Southern Men and the Politics of Freedom
Do yourself a favor and watch this video.
EVEN IF YOU FUCKING HATE WATCHING VIDEOS.
The video won’t embed, so the image below is just a screen capture, and the link to the video is below that.
This might be the best thing I’ve seen all year.
As you can see by the stats on the right in the image above, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Southern Men and the Politics of Freedom
Click the link and watch it, and tell us what you think?
*big thanks to the person who sent it to me. I would thank them by name but I don’t have a nym, only a name. So please out yourself in the comments so I can give you the hat tip you deserve!
h/t Craig
WaterGirl
Is there a trick to getting TikTok to embed the video you want, instead of embedding some other video by that person? This has happened to me before and I cannot figure out how to get TikTok to behave.
WaterGirl
OT, but does anyone else find the image on John’s podcast stess-inducing?
planetjanet
@WaterGirl: yes, it looks like a scene from a nightmare.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: Yes and ugly to boot.
Chetan Murthy
I watched the whole thing, and …. my impression was very, very, very different from yours. The word “sanctimony” comes to mind. Also the song “Strange Fruit”. Joe Bageant’s _Deer Hunting with Jesus_ and his description of the neofeudalist structure of Southern counties. And finally, that the KKK wore hoods to hide their identity. I appreciate that this guy is trying to appeal to Southern men’s sense of honor,etc, but ….. that never existed.
Mr. Bemused Senior
John’s podcast image is not something I would pick, but it’s his choice. Thanks for the TikTok video, very worthwhile.
@Chetan Murthy: I take your point. Still, it gives me some hope.
planetjanet
@WaterGirl: I did watch the whole video, and come away with mixed feelings. He does tout common sense values of honesty, integrity and character. But even as a southerner, those traits are not uniquely southern, or even widely held among those I knew growing up. It’s a story we may like to tell ourselves.
They Call Me Noni
I do usually hate watching videos, but since you asked in all caps I thought I’d better give it a go. So glad I did. Thanks for posting and more of this please.
Jackie
I got about halfway through and had to take a pause. The sadness and recognition in his voice as he said THIS America isn’t the America he was raised on as a Southern boy sounds so much as my dad would be saying, if he was still alive.
I didn’t catch his name, but isn’t he the same guy who enjoyed mocking FFOTUS sitting in his pickup during FFOTUS’s first term and during the ‘24 campaign? Assuming he is, his matter of fact sad tone of voice reflects mine today, following today’s vote to send FFOTUS’s bill back to the House. We are NOT the America we celebrated every 4th of July. We’ve become something ugly, and we need to understand WHY, so hopefully we can fix it.
stinger
@WaterGirl: Yes. I scroll past it as fast as I can while still skimming the comments, but it draws my eye every time.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, I found his description of southern honor and virtue a bit disingenuous at best.
WaterGirl
@They Call Me Noni: Thank you.
@Jackie: I too, had to take a pause for a minute. The sadness in his voice is the sadness I feel, too. I think the sadness in his voice is as powerful as his words.
WaterGirl
@stinger: I keep moving it around in the sidebar, trying to find a place for it where it’s not on the screen all the time.
It was my idea to put the podcast in the sidebar – I mean it’s John’s blog so it seems like his podcast should be prominent, but I didn’t expect to find the image so stressful
I do not need more stress, and I suspect i am not alone in this.
bbleh
Dude reminds me of a longtime WV family friend, really bright, educated, but somehow never managed to get away — even sounds like him, in tone of voice and the kinds of things he says.
@Jackie: “sadness and recognition” — exactly so.
Alas, my friend was not representative of his peers, and even less the men of today imo.
I dunno, mmmmaybe it’ll make a difference to a few folks. Every vote counts, so every little bit helps!
@WaterGirl: yeah eek. But his blog so I just scroll past quickly.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: I do! I sent you an email about it over the weekend, but it bounced back.
Love David Johansen (RIP), but enough. Don’t need someone sweaty yelling at us every time we stop by this blog.
WaterGirl
@SpaceUnit: If that’s the reality of what he grew up with, I don’t have a problem with him sharing that and sharing his distress.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Can you just link the podcast without an image?
stinger
@planetjanet: I’m half Texan, tons of cousins there, but I associate “southern” with the Confederacy and slavery and the flag of treason. I take exception to the notion that they are automatically people of honor because of where they live. And I dislike the division of our country in that way, that they’re somehow different and special. They have grandparents! I get what the TikTok guy was trying to do, but he just feeds into all that B.S. rather than pushing back on it.
WaterGirl
I am starting to notice a pattern. I put up a 2 or 3 minute video last week and some people complained that what he said was fine, but why didn’t he go on to say [whatever it was they wanted him to say]. To my mind, if a video was long enough to cover everything about how we should move forward, no one would ever watch it.
I’m okay with getting one piece of the puzzle from this person, and another piece of the puzzle from another person.
It seems to me that we simply cannot expect things to be wrapped up with a nice little bow now. We should grab every bit of truth or wisdom or influence, wherever it comes from, and put it in a pile with other bits of truth or wisdom or influence.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: What was the bounce back error message? And did you send it to my WG account, or my volo account?
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: I can link without an image, but most people tune out the links in the sidebar, so without an image it really wouldn’t be advertising the podcast.
SpaceUnit
@WaterGirl:
I probably shouldn’t have suggested he was being dishonest. He was deluded though and clearly immersed in southern mythology.
He ought to move north and just fix himself a plate of shrimp and grits when he starts to feel homesick for Dixie.
stinger
@Jackie: You probably mean Trae Crowder, and I think that’s a different guy. Similar style, though.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Volo. And I did mean to resend it! Included thanks for the respite and protest pictures. Will resend it now to the BJ address, just FWIW.
WaterGirl
@stinger: If I’m reading the TikTok stats correctly, that video has nearly half a MILLION likes. That’s a lot of people who are connecting with what he says. I grew up in Chicago, and not in the southern culture, but it still speaks to me.
(Which doesn’t mean that it speaks to everyone, or that it needs to speak to everyone.)
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: When I was 10, when my sister was 9, our parents moved us from Delaware to Mineral Well, TX. I was …. barely conscious at the time (spent all my time in books and such) but my sister was very, very aware. In the last year she has told me what she thought back then. She was -very- aware of Jim Crow, and to her mind, the thing that stood out the -most- was that her parents — the people whose job it was to protect her — dropped her off at this hellhole surrounded by these stone racists, as if it was no biggie.
I think I suppressed it all, b/c it was the only way I could survive it. But she kept all the receipts.
Everywhere in the south, the biggest billboards were always for two things: the churches, and the strip clubs. Yeah, it tells you a lot.
Southern honor? integrity? Decency? Yeah, -right-.
This guy is delusional. The men he excoriates are at least consistent: they know what they want, and they know they can get it from this orange-painted freak. And they’re good with it.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: Can you also forward the message that told you the original message bounced? I’d like to figure out what the issue is. thanks.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: That’s one of the things that I like about BJ. Even if we don’t agree, we get to hear different perspectives on things.
stinger
@WaterGirl: I tried to Like it but I’m not a member. It’s not that I dislike his message, it’s the idea that southerners are different and that that’s basically a good thing. Like the idea that there’s a “heartland” and not all Americans are in it.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: THE NEW YORK DOLLS WERE A GREAT BAND AND THEY LOOKED THE WAY THEY LOOKED!
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: I did watch the entire thing thru. And I will allow this: I -wish- that the South he describes were the real South at any point in my lifetime. Heck, in any nontrivial geographic area of the South. That would be brilliant, if it were the case.
WaterGirl
OT, but I am talking with Four Directions about their upcoming work in Virginia re: the November elections.
Heads up that we are getting two native-made Star quilts – one to raffle and one for auction.
I’ll have photos in a few days – one of our contacts there had a death in the family so things are a little delayed.
*what a funny word auction is. It doesn’t look right at all.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: My great grandfather was a General in the Confederacy. At the end, expecting to be tried for treason, he fled to Mexico and then Cuba. His family arranged for his return on condition that he swear an oath of allegiance to the United States, which he did. He settled at a small college, along with some other Confederate bishops and such, taught math and biology, and raised his family. I’ve seen that small college grapple with its Confederate legacy for at least the last 60 (+) years, with some success and some failures. To use one of my favorite phrases, “It’s complicated.” Another one is, “I don’t know. “
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, the way they looked IS STRESSING ME OUT. :-)
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Just sent it. Think I accidentally used an ancient email.
Started off consoling you about some awful Supreme Court decision, and things go so badly so often, I don’t precisely remember what we were moaning about on June 27. Alas.
HinTN
@stinger: The Liberal Redneck is decidedly different.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: I appreciate that you watched the whole thing.
Even if only 1/10 of the men raised in the south were raised with the sense of honor he talks about, that video could easily be reaching so many people that it could be the margin of victory if its giving that 10% pause.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: I so agree. We expected, but hoped somehow the Senate would have another McCain moment, and it didn’t happen. Well, some of us hoped. I realize the majority of us didn’t.
I’m in a major funk right now, coming to terms with the realization that the America I grew up in, isn’t the America I live in now. I don’t know how to deal with this. By the time the 2026 elections arrive, I don’t have any inkling if even should we take both Houses, we can undo what MAGA has done. I’m so worried for my grandchildren’s futures.
WaterGirl
@stinger: Ha!
I think there’s the Southern Man that he’s talking about, and ” the heartland” for folks who grew up in the midwest, etc etc.
We probably have a dozen or more “chosen” demographics. :-)
Danielx
@Chetan Murthy:
Every time I drive south, I’m struck by the billboards and crosses along the interstates. Sex shops, gun stores, churches, crosses. It’s like they can’t decide whether they want to get saved, kill people or get their freak on.
Maybe it’s the latter followed by the former.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle:
So very true. I laughed out loud. A chagrined laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.
I will look for the email in the morning. These bastards are sucking a lot of energy out of me.
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
I lived in the Deep South for a time, in the very heart of the Confederacy. I was young and politically naive at the time. I didn’t know dick, but I think the whole experience was clarifying in the years after.
There are many fine people in the south but way too many are a Lost Cause. I would never move back.
Jackie
@Danielx:
So true! I mentioned this to my daughter when I visit her in Florida. In WA State billboards are illegal, so they’re exceptionally noticed by me. There is no skyline in Florida due to the billboards blocking it.
WaterGirl
@Jackie: With a small number of different votes in the right places, we would be living in a completely different reality right now.
I think most of the ugliness we have been seeing has been there all along, but they used to scurry away when the lights came on and now they proudly stand in the light, proud of their roach-hood.
I think some truly bad people have come into power, and all their sad little roach-people are happy about it, but I don’t think it means the tide has turned. But really bad people have the power right now, and that’s a very bad thing doing a lot of damage.
Omnes Omnibus
I didn’t really care for the message. Southern honor culture and bar fights? The Trumps are scum but my experience is that anyone who looked a bit different was potentially in trouble. Anyone remember Uneasy Rider?
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never felt particularly comfortable anywhere in the South except NOLA and that doesn’t really count. FWIW the army is culturally of the south and I didn’t necessarily fit in.
WaterGirl
@Danielx: Or all three! People are complicated.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Interesting points.
George
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for your comment–I agree. It seems that some commenters expect to find that one pure source of wisdom and direction, and if what is provided is not total and complete, they begin critiquing it, which simply diminishes its impact.
As you noted, there are many pieces to the puzzle. We need them all.
WaterGirl
@George: Yeah, we’re not in the 15-piece huge puzzle pieces territory of starter puzzles for really young kids. If only it could be that easy.
caphilldcne
I’m an Air Force brat who lived as a child in Fort Worth and Bossier City. Parts of my family migrated from Tennessee to Detroit in the 20’s and retained their southern flavor. There’s a reason that a lot of Michiganders say y’all. The rest of my immediate family has been in Alabama since the late 80s meaning they are in the south but not of the south. They need a few generations more. I think this guy could be an effective messenger. But I actually suspect that he’s more appealing in the opposite direction as a person that non southerners can like and respect saying the things they want to hear. And the idea of the honorable southern man is entirely bound up in codes of chivalry (aka misogyny and caste/sadly including race) that we really need to let go of. I have complex feelings about the south. Anyway, didn’t much love the video as I suspect it’s not gonna resonate much with the audience it’s ostensibly aimed at.
Mr. Bemused Senior
WaterGirl
We need to be thinking about July 17. Isn’t that the day of the next big events?
(Having asked a question, I am now going to sign off for the night. The daily barrage of bad news really sucks the energy out of me, and I am heading for bed.
Mike in Oly
Having grown up in rural Illinois I can relate to a lot of what he talks about. Values in those communities have changed a lot since I was a kid. I hope he reaches a few people. Every effort helps.
WaterGirl
In case you missed them, you might want to look at all the pretty pictures from June that I posted earlier. Every time I put them up today, another post followed within 1-5 minutes.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@WaterGirl: To be fair, you did ask what people thought and they told you.
@Jackie:
America has changed, but I think only so much that the veneer has come off. For a lot of people this is exactly the America it’s always been. It’s just more are seeing and experiencing it now.
For many it’s not seeing that things have changed, but seeing that the America they thought they knew was a lie.
dww44
@Mr. Bemused Senior: As a lifelong Southener I take hope from this too. Cause most folks who look like him do not think like him. And the more of them that listen to him the better chance we have of surviving this horror. I’m sharing with a few.
stinger
@George: WaterGirl asked us to tell her what we think. I wasn’t expecting perfection, but I could have said more nice things about the clip. WG works hard for us and for democracy!
Chetan Murthy
I have always known (well, since late in grad school) that the South was ….. a horror. A hellhole. But I thought (esp. once having arrived in SF) that I lived in a safe place. I assumed that CA was safe. But it seems clear that CA is not safe: ICE roams across the state like a marauding band from Mad Max. So for me, things -have- changed: CA is starting to turn into Texas.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
July 4th, Indivisible, No Kings.
https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/808886/
WTFGhost
@Chetan Murthy: It may still be the best method of causing the vulnerable to question their own moorings. I think it was Schiavo that was a last straw for John Cole; if not for him, then for some other conservablogger I respected in the day. Well, what mattered then, was, “this is not how we were told it was going to be!!!” so appealing to honor that was never real might still cause a person to change. It might be easier to think that grand sense of honor was “lost” instead of “never was”, and if so, well… big tent, eh?
@WaterGirl: uh… I’ll keep the window open, but, believe it or not, I can’t promise. Not even if it’s short, I can’t promise. But I’ll try, and that’s more than I’d do for 95+% of front pagers I’ve known through the years.
@WaterGirl: I emphatically agree. This nation has become so warped, that simply saving the “low hanging fruit” during covid – just pushing vaccinations, just that, was too much for too many people, and they were defended by people who get taken seriously. There are no good messengers, because political thought in this country is mired in literal bullshit (though in the metaphorical sense). You have to worry, if you say Trump is dumb as a post, that people will be insulted, that you call their candidate dumb. And I mean, Q effing E effing D. (I’m glad my favorite math prof made sure I knew how to effing the QED, though I have no idea if it still goes to Latin that way.)
We literally debate whether it’s morally acceptable to save lives that are trivially easy to save. I mean, effing Jayzus effing EFFING effing *KEEERIST*.
And if you think it’s surreal to listen to me describe the state of politics today, just imagine living through it while *stoned*, because lemme tell ya… some other time. Excuse me, coming down.
@SpaceUnit: I’ve heard of worse idea than “The True Knights Of Old Dixie,” being those who renounced slavery, or refused to fight after secession, or otherwise acted as, you know, the “true” myth of knighthood and honor must, when confronted with irredeemable, inexplicable, evil. The myth exists – maybe use it. Just remember, I’m a damnyankee, one word, so, don’t take me as a Southern authority.
eclare
Southerner here, and I have mixed feelings. I get what he is sad about, the loss of honor, the worship of one man and his golden toilet. But then I think about all of my racist older relatives, and where is the honor in that? I found a copy of a letter my grandmother wrote to Castro saying that the US was ripe for takeover because Ole Miss was admitting James Meredith. That is what we should emulate?
And as far as worshipping a man with a golden toilet, the south has a long history of worshipping televangelists with their own trappings of luxury, like private planes.
Again, I get his point, I guess I just remember things differently. There are plenty of reasons to hate FFOTUS without throwing some notion of southern “honor” into the mix.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Chetan Murthy: it exists at Arlington where our honored dead are buried. It does. I have seen the southern soldiers’ graves and the names upon the wall.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@planetjanet: sometimes the stories we most like telling ourselves come true because we love them so.
A story that feeds our better angels sings to us, while hate just screeches. Hate isn’t something anyone loves. It is a thing to fill holes in souls some of us don’t even recognize are there. The stories we tell ourselves that glow fill those holes and help us grow out of the hateful swamps some of us inhabit.
imho
Omnes Omnibus
@HopefullyNotcassandra: That’s not reserved for Southerners. Arlington, etc., are for Americans from all over.
WaterGirl
@Jay: I thought it was the 17th or some other date in July – John Lewis’s birthday or something. Not the Fourth of July when everyone will have other plans?
eclare
@WaterGirl:
I also thought it was the 17th, because I remember when I heard the date I thought that there is no way I can stand on concrete in Memphis in July. I would melt into a puddle.
Jackie
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
So very true! And sad.
And an excellent rewording of a poem by Joyce Kilmer we all grew up with in junior high.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Danielx: Befuddlement surely follows once elites allow someone like Oral Roberts (who claimed people who need glasses are out of favor with the Creator) to rob destitute, desperate people.
Remember Ralph Reed? Wow, what a fellow!
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/campaign-turns-into-reeds-nightmare/
I know crooks live everywhere but our south appears to create truly despicable critters. I believe the Bible refers to the type as “whited sepulchers.”
WTFGhost
@Jackie: The rewording is very nearly a poem by Ogden Nash. (Nash’s version is “Indeed, unless the billboards fall…”, and please note, that was an *excellent* recitation from memory!)
They Call Me Noni
@WaterGirl: I believe July 17 was the date Mr. Lewis died.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: Why did your parents decide to move to Texas?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Omnes Omnibus: I do know that. No offense taken, though. The day has been long, the sunset was gorgeous and despite everything somebody is setting off fireworks. Blame those things for my imprecise words.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WTFGhost: see, the Internet isn’t perfect! I asked Google and it said “perhaps.” My memory said ” in fact” but maybe “indeed ” is it. Yes, of course, Ogden Nash.
tobie
@Jackie: I hear you about the funk. The cause is not just this bill, though it is cruel. It’s the descent into a despotic state made possible by the Supreme Court which has wasted no time reversing lower courts and hollowing out every protection in the Constitution. I’m heartbroken and yet I feel like I need to push on because I can’t allow this corrupt and vicious regime to break my spirit. It’s tough.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
It’s both dates. Some people don’t want to celebrate the 4th anymore, now that you have a King, His Court, and the Gestapo running free.
LA has cancelled July 4th because it’s to much of a danger to it’s citizens
WaterGirl
@They Call Me Noni: well, I had something related to John Lewis and July 17.
As They say, two out of three ain’t bad? :-)
thank you
WaterGirl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: google is no longer reliable.
edit: bastards!
Chetan Murthy
@Gretchen: Some of my father’s med school classmates had moved to Mineral Wells. They told him the money was good. The town was so horrific they moved to Weatherford, 30mi east. As if somehow that was so much better. Ah well. I remmeber reading that the schools were desegregated in thosee two towns in 1967; we moved to Mineral Wells in 1975. Sheesh. I mean, Delaware was no paradise: my sister reminds me that kids used to ask her why we didn’t go back to where we came from, there too. But it was nothing like Fucking Texas Goddamn.
Mr. Bemused Senior
The corruption of the federal judiciary has been a long-term, well funded project and now we have the result. I dread the damage yet to come.
Jackie
@WTFGhost: Yes, and Nash :-) My memory mashed the two poems together.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Alas, they gave up on “don’t be evil” too. *sigh
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: My phone has always been Android. And typically I run chrome on that phone. But a couple of weeks ago, I installed Firefox and started using it by default. B/c enough with Chrome-on–android not allowing adblockers. Enough!
Google is slowly becoming like every other company.
ETA: or maybe they’ve already become.
Jackie
@tobie:
Yes.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Jay: no. Los Angeles has not cancelled the Fourth of July.
Los Angeles county is enormous. Some places have canceled, or delayed, celebrations to prevent ICE from making a mockery of July Fourth.
Other places are proceeding with some changes. The Rose Bowl will be all drones this year. There will be fireworks over the ocean from Marina del Rey, Indeed, there will be at least fifty-one public celebrations in the city of Los Angeles this year.
https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/list/where-to-see-4th-of-july-fireworks-drone-shows-la-2025
We will be headed somewhere. The United States of America we love needs defending and our 1776 Declaration of Independence from tyranny needs celebrating
Craig
@WaterGirl: I sent it to you a week or so ago. I grew up in rural Virginia and my friends there are not at all Y’all Queda, so this lively rant stuck with me. Thanks for your work here. Some days it keeps me sane.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: We don’t have a king. That is the whole point of July 4th.
Another Scott
Recognizing that I’m not the audience (though I might have been long ago), I think it’s pretty good.
The quiet rage works well, and he’s a good speaker.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lsx3astcdk2w
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: too funny. of course we have a king.
tokyokie
The most miserable two or three years of my life were spent in Chattanooga, Tenn. Now I’m sort of a southerner, being from Oklahoma and having a great-grandmother named after Wade Hampton. But in Chattanooga, everybody considered me a damn yankee or some such, because I was an outsider. Almost everybody where I worked was from a 50-mile radius of Chattanooga. And although they thought because they had college degrees, they were superior to run-of-the-mill rednecks, they were just as racist, even if they didn’t really acknowledge or even realize it. I actually got along better with the working-class types at the auto-repair shop and the like, because they didn’t carry the self-deception that my work mates did.
I think the guy in the video is, like the song in O Brother, Where Art Thou, “A Man of Constant Sorrow.” I think that the honor that he ascribes to Southerners is largely a load of bullshit, but it’s taken the brazen cynicism of the MAGA era for him to realize it, and continuing to try to find a path forward when the foundation of one’s belief system has been shattered is arduous emotionally. But the fellow is incredibly well-spoken, and perhaps the sadness of his message will get through to some others and allow them to see the trump clan for the consummately evil bastards they are.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I didn’t swear fealty to him. Did you?
Jay
There is an ICE Block App for Android, but it’s not IceBlock, uses Telegram, so it’s ether not real or a scam, or a way to collect data.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: His dictates are law, and he can break the law at will with no consequences. That makes him a king.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: I am not going to have a semantic argument with you. But words have meanings. He’s working on becoming a dictator, but he’s not a king. Have a nice evening.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: sure. dictator, king, same diff.
Jackie
Much, much more from the link.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Chetan Murthy: Agreed 100%. It’s nostalgia for the Lost Cause wrapped in a gauzy vision of a South that never was, all of which sold to its inhabitants and adherents in novels and plays and TV. Gone With The Wind for guys who still chew, and who are better able to defend their mothers’ honor than their not-white neighbors’ homes and businesses. Faulkner and Williams and Mitchell would recognize that world just as quickly as they would call it out as a polite fiction.
I know he means well. And having lived in the South I share his pain. But the thing he yearns for never was.
Lynn Dee
I’m going to call it uneven at best. Definitely could’ve done without the lauding of grandpa, who apparently engaged in bar fights with everyone whose jib wasn’t cut the way he liked.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@WaterGirl: Not to beat a dead horse here, but that “sense of honor” you mention nearly lynched a white friend and his black wife for daring to be on stage together as a musical act. In 1984. It allowed an educational institution I know to have admission policies so skewed that the students joked that Admissions allowed in one black student per division plus the basketball team. In 1988. It may have been upright when it came to his folks and their cishet white neighbors, and it might have cast a polite blind eye to Uncle Marlon’s occasional men visitors, but it fell far short of the vision he holds up.
Will it reach some people who need to hear how they’ve been hornswoggled? Maybe. Would they take that knowledge and use it to try and close the philosophical gap with progressives? Unlikely. Would listening make them pivot from FFOTUS? Perhaps; but they would be as likely to pivot to people like Kennedy (LA) and Tuberville as to anyone, and that change won’t help us nor solve the problem this guy sees.
I am sure he is being genuine. But he was sold a bill of goods just the same as the misled pikers he’s trying to wake up.
jonas
This was a really interesting video and if it gets some young MAGA dude out there to maybe rethink his life choices, well, godspeed. But the guy seems truly perplexed as to why so many southern “men” have chucked all their sense of honor and bent the knee to this rich, Yankee coward of a dandy. It’s, um, the racism, buddy. Trump may be from NY, but he’s basically promised to bring the Old South back to America, if not in stoic manliness and rugged individualism, then at least in making anyone not a while male a second-class citizen (or now, apparently, non-citizen deportee). The question is why “undo the entire legacy of civil rights over the past 60 years” resonates with so many southerners. Is a puzzlement.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: I was listening to Ali Velshi’s Banned Books podcast tonight. He was saying that his sister had a different experience than he did when they moved to Canada; being a girl gave her an entirely extra layer of not fitting in over being a boy immigrant. He wrote a book about about his upbringing which he’s going to talk about in one of the episodes
Here’s the episode I was listening to: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/listen-ali-velshi-banned-book-club-julia-alvarez/
Gretchen
@Lynn Dee: Exactly. I’m imagining grandpa in a bar fight 60 years ago. Did he always side with the good guys? Those sorts of situations don’t always go that way. If a black guy or a civil rights volunteer showed up in grandpa’s bar, would he shake his hand or beat him up? I’m not sure that grandpa’s sense of honor would steer him in the right direction.
bjacques
Sure it’s a lie, but if it counters the existing worse lies, fine. If enough people act like it’s true, so much the better.
Disclosure: I come from California but grew up in NOLA and then suburban Houston (near NASA) and am (mostly) white so enough of it resonates.
Citizen Alan
@Chetan Murthy: He’s appealing to the myth of the Good Ole Boy that most white straight Southerners cling to. The one that lets them imagine they’re honest heroic Good Ole Boy’s like Bo or Luke Duke (while pretending that there wasn’t a Confederate Flag on the roof of the General Lee) when, in actuality, they’re more like Redneck Villain #3 from an episode of In the Heat of the Night.
Honestly, my biggest takeaway is that he used too many big words for the people he’s talking about to pay any attention to his message.
Citizen Alan
It was. I was a solid Dem before that–I think the last straw for me was Pat Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 convention which I thought was literal fascism loudly applauded by the audience. I remember Molly Ivins’ revulsion at the sight of women at that convention who were the mothers of gay children cheeri eliminationist talk about LGBTs.
I will say, however, that the Terry Shiavo debacle was the first time I started describing the GOP as “Satanic.”
SpaceUnit
Ya know what else? Southern boys couldn’t fight worth shit unless they had a four on one advantage.
Archon
As a black man I say if some white people need to hear some ridiculous fairy tale about a time white southerners had an honorable culture so they can do the right thing now, so be it.
Honestly making white folks face the truth of our past we’re for quainter, less dangerous times. Now they can say the south was Camelot for all I care if it gets them to not want to burn the country down.
Betty Cracker
I can’t tell you how many times my sister and I have marveled in bewilderment and disgust at the spectacle of our prideful, tough uncles and cousins — who look and sound exactly like this guy! — cheering on a spray-tanned, gold-plated, soft-handed, girdle-wearing fraud from NYC.
Thank you, WG. I will share this far and wide.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Our interpretation of manliness is based on our conception of individual strength, which emphasizes independent thought and action.
The right wing version is based on feudal worldview, which emphasizes ruling over one’s lessers but pledging fealty and obedience to one’s lords and kings.
Aziz, light!
“You thought you were voting for the lesser evil, and maybe you did.” Fuck that noise.
This man hates Trump because he hates all northerners.
He and the men he is preaching to will never vote for Democrats. Not since 70 years ago, when they would have been screaming vicious slurs at little black girls trying to go to school.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: It’s an honor culture, not in the sense that it’s honorable but rather that an individual’s social standing depends on receiving respect (fake or real, apparently) from others, wherever they are in the hierarchy. As a con man, Trump knows how to size up the marks.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I wonder what it would take for Trump to lose honor other than treating the Others as full fledged people.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Maybe a “Face in the Crowd” hot mic moment?
Doug
@HinTN: I’m a graduate of that college, and I have been glad to see it grapple institutionally with its legacy. That may no longer be a minority view among alumni, but it’s still very much a contested one.
As the joke goes, how many [xyz] students does it take to change a light bulb? “Change? Change?? CHANGE???”
Professor Bigfoot
Okay, so I watched it. All the way through.
Beautifully written, poetic, brilliantly delivered.
And it’s still just Southern White Men, who don’t like Trump, but still got nothing to say for the Klan, the Councils of Conservative Citizens, the night riders and all the rest— he’s just erased Blackness from his South, as white men will always do.
I am severely underwhelmed with his Southern White Man schtick
Edited to add still unmoved: Motherfucker, your granddaddy was a fucking lyncher. Fuck you.
Professor Bigfoot
@stinger: Nah.
I grew up with white guys like this.
I don’t know him personally, but his voice, his accent, his delivery all raise the hackles on the back of my neck.
Professor Bigfoot
@stinger: White Southerners are very different. The South is the home base of American white supremacy.
I know. I grew up there.
Professor Bigfoot
@HinTN: The Liberal Redneck is “white folks.” This guy is “white people.”
There’s a difference.
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: But some of us had masters.
Especially on July 4th.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Like others I found the mythologizing of Southern culture as uniquely honorable grating. Everything he said about his grandfather could have been said of mine…who was born in Jamestown NY to parents that immigrated from Sweden, with the exception of getting in bar fights. The values he touts are not uniquely Southern.
That said his skewering of Trump and the fake manliness of the manoshpere are pretty spot on. And it seems like the Republican appeal to these folks is largely culture based rather than policy based so “othering” them on culture grounds needs to happen. I think that’s essentially what he’s trying to do and hopefully it’s effective.
Honestly the fastest and least painful way out of this mess is for the Republican electorate to George W Bush these guys…he was was never a real Republican, I never liked him, who? Never heard of the guy and certainly never voted for him. Except the last time they did that they made a hard right turn and we can’t afford another one of those.
Paul in KY
@WaterGirl: Thank you for linking to his video.
Betty Cracker
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Agreed. I don’t expect it to break through because the people who need to hear it won’t. But if I could strap all of my redneck relatives down Clockwork Orange style and make them listen to this dude, I would.
Baud
Geminid
It’s kind of a slow news morning, but it’s never a slow news morning at Politico!
This morning’s Playbook has an an update on the race to succeed Senator Thom Tillis. Two potential Republican candidates– Richard Hudson and Michael Whatley– have taken taken their names out of consideration, while a third– freshman Rep. Pat Harrigan– has come out for Lara Trump.
So it looks like the nomination is Lara Trump’ss if she wants it. Tillis says he expects North Carolina Republicans will rally behind whomever Trump endorses.
There are other reports that former Gov Roy Cooper is now leaning towards running. Former Rep. Wiley Nickels is already in the race, but I think Nickels has said he’ll drop out if Cooper runs.
And David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve PAC has endorsed 25 year-old Deja Foxx in the AZ07 special election. This is to fill the seat held by the late Rep. Raul Grijalva.
Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, the Congressman’s daughter, is running also and has been endorsed by Senators Mark Kelly and Ru en Gallego, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s in interesting split in AZ.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I do love NOLA!
Poodle Mom (fka KM in NS)
The video resonates with me. I grew up in the South and I think it could speak to some who are persuadable. Of course, I don’t have much hope there are many in that category, but hope springs eternal.
Now… to read the comments.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: I also thought he used to many ‘edumicated’ words. Good try though.
mappy!
The country has changed?
Thurmond Dixiecrats (D) took their ideology and turned Republican.
This is the same country that elected Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon.
Lee Atwater eventually recanted his Southern Strategy. It doesn’t change anything.
Geminid
@Baud: Raul Grijalva was a long-time Progressive stalwart, so I’m not surprised Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are backing his politically experienced daughter.
This Hogg’s third endorsement in an open seat race. His PAC has endorsed an Illinois State Senator running for Rep. Robin Kelly’s seat (I think Kelly is running for Senate). And Hogg endorsed a Virginia Delegate in the primary to fill Gerry Connolly’s seat. Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw, former chief of staff for Connolly, won that “firehouse primary.”
Paul in KY
@Baud: Good point, Duke of Pantlessness.
Baud
@Geminid:
I personally don’t care, but I recall all the fake outrage on the left in 2016 over “dynasty.”
Paul in KY
@Aziz, light!: I didn’t like that line either.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Good tape of him simpering to Putin. Really laying it on in a craven manner, while simultaneously expressing his disgust at the marks who worship him?
Baud
EarthWindFire
The video left me cold. My grandfather did everything his did and he spent his life about 500 miles north and 1500 miles west of the Mason-Dixon line.
I suppose it might mean something to some and reach them where they are. But I had the same feeling I get whenever I see other Southern Pride sorts of things: you’re not special, get over yourselves.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: That would be cool to see.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: I hope Gov. Cooper runs.
Hoodie
@Professor Bigfoot: The problem I have with this stuff is it still casts the white southern man as something special. I spent my early years in the midwest but moved to Georgia at the start of junior high and spent my teens and early 20s there. I also had a lot of family in Tennessee on my dad’s side. This is a comforting tale I heard often in those years. It’s delusional. In some sense, this is a just a more genteel form of Lost Cause mythology. White men are still special.
The gentility harkens back to a time when white men were more firmly in control in the South. When you own everything you can afford to be genteel. The more toxic stuff we’re seeing these is symptomatic of a sense of loss of that control, which is why you see silly stuff like Confederate flags in PA or upstate NY, which makes no sense from the standpoint of any imagined “heritage.” That said, if this guy’s fairy tale gets some of them to shut up and act like civilized people, great.
Mr. Mack
Great video. The Southern “way of life” is aspirational, not necessarily a thing that can be fully accomplished. One of the obvious things about southern men is the underlying insecurity so many have. Where this comes from is debatable, but it very real.
Hoodie
@Geminid: Hopefully Lara will grace us with some of her lovely renditions of the popular hits when she’s on the campaign trail. It shows you the level of contempt that the GOP has for its own voters that these morons are lining up to support her. My gut tells me Cooper would bury her.
WaterGirl
Big thanks to everyone who watched the video and shared their thoughts.
Chief Oshkosh
@WaterGirl: Yes
Geminid
@Hoodie: I think Rep.Harrigan would be a stronger candidate than Lara Trump. But this is not yet a done deal, so if Lara Trump decides not to run– and the decision might not be hers to make– Harrigan has positioned himself for Trump’s endorsement.
Geminid
@Baud: I guess they’re saving that outrage for Christine Pelosi, if she runs for her mother’s seat.
Geminid
Dave Wiegel reported in a Virginia Republican rally yesterday:
If this the most Virginia Republicans have on Spanberger, they ain’t got much.
Wiegel also addressed some other fallout from the Mamdani story. Various people are claiming that Senator Kristen Gillebrand endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary. As Wiegel and others point out, that claim is flat-out untrue. I suspect some of the people making it know this.
Baud
@Geminid:
This isn’t her style, but it would be a hoot if Spanberger wore a fake beard at her next rally.
Soprano2
QFT. I watched the video. He talks about the almost mythical Southern man, who exists but is a lot rarer than Southerners think he is. It might be effective with some people, but like others what I noticed most is how sad he seems, as if he’s being forced to acknowledge that the way he always thought about the place where he was born and grew up was a lie, and that these people weren’t who he thought they were.
It has always been a mystery to me how a bunch of “New York City Yankees” can be seen as heroic to so many men (and some women) from rural areas in general, where there is no respect for men who can’t change their own oil or fix things around their house. FFOTUS and his sons and the others who hang onto him are the type of “effete Northern man” that the country music videos scorn and make fun of. The only thing I’ve been able to come back to, again and again, is that FFOTUS hates the same people they hate, and gives them permission to hate them openly. That second part is the key, I think – they’ve been given permission to fly their freak flag, so to speak. Every time I hear someone say something like “He gets me, he understands me”, what I’m hearing is that he understands their prejudices and says they’re acceptable, and should be acceptable in “polite society” again. They interpreted “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” as shorthand for “don’t you understand what kind of animals “those people” are?” I wonder if the man in the video understands that in the world his grandparents grew up in it was considered OK to call a grown black man “boy” and make him always be subservient to a white man, that it was OK in polite company to use the “N” word without a second thought. I think a lot of rural people want that world to come back, and FFOTUS makes them feel that it just might.
Elizabelle
Finally watched the video. I did not care for it. It may appeal to some, because he plays to stereotype. Anyway, it is not for me.
RevRick
@Chetan Murthy: I had the same reaction about what was left unsaid in this TikTok video. And it brought back to mind what Amy S. Greenburg wrote in 2005 in Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire. Greenberg noted that in this period two competing versions of masculinity were taking shape. In the South, it was what she termed martial masculinity, marked by aggression, hypersensitivity to affronts to honor, a desire for conquest, whether that be the Caribbean or women, and a will to dominate. In the North, however, under Whig cultural norms, it was what she termed restrained masculinity. They sought self-improvement, of body, mind, and spirit. Theirs was guided by morality, reliability and a certain stoicism. They viewed violence, not as a hallmark of masculinity, but as a failure of self-control. Lincoln epitomized this was his belief that reason should govern the emotions.
Greenberg noted that northern working class men shared more cultural values with southern men than their northern middle class neighbors.
What brought all this to mind was the poster’s reference to bar fights and the use of fists.
RaflW
“They don’t work, they don’t serve, they don’t sacrifice, they don’t build or fix or do a goddam thing but inherit money and lie about it.”
“We were raised by steel and iron women in church dresses who carried casseroles in one hand and consequences in the other” is damn poetic! Bam.
That man is devastatingly clear and incisive. But money has so saturated politics that I think his message, while absolutely perfect, won’t be allowed to pierce thru, to seep in. Though we can help try to amplify it. Thanks WG & Craig.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Hogg has endorsed Lauren Underwood’s primary opponent.
She has a solid progressive legislative record and is young. So what exactly is Hogg’s problem with her?
(Rhetorical Question)
As for the video, talk is cheap. I don’t buy his sad voice it feels like an act. Obviously, as someone who is a damn Yankee, I am not the intended audience. YMMV
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I hadn’t heard that. That is a waste of resources and will lead to ill feelings.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: Indeed, he sounds like an upper caste Indian uncle lamenting about the idea of India gone to seed under Modi.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: All said and done, Hogg is a southern white man, even though he masks his identity politics in progressive garb. IIRC his parents are Republican.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I looked into that story about Hogg endorsing Underwood’s opponent, and I’m pretty sure it was just a rumor.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Hogg says now that it is a rumor. I am guessing a trial balloon was floated and got a lot of push back.
What @Geminid said in the comment above.
BethanyAnne
It’s probably a dead thread at this point, but I liked the video. And I think a big group of the commentariat is missing the point. The whole point is to get people to vote for our coalition. I think it’s easier if we appeal to an imagined past and the myths that they hold dear. Evidently several in this thread would rather convinced them to become liberals. Looks like a harder lift to me. I don’t need them to see reason. I don’t need them to agree with my core philosophies. I need them to stop voting for the worst people America has to offer. If that means that I flatter them with a few comforting lies, I’m fine with that.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: He just gets worse and worse. I thought she would be the kind of candidate he would like – young and gets things done. She hasn’t been there that long. I wonder what his rationale is for supporting a primary opponent to her.
schrodingers_cat
@BethanyAnne: I get the point. It just left me unmoved. I was answering the question the writer of the blog post asked.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Some sense seems to have prevailed and Hogg now says it was just a rumor.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s good.
Steve Paradis
@BethanyAnne:
Some people need to read more Faulkner.
He’s not talking to you. He’s talking to Jackson Fentry.
dnfree
@Chetan Murthy: I agree, to a large extent. I get that he’s speaking to a certain subgroup of (definitely white) southern men, but when he starts off talking about Don Jr.and Eric as effete snobs and how they would have been punched out by his forebears the instant they walked into a bar….well, that’s not a particularly honorable image of masculinity.
I know people who hold this kind of “masculinity” in high regard. They look down on men who don’t meet their standards, but they also try to put women into particular pigeonholes. (In this version, they wear church dresses and carry casseroles and consequences.)
So I get what he’s trying to accomplish by starting off with fighting in bars, but that doesn’t necessarily connect directly with speaking truth to power.
dnfree
@Chetan Murthy: It was slowly and then all at once that Google changed from “don’t be evil” by dropping the first word. I loved my Fitbits for many years, and then Google bought them and integrated them into its universe. When they insisted on integrating Fitbit with Google, I went out and bought an Apple Watch. “Lesser of two evils” thing.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
This seems more on point:
https://www.threads.com/@jrcolbert/post/DLkBW3gu_YE?xmt=AQF0qkWT1Du17T7xdfoP31Ogf_IYyB0N9uX656PlaELUxw
Netto
@Chetan Murthy: My reaction was similar to yours, if a bit less negative. But we’re not the audience. Perhaps this sort of flattery can break through the cult armor of those who see themselves as the heroes in their own stories.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Good points.
Paul in KY
@dnfree: IMO, punching the actual Don Jr and Not-Don Jr. in the face as soon as they sauntered into a dive bar would be quite OK.
Miss Bianca
Well, ok, I watched it, and my conclusion is that I agree with *everyone* here!//
i.e., There’s some nice notions in this here speech, but…a lot of it is horseshit. I’m not going to call it bullshit, because to me, bullshit involves a level of awareness that what you’re peddling is mendacious nonsense, while horseshit is perhaps more heartfelt nonsense.
And yet, if sincerely-held horseshit beliefs like “honor” – although I would define the Southern conception of “honor” as “quick to meet perceived insults with violence” – works to persuade some of these shitty white men to stop being quite so shitty, well…I’ll take it.
Like many here who have pointed it out, I’m not the target audience.
dnfree
If David Hogg even HINTED at primarying Lauren Underwood, he can go directly to hell, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. (Does anyone still say that?) She’s a tremendously effective representative who deserves the support of all of us (and I contribute monthly).
EarthWindFire
@BethanyAnne:
I recognize that I am not the target audience. I also recognize that reaching people who are different than me is essential to fighting what is happening to this country.
But I am so goddamned tired of horseshit Southern Pride that is by no means unique to the American South being “shoved down my throat” as RWers put it. If I can’t own up to that here, where can I?
BethanyAnne
Fortunately, I read about 50 comments before I skipped down and made my own. Missing both schrodingers_cat and EarthWindFire’s opinions on the videos entirely, and therefore, not meaning y’all in my comment.
WTFGhost
@They Call Me Noni: OMG, “the day our Lewis died” scans to “the day the music died,” and it could be a great filk [sic] song.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Soprano2: You say “effete Northern Man.” I say “thieving backstabbing poseur.”
O. Felix Culpa
So, I finally found time to watch the video. With the caveats that I’m not the intended audience and the guy does have a nice way with words, I found it kind of offensive. All that drivel about [unspoken white] “Southern manhood” as if it were something unique and special, and superior to the effete Yankees. If those pretty
liesstories help move some folks away from Trumpism, then well and good. It makes me want to gag, but–again–I’m not the intended audience.Just Some Flyover
And how would grandpappy have reacted to a mixed race man elected president twice? How would he have reacted to a woman candidate, let alone a mixed race woman candidate?
Kayla Rudbek
@Geminid: Spanberger as a socialist? Retired CIA and former postal inspector Spanberger? What kind of crack is Youngkin smoking? (And I say this as someone plans to happily vote for Spanberger)