought that commercial was a bold, open play for tobacco lobby donations.

  41. 41.

    Brandon

    October 25, 2011 at 11:20 pm

    Not to go OT, but can someone please alert Ben Smith that the NYT is attacking Romney’s religion? NYT Caucus Blog: For Romney, an Awkward Visit

  42. 42.

    PurpleGirl

    October 25, 2011 at 11:21 pm

    @beltane: I doubt it. No DFH is a real ‘murikan.

  43. 43.

    tc

    October 25, 2011 at 11:22 pm

    OT: Occupy Oakland protesters teargassed. Reporters told to turn off their cameras and leave.

  44. 44.

    joeyess

    October 25, 2011 at 11:22 pm

    I have a cousin that runs a family dairy farm in Elmira, Wisconsin. The farm has been in their family for over 100 years. They have around about 50 milk cows. Work begins at 4 in the morning and ends around 7 at night.

    They are the hardest working people I know. They are also the poorest people I know.

    They clear about $23,000 per year. Family of 6.

    Yeah, that 46k farms that account for 50% of all products is nothing more than big Agra. Once again, the top 1% owns about half of the wealth. It’s a rampant and recurring theme in all walks of American life.

  45. 45.

    scav

    October 25, 2011 at 11:23 pm

    OT tidbit loosely linked in by Romans and pedantry and general aura of propaganda and myth. Picked it up watching QI today. How many know the original gesture used during the pledge? The Bellemy salute, goes back to 1892. Only abandoned in ’42 and replaced with the hand on heart gesture by the dreaded FDR and his nefarious congress because it was being confused with the Fascist and Nazi salutes.

  46. 46.

    magurakurin

    October 25, 2011 at 11:24 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I had to check but, need to add “freshwater” as well.

  47. 47.

    magurakurin

    October 25, 2011 at 11:26 pm

    @scav:

    “I did not know that, Dude. I did not know that.”

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack

    October 25, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    @Linnaeus, @S. cerevisiae:

    I always disliked “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” maybe because it was played and played into the ground on the radio. And it seemed interminable.

    Much prefer “Ballad of the Yarmouth Castle,” from Lightfoot’s awesome live album Sunday Concert.

    (Favorite song: “Apology.”)

  49. 49.

    jl

    October 25, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    I done growd up on a dirt farm what are IN a coastal watershed county. So gwarsh, I reckon I has one o’ them thar identitee cornflictions.

    Aw shucks, make me so consarned cornfused Iwll, go plink some varmints wi my 22 and warn itall warked outta ma system, come back in an sippa nice mason jar o’ Los Carnareeros Pinoh Nwar ‘n aged Comtay.

  50. 50.

    PurpleGirl

    October 25, 2011 at 11:28 pm

    @amk: No, they just do the harvesting and maybe help with the planting. But as we learned from Georgia’s recent experience they are vital to the economy.

  51. 51.

    edmund dantes

    October 25, 2011 at 11:30 pm

    If you want to stick to original definitions of words, why don’t you switch to a dead language, and save us the “get off my lawn” rant.

    Otherwise, we’ve got ourselves a living language, and things are going to shift over time.

  52. 52.

    Steeplejack

    October 25, 2011 at 11:33 pm

    (Resubmitted because of too many links. FYWP!)

    @Linnaeus, @S. cerevisiae:

    I always disliked “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” maybe because it was played and played into the ground on the radio. And it seemed interminable.

    Much prefer “Ballad of the Yarmouth Castle,” from Lightfoot’s awesome live album Sunday Concert.

    (Favorite song: “Apology.”)

  53. 53.

    Jenny

    October 25, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    OBot Alert

    Obama is appearing on the tonite’s edition of “The Tonight Show”.

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_img_full/image/image_file/_mg_3183.jpg

  54. 54.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 25, 2011 at 11:39 pm

    Quantum leaps are small? What the hey?

    Next you’ll be telling me that no time travel is involved! Hmmph.

  55. 55.

    genghisjon

    October 25, 2011 at 11:40 pm

    I,ve worked on farms on and off as a hired hand,mostly milking cows and field work.The saddest thing I ever saw I was working in a sales barn.A couple who had to have been in their 80’s had to sell their dairy heard.They went to every cow and said goodbye she was crying.One farmer I worked for owed a lot money,every body told him he should take the gov.buyout to save as much of his farm as he could.We were takeing a break one day ,he looked at me and said he could not sell,it was all he’d ever done.His nick name is Tuffy.It ended badly.The toughest most hard working sons of bitchs i’ve ever knowen.God bless im.

  56. 56.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 25, 2011 at 11:41 pm

    Just for the record, I’m such an old fogey that I have fed hogs.

  57. 57.

    Bubblegum Tate

    October 26, 2011 at 12:08 am

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m with you.

  58. 58.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    October 26, 2011 at 12:08 am

    Blah, I grew up in a small town in Oregon (timber country mind you, I’ve never been able to stand the sight of flat farm fields) and I hated it. I dunno, I’m not secure enough yet to actually want to go back and visit. Honestly, it was that shitty of an upbringing, that I want nothing to do with small towns.

  59. 59.

    Elliecat

    October 26, 2011 at 12:16 am

    @Gex:

    I don’t look down on small communities or people that work the land. But they don’t need to be mythologized and used to bludgeon the rest of us and tarring us as not-real-Americans.

    Funny you should use the word “bludgeon” on this context. One of the worst murders in our general region was the bludgeoning murder of an entire family (two parents and four or five children, a couple of them still small) in their small town home, by a couple of “Real Americans” who had apparently gone to the home intending merely to rape the teenaged daughter. I thought of that every time I heard Palin carrying on about “Real Americans.”

  60. 60.

    Cliff in NH

    October 26, 2011 at 12:34 am

    @joeyess:

    yup, rel’s got ~50 milkers, its not easy, and they cost $2000+ each before they can even be milked, Its Not Easy.

    Not by quite a bit.

  61. 61.

    Calouste

    October 26, 2011 at 12:37 am

    @Amanda in the South Bay:

    Lou Reed and John Cale – Small Town

    “There’s only one good thing about a small town, you know you want to leave.”

    And that, in 2 minutes and 17 seconds, was the summing up of Andy Warhol’s childhood.

  62. 62.

    Duane

    October 26, 2011 at 12:40 am

    I wonder if I am a “real american”…. 120 cow 1000 acre family dairy farmer……My dad, brother and I all make a good living off the farm……listen to country music…..Nascar fan….though I am converting to INDYCAR—uh-oh chinks starting to show….live in middle of nowhere Ohio…. BUT…. I am a lifelong Democrat who is more liberal than most folks I know……hell I support the evil black man who is President…. yep…I dont think I count as a real american after all…….

    so just remember that a few of us full time farmers are hard core lefties…a few at least…

  63. 63.

    Cliff in NH

    October 26, 2011 at 12:56 am

    Hey guys, Buy Cabot cheese, I’ve met the cows, they are nice =)

  64. 64.

    Chris

    October 26, 2011 at 12:59 am

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    But maybe that’s why exurbia is so attractive: lets people maintain the myth of being the rugged American outdoorsman (the wilderness, for limited values of such, is only a 15-minute drive away, after all!) while having all the conveniences of big city life.

    DING DING DING DING DING!!!

  65. 65.

    Viva BrisVegas

    October 26, 2011 at 1:02 am

    @genghisjon:

    A couple who had to have been in their 80’s had to sell their dairy heard.They went to every cow and said goodbye she was crying.

    I assume that normally they retired all their old cows and sent them to Florida.

  66. 66.

    joeyess

    October 26, 2011 at 1:06 am

    @Cliff in NH: Yeah Cliff, they struggle monthly and work their asses off. It’s tragic. But man is that milk good.

  67. 67.

    Yutsano

    October 26, 2011 at 1:11 am

    @Duane: You were good until you supported the sociallist nigra. But FWIW I have a friend who’s a cattle rancher in Wyoming. And a DFH.

  68. 68.

    KS in MA

    October 26, 2011 at 3:25 am

    My grandfather was a dairy farmer in Tennessee. Voted for Henry Wallace in ’48.

  69. 69.

    Ronzoni Rigatoni

    October 26, 2011 at 5:58 am

    Grew up in a small farm community on the shores of Lake Erie where at the ripe age of eight I was ordered to climb up 12 foot ladders and pick Cherries (“15 baskets a day or you’ll get a whippin.'” I never got more’n 10). Anyway, it was mostly grape country, so fortunately there was no need for herding or milking. Woo woo, Welch’s! (ever herd a grape?). Not much to do out there in winter ‘cept “pullin’ brush” in January (It was no accident then that most of my very extended fambly was born around October/November). I hated every minute of it, but the good thing was that most of the folx were FDR Democrats.

  70. 70.

    prufrock

    October 26, 2011 at 6:10 am

    In fact, contra that Foxbot, half of all Americans live in coastal watershed counties.* We may not all be elite**—but there are a whole lot of us.

    That’s nothing. In Florida, 90% of the population lives within ten miles of the ocean. However, that didn’t stop our “coastal elites” from electing Governor Skeletor.

  71. 71.

    geg6

    October 26, 2011 at 6:32 am

    Calouste @61:

    That would be a good line except for the fact that Andy Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh, not exactly a small town or rural area.

  72. 72.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    October 26, 2011 at 7:17 am

    what an obtuse load of sanctimonious bullshit.

    i think you are missing, and so badly it can only be on purpose, the appeal of the “real merkin” strawman.

    its because whether they are urban, suburban, ex-urban, ex-ex-urban, or truly rural, the “real merkin” of right wing mythery, is a person who isn’t, won’t even become by moderate to strenuous effort, and knows it, and has known it so long they don’t even want to be the advertized, commonized, commoditized, propagandized, culturalized, socialized, and standardized version of modern man popularized in the post-modern simulacrum that wages an all out assault on our senses and sensibilities.

    liberals react to this phenomena in one way, conservatives in another, but you are never going to reach these people, even for their own good, if you don’t understand what motivates them.
    for conservatives,and others who smoke; smoking, though undeniably unhealthy, is a tiny act of defiance in an otherwise largely conformist life where there is always another asshole trying to beat on you and tell you still have conforming to do before you sleep.

    do you want to reach these people, or are you content vilifying them?
    because all they are saying is the same thing you are, though not in so many words, they are tired of the bullshit, and they are even willing to self-destruct to get that message across.

  73. 73.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 26, 2011 at 7:44 am

    @geg6: Tell that to Lou Reed and John Cale. It’s their line.

  74. 74.

    David in NY

    October 26, 2011 at 7:50 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: It’s a tiny act of addiction or thinking, when you were 16, it was cool. Often to your later dismay when your lungs are black and cancer-ridden.

  75. 75.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    October 26, 2011 at 8:17 am

    @David in NY:

    and what do you call people bitching about it? other than people who could probably use the slight rejiggering of the neurons that smoking provides?

  76. 76.

    RSA

    October 26, 2011 at 8:43 am

    Real Americans Don’t Slop Hogs

    But farmers are the salt of the earth!

    (I’ve always found that phrase strange, though I understand the allusion to salt being valuable, as in the Latin origin for “salary”. But salting the earth is also something that was done to destroy its use for growing crops. Weird.)

  77. 77.

    RossInDetroit

    October 26, 2011 at 8:46 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:

    other than people who could probably use the slight rejiggering of the neurons that smoking nicotine provides?

    I use the gum, achieving both a stimulated brain and pristine lungs. Plus no burning smells. If I develop an allergy to chicle I’m screwed though.

  78. 78.

    Tom Levenson

    October 26, 2011 at 9:03 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Way to completely miss the point of the post, my friend.

    Target: Fox News, faux populism.

    People bitching about smoking = one of the most successful public health programs ever, though long delayed by unindicted felons in big tobacco.

    But again: if you read the piece over, you’ll see that the argument isn’t about smoking, it’s about some Fox talker claiming authenticity for a small group of mythologized Americans, and denying same to the vast majority of us who live in cities and suburbs.

  79. 79.

    SBJules

    October 26, 2011 at 9:07 am

    I thought Andy Warhol grew up in Pittsburgh.

    Agriculture is still major in the coastal southern CA county where I live. There are big farms across the road from the processing plants and many small operatitons that sell at the numerous farmers’ markets.

  80. 80.

    Johannes

    October 26, 2011 at 9:09 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Hey, I’m with you on this one, too. I mean, even the Master stops short of linguistic butchery.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQtLzWZ6D8

    /Doctor Who geek

  81. 81.

    David in NY

    October 26, 2011 at 9:28 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: “and what do you call people bitching about it”

    A necessary public health program.

  82. 82.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    October 26, 2011 at 9:31 am

    @Tom Levenson:

    and you are missing the point as well, the reason why faux has appeal to biologically verifiable people, is that their populism schtick, no matter how thin the premise, says things about the culture as a whole that these folks do not hear elsewhere.

    sure they prey on fears, and insecurities, but those things are real, even if they are directed, misdirected, or channelled into causes and scapegoats that aren’t.

    smoking for liberals works a lot the same way, what does it say about the emotional and psychological needs of a person who is so desperate and eager for someone to look down upon?

  83. 83.

    Tom Levenson

    October 26, 2011 at 10:18 am

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Let me put this very simply: show me in the post where smokers are put down.

    Smoking is correctly identified as a source of disease — one that has struck very close to home in my family. But there is nothing in the post that suggests smokers are inauthentic, unreal or any of that…

    You are projecting, fellah.

  84. 84.

    geg6

    October 26, 2011 at 10:24 am

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    That’s what I’m sayin’. It’s a good line but it’s bullshit. Which suits Andy to a tee, I must say.

  85. 85.

    Rafer Janders

    October 26, 2011 at 11:45 am

    Here’s another point: New York has been inhabited since 1624. Boston, 1620. Philadelphia, 1682. These cities and the other towns and cities on the East Coast have been around for all our history — hell, they created our history, and were the drivers behind their even being an American Revolution and a United States of America.

    So when people speak about “the Heartland”, I say no — the real Heartland is Boston. It’s New York City. It’s the places that have been part of America for over 350 years, not the places that have barely been settled for 150. Those other states, the Midwestern states, the farm states out west, they’re Johhny-Come-Latelies, they joined the party after we already bought the booze and set up the chairs and rented the hall. It was the East Coast that did the hard work of founding this country.

  86. 86.

    RossinDetroit

    October 26, 2011 at 11:56 am

    @Rafer Janders:

    So when people speak about “the Heartland”, I say no—the real Heartland is Boston. It’s New York City. It’s the places that have been part of America for over 350 years

    Detroit was founded 310 years ago.

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    October 26, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    @RossinDetroit:

    In 1611 Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal, on a site initially named La Place Royale. At the confluence of Petite Rivière and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands.[30] In 1639, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Société de Notre-Dame de Montréal to establish a Roman Catholic mission for evangelizing natives.

    If we really wanna go there. But that’s more familial interest than anything.

  88. 88.

    RossinDetroit

    October 26, 2011 at 12:25 pm

    @Yutsano:

    Mine too. My mother’s side are of French Canadian descent. The Amish on my father’s side emigrated from Switzerland in the 1730s. But I guess that makes them latecomers if New Amsterdam is the standard.

  89. 89.

    RossinDetroit

    October 26, 2011 at 12:27 pm

    @Yutsano:

    BTW, nice bridges in Montreal. Boring Ottawa could learn a bit from Montreal’s architecture.

  90. 90.

    CaliMatt

    October 26, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    Remember: Duluth is America’s westernmost Atlantic port.

    Wouldn’t that distinctive honor belong to Corpus Christi?

  91. 91.

    PanAmerican

    October 26, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    The Brits had small ships (“canallers”) that could make the locks to Erie and Superior prior to the Seaway.

  92. 92.

    McJulie

    October 26, 2011 at 3:01 pm

    The idea of cities as hotbeds of corruption and small town/rural America as inherently virtuous goes back all the way to Thomas Jefferson, so in a way, right wingers are just piggybacking on a pre-existing meme that ties into their social conservatism.

    But there’s more to it than that. Liberals aren’t obsessed with identifying who the “real Americans” are. I don’t think a Republican-voting farmer isn’t “real” I think he’s wrong about stuff. I acknowledge he’s just as American as I am. Why doesn’t he return that small courtesy?

    Maybe it’s because of reality’s well-known liberal bias. Republican ideas only survive when they are protected by such deep walls of cognitive dissonance that reality itself cannot intrude. Therefore that farmer can’t simply disagree with me, he has to otherize me to the point where he can pretend I don’t even exist. Or, you know, technically I exist but I’m not real.

  93. 93.

    Rafer Janders

    October 26, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    @RossinDetroit:

    Really? Really? You completely failed to see my point, didn’t you? Michigan was not one of the original thirteen colonies. It was not one of the first thirteen states. Britain retained control of it after the Revolution, and it didn’t became part of the US until after the War of 1812.

    Please list the citizens of Detroit’s many contributions to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the writing of the Constitution, etc. Show your work.

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