(no subject)

[proximoception]

Comment at the Vanity Fair website on the new Perry revelation:

Something less offensive, for example literally anything, would have played better with the coveted not-racist demographic.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't you love to see how they (the professionals) have got the racist demographic carved up? The other day a pick-up truck drove down our street with a Confederate flag planted in the bed, waving in the wind. I did a double take. Probably you saw that in SC, no?

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

As in Lee Atwater.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Nowhere near as much as I'd thought. There's famously a confederate flag on the statehouse lawn down there - it had topped the dome before we arrived but a successful protest campaign brought it down. From most angles it's hidden behind the tree they dress up for Christmas. And when we left a local barbecue chain was still flying it, despite boycotters.

Never saw it on vehicles down there, interestingly, despite how popular stickers and things were. Actually I've only ever seen it on vehicles twice in my adult life: once around here, once in Springfield, OH.

The white south's embrace of the tea party type thing seems like a stage in racism recovery, to me - they've been shamed out of direct racism but don't want to actually change anything because it would mean rubbing their faces in how they've -been- racist, all their beloved heroes and churches and activities, all racist as hell and little else in a given day, and also because it's hard and stuff. So they love any and everything that tells them they're guilt free, that that's all in the past and any persisting problems are somehow due to the government. It's tough squaring their pride with their actual and abiding role as one of the most villainous groups in modern history. Fox and radio give them rhetorical help, act as tranquilizers, hence all the voting for the interests of the richest one percent from a region where next to none of those one percent live.

But all this probably only applies in cities. Might be different if you get too far off the interstates. We tried hard to never check.