Jul 30, 2002
Ben 'Cooter' Jones
Hey Cooter!: This Good Ol' Boy Never Means No Harm
A. BARTON HINKLE
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
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Those dirty sidewinders! If Uncle Jesse gets caught with that 'shine, he, Bo, and Luke are all gonna go to jail! What are we gonna do, Cooter?
- Daisy Duke. Welcome to Hazzard County. Y'all might not know this, but ol' Cooter's gone and given up his garage. You remember how Boss Hogg and his schemin' nephew Hughie tried to foreclose on Cooter in "Dukes of Hazzard" episode 72 so they could put up a "Hoggominium," an' how Boss Hogg tried to throw him out in episode 105? Cooter hung on like a tick on a hound dog. We all thought he'd be there till two weeks after forever.
But he's got a new name these days - Ben Jones, though he puts the "Cooter" in the middle of it on his Website, so we can still call him that - an' a new line of work to go with it. He's runnin' for Congress. So he wears a coat and tie now, an' his fingernails are clean. But he's just as much a character as he ever was. He stopped by the other day for a little get-to-know-you chat.
Cooter's been in Congress before - served the good folks of Georgia for four years before he got redistricted and Newt Gingrich whupped his tail for him. He said he didn't want to go back - When Jonah escaped from the whale's belly, he didn't go back for his hat, is how he puts it - but here he is, goin' back for his hat after all, this time in Virginia, where he grew up an' where lives now.
Reason is, when the Virginia legislature redrew the congressional district lines Cooter's home landed in the district of Republican Eric Cantor, an' the Democrats didn't seem like they was goin' to put no one up to run against him. Ol' Cooter believes in competition. Competition takes exposure, though. If nobody in the news business covers him, then the race is already over before it starts. That ain't right; a healthy democracy needs at least two political parties and lots of good arguments, otherwise everyone sort of falls asleep. Cooter, if you're readin' this just slip the check under the door.
COOTER believes in some other stuff, too. He believes in the core values of the Democratic Party, he says, like an eight-hour work day, Social Security, the G.I. Bill, civil rights - he did some demonstratin' back when he was a younger man - an' FDR an' Harry S. (Truman, that is.) He thinks the Democrats took a wrong turn somewhere, probably around Vietnam, and haven't got straightened out yet. He doesn't much care for the group-identity politics they make such a big deal of, or abortion (sure, keep it legal, he says, but people are havin' too many of 'em), or how some of the Democrats have gone pro-Palestinian, or how they make such a big deal of gay rights. Not that everyone shouldn't be treated with respect, mind you. Still, "I don't care what a man does with his johnson," he says, "but don't make a political movement out of it!"
He also has a right strong passion when it comes to Confederate heritage. (The other day the Editorial Page of this here newspaper had some fun pointin' out how hard the Democrats had been on George Allen on account of his Confederate flag, makin' out like he was some kind of white-hooded racist, whereas they haven't had word one to say about Cooter's Confederate leanings. He phoned shortly thereafter.) He calls it absurd to compare the Confederacy to the Nazis, and he sounds awful proud when he talks about the great valor the Confederates showed on the battlefield, fightin' like the dickens even when they didn't have nothin' but grass to eat.
That much love for the Confederacy won't sit well with Democrats of the more African-American or Yankee persuasion, though it probably don't hurt him none in a lot of the Seventh District. The same goes for his support of capital punishment, an' the fact that he was among the first Democrats to call on President Clinton to resign. (Which also makes him one of the only ones.) Ditto for how proud he sounds of "The Dukes of Hazzard" bein' good clean broadcast fare where the good guys - heroes, really (if you don't count runnin' moonshine) - always won. Somethin' the whole family could enjoy, you understand. (Particularly the teen-age boys, particularly if Catherine Bach was wearing a skimpy pair of Daisy Dukes . . . .) He don't like all the filth on the airways today an' he's right with Tipper Gore in tellin' the entertainment industry it ought to shape up.
In fact, ol' Cooter sounds like a Republican as much as he sounds like a Democrat - or one of them blue-dog Democrats. Seems as if all the Democratic leaders he admires are dead, an' these days you won't find many Republicans bad-mouthin' labor laws or government programs to help the elderly. Least not out loud, anyway. On the other hand, when Cooter was in Congress he got pretty high marks from the left-wing Americans for Democratic Action, an' his score with that group was about twice as high - makin' him about twice as liberal - as the score for Virginia Democrats.
ANOTHER thing Cooter gets passionate about is some of the stuff the other side has said about him. He still gets madder'n a bee-stung badger about a broadside they put out sayin' he supports flag-burnin'. See, when he was in Congress he voted against a constitutional amendment to help make flag-burnin' against the law, on account of the courts say burnin' the flag is political expression and outlawin' it violates the First Amendment.
Cooter's point - and you have to admit it's not a bad one - is, why go messin' with the most sacred document of American government on account of three burnt-out hippies out in California or wherever who want to get on TV? Twistin' that argument around to say he thinks people should burn the flag is plumb dishonest and dirty. Reckon that's so, and reckon maybe he's right that the Cantor folks are a little worried if they'd stoop so low to attack him even before he formally announced his candidacy.
Not too worried, mind. Last time around Cantor kicked his opponent's tail so bad the man probably still walks with a limp and sits down real careful. Cooter won't take PAC money even though Cantor is rakin' it in. An' incumbency is just about the best inoculation against electoral defeat ever devised.
Cooter puts on a brave face and acts mighty optimistic about his prospects. But this is one race maybe even the General Lee couldn't win.
Source
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Beware of the candidate, especially a Democrat, who runs as a conservative and votes like a liberal.