Letters to the Editor
prytania
Published Letters: 137 Editor's Choice: 5
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LilyRose is an asshat
[Read the article: Why don't those hillbillies like Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To proscribe "race-baiting" in the same paragraph in which she uses the most shopworn anti-Appalachian cliches is pure asshattery.
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Jane Doe
[Read the article: Why don't those hillbillies like Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You need to be careful when you come to Kentucky and base your assumptions on what people in the Bluegrass tell you about Eastern Ky--which is indeed a different place, but not entirely in the way you (or is it "they"?) describe. Lexington is where people go when they've made it and want to hide their roots, and one way of hiding them is to slam the folks they left back home in Leslie County.
You write: "These are very uneducated, very isolated white rural people who are very Republican, conservative, Bible-believing christian, and are still fighting the war between the states."
The current Republicanism is, in part, due to a savvy mixture of fear-mongering politics (here is where the "Obama-is-a-Muslim meme" obtains) and pork barrelism (Hal Rogers, a congressman who is virtually unknown in the broader US, is a champ).
The people of Central Appalachia are indeed "Bible-believing Christians," but not in a way that is easily assimilated into normative American culture. Try Pentecostalism=mainline religion. Or: preachers are agents of the devil because they get between you and your personal God. (Or, for that matter, try Xian missions that go back 100+ years.)
The Civil War ("war between the states" is a Deep South locution, and not used by most people below the age of 130) remains an interesting issue here because it was so vexed a notion in the first place. Appalachia had to decide what side to be on, and it mostly chose to side with the North. (Note the presence of colleges like Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN.) However--and this is why it remains a current issue--families split apart when individuals had to choose, as did communities. There were no major battles in Appalachia, but the fighting was more savage because you knew who you were shooting at.
What joins those aspects together is a deep-seated attitude of, well--is fuckyouism a word? Check out, e.g., the contortions Erik Reece has to go through in Lost Mountain to suggest why he, an outsider, has a right to speak about mountaintop removal in Southeastern Ky.
Note, by the way, that Appalachia is not monolithic. In the map of voting patterns published in the New York Times a few days ago, Appalachia was indeed mostly "red" (whether they used red or not, I forget). But the map also highlighted the areas where voters went with Gore or Kerry or both. The area described is Central Appalachia.
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Dickhead
[Read the article: A great debate about Obama and Appalachia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Still have no compassion for a group of people that were born into all the possibility in the world, chose not to keep up with the changing times, chose not to better themselves by reading books or taking a class at the community center every once in a while,but instead prefer to blame the success of peoples they used to oppress as the root of their lack of progress."
First of all, your sentence needs a subject. Buy a pronoun, sweetie.
You may also want to take a sociology class at some point in your life. "Better" your own damned self, that is.
Hey, how about this: you come to Hyden, Kentucky, and tell some folks I can set you up with that they were "born into all the possibility in the world"?
You don't have to get on a plane to see the Third World.
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FranZooey
[Read the article: A great debate about Obama and Appalachia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I apologize for the earlier insults to you. Thank you for conceding the argument.
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Has some sort of experiment been going the last week?
[Read the article: Heaven, heartache and the power of deviled eggs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]An attempt--who knows why?--to drive a wedge between your city readers and country readers, between those on the coasts and those in the middle of the US? To see how many of the good, decent folk reading Salon will revert to slurs like hillbilly at the drop of the hat? If so, when will the experiment be ending?
On another front, I really appreciate the phrase "You don't fuck with bacon." I could use that on a t-shirt.
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"Y'all"
[Read the article: Heaven, heartache and the power of deviled eggs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's spelled y'all, but we'll let you get by with it because you're so damned adorably bigoted.
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More on bacon and fucking
[Read the article: Heaven, heartache and the power of deviled eggs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am also partial to the tagline "Don't fuck with the Jesus." Therefore, I suggest that, for me at least, bacon IS the Jesus*.
And, yes, I am a good Episcopalian, which not only shows you how little the all-Xians-are-the-same crowd know, but also how low the Episcopal church has sunk.
*Unless, of course, you want to argue that Bacon was the Shakespeare.
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Oh, shut UP
[Read the article: Remembering Sydney Pollack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was looking for the opportunity to write in that, despite its now iffy cultural coverage, Salon still beats its betters (say, the Onion's AV Club) in one regard: the intelligence of its readers' responses to said coverage. That is, following the Club's news note on Pollack's death, a couple of dozen firsties dove in to say the rudest thing they could about some (to them) random dead guy. But then the first response on Salon mistakes snark for toughminded critical acumen and goes for the oh-so-cute with a cretinous "Who dat."
Damn.
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What about these fat guys on bikes?
[Read the article: Playing soldier]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Patriot Guard Riders, whose maikn mission is to protect the grieving from that douche Fred Phelps and his hellbound "church."
http://www.patriotguard.org/
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"French rock blows."
[Read the article: Can Scarlett Johansson sing?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Plastic Bertrand!
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My sound card is on the fritz
[Read the article: The longest 47 seconds ever]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did I miss the sounds of cheering crowds and a big brass band?
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Who?
[Read the article: More on "the YouTube divorcée"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is there a Czar of Who-Gives-A-Fuck who trawls YouTube and the blogs for non-entities to celebrate?
Tricia, Lonely Girl. Lonely Girl, Tricia.
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Context
[Read the article: Machinist, gone phishing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps it would have been a little smarter to headline this somewhere other than right about the Movie Guy's "on vacation" headline.
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Maybe Charlie Gibson can be the host
[Read the article: McCain wants joint town halls, Obama receptive to idea]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In fact, ANY media-okay host is NOT okay.
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trailer hate
[Read the article: Critics' Picks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It was cute enough when for the first 2/3. Then the little dog said, "Jealous?" in a way that made me think of how so many shallow dickheads use that particular locution to talk back when you call them on shallow dickheadedness.
Fuck it. Asshole are assholes, even if they're adorable little rat dogs.