Fiddle Dee Dee--George Bush Thinks Conservatives are Poor White Trash

Mamzelle

[Mamzelle]

Over the past months of this nightmare of immigration scofflawry, listening to the rhetoric from the aristocratic Republican elites--I’ve been carried back to the Magnolia Melodramas I enjoyed reading as a teenager. Gwen Bristow’s “Plantation Trilogy”; Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow” and the magnificent mother of them all--Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.”

George Bush once said, “I’m not a southerner, I’m a southwesterner.” He was trying to distance himself from the south and the taint of racism, a “compassionate” insult to every southerner who voted for him. But he has every resemblence to the linen-suited julep-drinking Massa of the Old South.

And the dynamic of the Elites verses Middle-class Conservatives is exactly like the plantation owner and his nearest inelegant neighbors...White Trash. Scots-Irish subsistence farmers couldn’t afford to the leisured fineries of the Planter Class because they were trying to eke out an existence in competition with the institution of slavery.

Remember the characters of the Slatterys and the Macintoshes, Gerald and Scarlett O’Hara’s WT neighbors? Not only did the O’Haras hold them in contempt for being so hardscrabble, tacky and rough-textured, but the slaves themselves of the plantations held themselves in higher esteem than “po’ whites.”

And the Massa with the Big Heart dearly loved his servants, loved condescending to them--What treasures! Just like members of the family! Not that he set them free, or ate at the same table. There are limits to paternalism and noblesse oblige. But Massa and Missus were unfailingly thankful that Mammy and Pork picked up Scotty’s poop off the Big House lawn.

The irony--it’s the Southern middle class that makes up a lot of the soldiers who trusted him enough to serve in Iraq.

George Bush thinks he can afford to openly display the contempt he has always felt for Joe Redneck...er...Sixpack. His chief overseer, Tony Snow, let us in on the secret in the wee hours after election day. He can now concentrate on indulging his oozing childhood sentimentality by handing his house servants a deed to America.

I’m reminded of another scene from Gone With The Wind--Scarlett was being lectured by an elderly matriarch about Trash. “And when you’re done with them--kick them away and do it thoroughly, because Trash clinging to your coattails can ruin you.”

I have entered into many discussions about illegal immigration with a comment--housework and yardwork are political. This is a class issue between overlord elites who can’t conceive of a life spent actually cleaning up after themselves. They break the laws, then have to justify the transgression by accusing the law of being bad. That’s why they become insulting and defensive when requested to obey the law.

I’m done with Bush. I don’t trust him--or any member of his Indolent family.

[durasell]

Topsiders are fine shoes. I place them up there with Red Wing boots and Alden.

[wardaddy]

Could Scarlet O'Hara walk on the set of Dallas and immediately fit in?

oh absolutely she could...especially in Dallas ...but maybe not the same in Amarillo

Highland Park soccer moms is Escalades are almost exactly as blonde, spoiled and yummy as they are in Madison Mississippi or Roswell Georgia or Mountain Brook Alabama or Belle Meade Tennessee

And Tri-Delts at SMU are dopplegangers of the same at Oxford Miss or Tuscaloosa Alabama.

Well bred north Dallas gals are sorta the Mecca of southern beauty and feminimity...southern but Texan too

North Dallas, Ole Miss, Miami, Southern Kali, the Dock @ Jackson Miss on a summer night.....there are a few real hotspots for babes...and North Dallas has always been blue flame hot since I was a boy in the early 70s

btw....my mother...Miss Mississippi 1952, is Scarlett O'hara...incredibly passive aggressive but strong willed too

nice well thought out post that one Claire...I liked it.

[lentulusgracchus]

There are no classes in America, so think of another reason for your resentment.

Actually, Paul Fussell thinks there are, and he cut down quite a few trees in the course of arguing his case.

As for cause for resentment, you might try plumbing opinion in the business world before you dissociate (non-existent, according to you) class-consciousness from reasons for resentment. The social affinity game is in full force, I assure you, at the vast majority of Fortune 500 corporations. That is a form of classism. Not well-spoken? Don't play golf? No Bill Blass suits in your closet? Oh dear, no corner office for you. Didn't go to an Ivy? Well, sorry, nothing personal, X, but here at ABC Corp., we're very demanding of candidates for our junior-executive program. Yeah, right. Yale Law, upper half, in like Flynn. Johns Hopkins, upper quartile, A-OK. Hanover or Oberlin or Case Western, top quartile, good candidate. Southern Illinois, top five percent, ummm, well, hemmm, hawwww, hmmmm. Associate degree in biz administration from Chadron State or Lenoir Rhyne, no way. We have standards. Yeah, right.

[nativist]

Aw don’t be, Some of our greatest heroes came from Tennessee. Nice family you have there. Congrats.

[mimaw]

Your right Texas is not the South it’s the Southwest and the author of this rant is showing his BDS

[Dog Gone]

Culturally and traditionally, the South is the place of antebellum homes, plantations, and deep South traditions that go back to the founding of this country.

Texas was barely a factor in the Civil War, although it was part of the Confederacy. In my opinion, Texas is part of the South only in that it’s certainly not part of the North, but it has more in common with Colorado and Wyoming than it does with South Carolina.

It’s roots are the Wild West. If there’s an antebellum plantation house in Texas, I’ve never heard of it in the nearly three decades I’ve lived here.

I think the South stops at the Sabine River. Once you cross that from Louisiana you’re into cowboy country. It’s a whole different thing.

[lentulusgracchus]

and North Dallas has always been blue flame hot since I was a boy in the early 70s

Those were, I think, precisely the women Jack Kennedy had in mind when he made that famous crack about "those Texas broads", when he was bragging about how Jackie was going to shade them all and show them what real elegance looked like.......and his remark presumably included Mrs. John (Nellie) Connally, whom Texans generally came to like a lot. Like Laura Bush.

That was back before the rest of us knew about Fiddle and Faddle and Marilyn and Judy Campbell.

Hybris.......

[lentulusgracchus]

If there’s an antebellum plantation house in Texas, I’ve never heard of it in the nearly three decades I’ve lived here.

There's one in the city park in Dallas, along with the dog-run house it replaced, and several other examples of early Texas houses. The big house was built in 1855.

There were a raft of them on the lower Trinity, St. Bernard, Brazos, and Colorado Rivers. Abner Jackson alone owned three of them on the Brazos: two of them, Darrington and Retrieve, are still there, state property now, taken by the state for property taxes (which the legislature raised to get them) and operated ever since as prison farms. His third, where his biggest big house was located, was at Lake Jackson, which was taken for a state mental asylum and eventually torn down in the 1920's or 1930's. It's a state park now, under excavation by the Texas Archeological Society for several years.

Yes, there were big houses in Texas. The first was built by Jared Groce, formerly of Georgia, who removed his entire plantation to Texas in 50 wagons to settle on labores staked out by his slaves and claimed from the empresario Stephen F. Austin under the terms of the grants made to Groce and the rest of the original Old Three Hundred in 1822.

Yes, there were plantations in Texas (mostly cane). And yes, Brazoria County was over 90% black in 1855, because of the presence of the plantations. The total value of slaves held in Texas in 1860 was $160,000,000 gold, or more than the value of all the improved real property in the State. The plantation establishment was very definitely there......but most of north Texas at that time was farmed by freeholders, most of them from Tennessee, Kentucky, and "Show Me".

[Bob J]

Texas isn't a southern state, it's part of the southwest (if it isn't it's own country at times). Ya'll are getting your panties in a wad because he corrected a mistake about where he was from. If a Georgian was referred to as a northerner, you can bet their would be a correction and a few pats on the back.

[ClaireSolt]

I smile too at those who are calling themselves the elite. I call them the self-appointed elite. They are made up of people in occupations that are actually held in low regard. I call that snobism, and I hate it.

that is very different from a class system with a hereditary aristocracy. George Soros has power because he has money and a criminal genius. He is an immigrant and his power has nothing to do with class in America.

Anyone who sees no differences in societies from Old Testament times is not looking closely. No doubt, there have always been snobs everywhere.

The most important characteristic of American society since de Tocqueville first described it is its lack of classes and its social mobility. I deplore the facile use of the term middle class by leftists because I spent my teaching career mostly working to give black Americans the tools to succeed. Telling p;eople they are stuck in classes is a source of depression and desparation.

[Netizen]

Why do the second, third, and fifth paragraphs of your definition set for the word "class" show so much redundancy?

I have no idea, I wondered the same thing! Maybe because it is a scholarly book? ;)

[oneamericanvoice]

To reinerate, I was pointing out that I believe that the President was attempting to clarify the region where he comes from. Just as someone from the west would define themselves not from the southwest. This is not because of class warfare, but honesty. The theory below makes example of “the Elites versus Middle-class conservatives”. This is laughable since conservatives exist in all classes. The very usage of “elites” is classist. I know people in the upper class that find Larry the Cable Guy hilarious, not because of classism. Then the author goes on to point out the differences of “subsistence farmers” versus “the Planter Class”. This shows an utter disdain for and ignorance of the upper class. But then this is “just my opinion.”

“And the dynamic of the Elites verses Middle-class Conservatives is exactly like the plantation owner and his nearest inelegant neighbors...White Trash. Scots-Irish subsistence farmers couldn’t afford to the leisured fineries of the Planter Class because they were trying to eke out an existence in competition with the institution of slavery.”

[oneamericanvoice]

You made my point that the President was only clarifying where he comes from. Regarding his accent...who cares? I sound different from my family. Not all Texans sound alike.

[dcwusmc]

NICE Rant. I am in total agreement with you.

[oneamericanvoice]

I do understand this. I don’t wish to fight either. I just don’t believe it is class warfare or arrogance.

Texas isn’t a part of the old South anymore than Arizona is because of the Battle of Picacho Peak. But then there are alot of folk still fighting the Civil War.

Who cares if his family had a part in slavery or reconstruction? Those have nothing to do with him. What’s in your closet? My family had slaves. Does that have any bearing on me? Part of my family that was still in Germany lived in the city of Dachau? I never met them, or corresponded with them, but given your thinking, I should be looked down on because of them. They weren’t Nazis, and if fact, had to prove their Aryan descent lest they end up in the camp.

There is nothing telling when President Bush says he is from the southwest. But seems quite telling at everyone, especially the Southerners who keep screaming about the Yankees.

[RobbyS]

Well, of course Texas is a big state. But I do wonder where Bush picked up his particular brogue. He cerrainly doesn’t talk like the old cowboys I met fifty years ago when I was living in the Permian basin. My Dad being a German from San Antonio and my mother being from Mississippi and I growing up in the East Texas Oil field where many accents were heard, I have always been aware of such things. My guess is that Bush made a decision long ago that he wasn’t going to be an easterner so he copied someone. Just can’t place it. Does sound more like central Texas. He kinda slurs his words like Lyndon did.

[oneamericanvoice]

The Brits didn’t always sound the like they do know. All it took was one King with a speech impediment....Perhaps the difference is the progression of the regional accent. Or it could be, as the old saying goes, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Either way, it doesn’t matter.

[wardaddy]

by your answer I can tell that attacks on southern heritage don’t matter to you therefore why should Bush giving PC answers about Texas being Southern matter either.

if said attacks did matter to you and if they did and you were old enough to remember when folks....especially conservatives ...did not disparage my history, then you would be rankled too

I’m not sure what Nazis have to do with all that unless you are equivocating slave owning southerners with nazis in which case there is not much i can say or do to change how your thinking has been affected

we are not refighting the Civil War, no one is advocating seccession, but many of us are tired of seeing our history and our kinfolk disparaged, insulted and marginalized by the politically correct, many of whom are unfortunately from outside the South

wait till the PC folks come for Texans over Commanche genocide or Anglo aggression towards hispanic heroes...the latter is inevitable....just wait, then we’ll see how you like it.

Bush says he’s from the Southwest because it suits his sensibilities ...sensibilities which have proven to be awful for the rest of us and sensibilities about whether or not Texas is Southern shared by a small minority on this thread...and by almost no native texans...

you can decipher that

I even pinged a High Plains dweller to ask him....is Texas southern or not? if it’s Southern in Dalhart, Dumas or Texline...then it’s Southern all the way...like the native Texan said....the accents change when you hit New Mexico

[stainlessbanner]

Texas is Southern all the way. Southern as Louie Wigfall, Brax Bragg, John Bell Hood, Terry's Texas Rangers, Tom Green, Albert Sidney Johnston, Sol Ross, Col. Granbury.

Texans saw action in nearly every major battle of the war and won battles in the homeland at Glorietta Pass, Sabine Pass, Sabine Crossroads, and Galveston. Texans mounted up and joined their brothers in the Army of Tennessee and some detachments went to the ANV and Trans-MS.

There were only two capital cities never captured in the War: Austin and Tallahassee. The Florida boys (literally) laid down some Cracker punches at Natural Bridge and Grant, Sherman, Sheridan knew better than to mess with Austin.

Lee asked for more fighting Texans:

"General, I have not heard from you with regard to the new Texas regiments, which you promised to raise for the army. I need them very much. I rely upon those we have in all our tight places, and fear I have to call upon them too often. They have fought grandly and nobly, and we must have more of them. Please make every possible exertion to get them on for me. You must help us in this matter. With a few more regiments such as Hood now has, as an example of daring and bravery, I could feel more confident of the campaign."
- General Lee to General Wigfall, 1862

[wardaddy]

it’s ridiculous to argue with folks who for some modern political reason (a reason we are so effed up right now with political correctness)...to have to argue over whether a state founded by Southerners which fought in the Civil War and has monuments on many courthouse steps same as all over Dixie is not after all Southern.

as General Anthony C. McAuliffe said in ‘44....”nuts”

it’s this PC attitude which all too often is directed at us that is exactly what is wrong with the GOP and cripples it’s effectiveness with Islam, race issues, immigration etc.