Posted on 07/16/2024 1:16:42 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The selection of J.D. Vance on Monday as Donald Trump’s running mate is a direct result of the political media’s failure to understand class in America. For his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance was venerated by many journalists and book critics as a powerful voice representing long-overlooked Americans. But he’s no working-class hero.
Vance portrayed this group — 35% of Americans, by the way — as tragic victims of alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness and their own self-destructive moral failings. Journalists ran with that, bringing their own stereotypes to depict the working class as angry, uneducated white men driven by economic insecurity and racist nostalgia to support Trump’s retrogressive campaign.
This distortion, in turn, widened a real divide by alienating many Americans, fueling support for Trump and even veneration of Vance.
Lauded by David Brooks as the interpreter of some mythical “working-class honor code” that could illuminate the motivations of the core Trump voter, Vance was praised in reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post and a host of other publications, and he became the go-to guy on the working-class perspective. CNN hired him as a political pundit.
This was no better than the “parachute journalism” of upper-middle-class reporters who would visit an Appalachian tavern for one afternoon and then presume to tell the nation what the working class was thinking.
So who actually is the working class? Consistent data has shown that, in the words of the Center for American Progress, “Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class, while non-Hispanic white workers comprise the remaining 55 percent. Nearly half of the working class is women, and 8 percent have disabilities.” Media portrayals that equate this group with uneducated white men elide most of the...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
there’s a leftist narrative out there that Vance’s book is “made up.” I’ve heard it elsewhere.
It is a bestselling book. $7.45 for Amazon Prime Day. L.A. Times writer is jealous.
I’ve got that book and need to finish reading it....
It is a bestselling book. $7.45 for Amazon Prime Day. L.A. Times writer is jealous.
That didn’t take long...........
If the book was so bad, why did RON HOWARD make a movie of it?...............
Sorry for the duplicate.
So much for the “let’s just get along” BS from the left. If this attack happened to Biden it would be 24/7 of “J13” for the next 40 years. And if you said something against it, it would mean you’re a science denier and KKK.
Vance is now a very important figure in the GOP, of course he must be a cheat and a liar!
At least Vance wrote his book himself instead of having Bill Ayres ghost it for him.
I'm sure the Slime and Compost are removing (or editing) anything positive they may have ever written about Vance.
Well, soon he’ll write “Vice-President Elegy”
No clicks to the LAT. Projection is a thing for libs. I once was at an event that made the front page of the LAT. They got it ALL wrong. If it bleeds it leads and they wrote up a bunch of college kids standing around waiting for the UC Regents to go to a meeting in a dorm as a protest. I lived in that dorm and knew the faces on the huge front page photo. Disgusting lies.
But of course.
I look forward to hearing what the MSNBC crowd have to say about Vance. I’m sure he is evil, but I hope to learn why they perceive him as evil.
Berry does not have the first clue what she is writing about.
At the core of Hillbilly Elegy was the FACT that the Carter Administratin and NAFTA virtually destroyed the manufacturing economies of Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, etc., etc. The drug economy replaced the lost industry and addiction ran rampant.
Vance understood and understands that. It was a core refrain in his book, and to a great extent his alignment with Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJHIvunGVY
Above is a video of that Meghan Kelley just did. She talks about Vance’s story, and includes bits and pieces of an old interview (from 2016 or so.)
About 12 minutes long - REALLY good background story on JD. Terrible upbringing until he went to live with his grandparents and a “gun-toting mawmaw”. (When she passed away they found 19 loaded handguns stashed around the house!)
The grew up in Middletown, Ohio, just a few miles from where I grew up. The characters in his book (his family) are quite representative of a LOT of people in the area. It has nothing to do with” working class” and everything to do with the dchoices these people made in their life.
It wasn’t a “story”. It was an accurate reflection of his own family and his own upbringing.
If you are reading this wrap, it tells me that your fish are still living and you haven’t needed it yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.