December 16, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
Talking Redneck
Michael Graham explains that we're all rednecks now.
A Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez
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ichael Graham, who has been a contributor to NRO over the years, is author of the new book, Redneck Nation: How the South Really Won the War. Graham can be heard daily in the Beltway (and anywhere, online) on Clear Channel's AM 570 WTNT. His website is here.
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What's the most ironic part of this whole Trent Lott gaffe crisis?
Michael Graham: Democrats assailing the Dixiecrat politics of Strom Thurmond is certainly ironic given that, if Strom were alive today, he'd be a liberal. (He is? Are you sure?)
In 1948, Strom Thurmond was a politician obsessed with race. The modern American liberal is obsessed with race. Strom Thurmond thought schools and courts should treat citizens differently based on their skin color. Liberal supporters of, among other things, race-based admissions policies and hate-crime laws agree. Strom promoted the "multicultural" view that institutions like Jim Crow and segregation might appear irrational or unjust to outside agitators, but they were a perfect fit with southern culture. Liberal apologists say the same for modern Arab-Muslim culture all the time.
Hey, Democrats: What's the problem?
Lopez: By the way, do all southerners believe the world would be a better place if Strom Thurmond had become president in 1948?
Graham: Even with the head of the state KKK living around the corner from me back in South Carolina, I have rarely heard even the most knuckle-headed racist pining for the "good ol' days" of Jim Crow. Though I have heard some folks wax nostalgic over Strom's first run for the White House — when he almost tipped the election to Tilden in 1876.
Lopez: Not to speak ill of Mr. 100 or the South, but why the heck did the people of South Carolina elect him that last time?
Graham: Strom Thurmond. Bob Jones. The Confederate Flag. Fritz Hollings.
Graham: Strom Thurmond. Bob Jones. The Confederate Flag. Fritz Hollings.
South Carolina: Our headlines are America's punch lines.
Lopez: Do you think that the Democrats, after this past election are going to undergo a successful facelift or will they just get more redneck than they already are?
Graham: I spent six years working fulltime as a GOP flak, and I've learned that a party is only as strong as its individual candidates. In 1992, you could have given a candidate like Al Gore the entire Bill Clinton "new Democrat" message, and Gore would have lost. Bill Clinton's individual political skills and strengths carried the day, as did Reagan's in 1980.
Which is bad news for the Democrats. Look at the bench: Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, and even a rumored candidacy by Gary Hart? Park the DeLorean — I think we've hit 1988. And when geezers like Frank Lautenberg and Walter Mondale are running for the Senate again, you've got to start wondering if the top of the 2004 Democratic ticket might be Adlai Stevenson and William Jennings Bryan.
Lopez: How about the GOP? Expect more Strom-gates and the like?
Graham: Look down a GOP gun barrel and you'll inevitably discover it's aimed at a GOP foot. There is no election so safe that we can't find a way to blow it.
Having said that, I think 2004 is going to be a solid year for Republicans in part because the Democrats are going to continue playing ethnic-identity politics (which I argue in Redneck Nation they learned from white southerners).
To be a Republican, you have to believe something. To be a Democrat, you have to be something — a union member, education bureaucrat, part of an ethnic minority, etc. By that definition, they can't expand their base, but we can.
Lopez: What's a redneck exactly?
Graham: My Uncle Bobby is a redneck, exactly. I cropped tobacco for him one summer in North Carolina and it was like working the back lot of In The Heat Of The Night.
But when I talk about redneckery in Redneck Nation, I'm not talking about the Jeff Foxworthy stereotypes. I'm writing about the ideology: What did a typical white southern "redneck" believe at the beginning of the civil-rights movement 50 years ago?
He believed that race mattered, that race was determinant. He believed that free speech was dangerous, spread by "outside agitators" who never learned the southern speech code: "If you can't say something nice…drink." He believed that all women were either delicate creatures in need of special social protections, or they were road house trailer trash who would spank you and call you "Daddy." He believed that the more irrational and ridiculous your religion, the more fervently you believed in God. He believed the most entertaining way to spend a Saturday night was to watch something get "blowed up real good."
And on and on.
Lopez: How are we becoming a redneck nation?
Graham: Just look at the list above. Having fled these attitudes among my rural southern neighbors, I know live in a modern, liberal America where Ivy League colleges are building segregating housing because "race matters." I actually heard one modern defender of segregated public schools (blacks-only academies) say "black people learn differently from white people." Gee, I haven't heard that since I was 12 — from a klan member!
Thanks to the efforts of northern liberals, we now live in an America where:
Conservative newspapers are regularly burned on the Berkeley campus and Harvard is developing speech codes to keep students from saying anything that might upset their neighbors. Where feminist professors are having works of art like Goya's The Naked Maja removed from classrooms because they create a hostile work environment; and where the model of modern womanhood is the Sex In The City, a.k.a. "White Trash On The Hudson." Where evangelical Christians are mocked by West Coast liberal elites who wear healing crystals, have conversations with trees and watch John Edwards — TV psychic. And where the number one spectator sport from Maine to Malibu is — -NASCAR!
Lopez: Are you a self-hating southerner? I think I learned more redneck stereotypes from your book....
Graham: I was a self-loathing southerner for many years — in fact, that's the premise of the book: I left the South looking for some place in America that was significantly different. I wanted to live in that mythical meritocracy called "The North." It took me 20 years to figure out that the only difference between Brooklyn, New York and Birmingham, Alabama is that you can't get a gun rack in a Trans-Am.
Redneck Nation concludes with a love note — or a "mash note" at least — to the South: the good-hearted people, the excellent food, the fundamental desire there to make life an enjoyable experience for as many folks as possible, even people you don't really like. That's my home. I may be a reluctant southerner, but I am a southerner nonetheless.
Lopez: You pick fights on issues like date rape. Why bother?
Graham: Because the most angering thing about America today is the deference we give to self-proclaimed "victims." There are true victims of rape, and racism, and injustice, and it is an insult to them to grant victim status to anyone who claims it. So I put the burden of proof on the so-called "victim" to demonstrate they've actually been victimized, as opposed to buying into the ridiculous (redneck) notion that if you feel offended, I have to take your feelings seriously.
That's why I say there is no such thing as "date rape." Either you were a real victim of sexual violence or you weren't. This pseudo-crime of "I don't think I really wanted to have sex when I got in bed with him, but I was so drunk I'm not sure" isn't rape. Date rape is a concept invented by sorority girls who suddenly realized they just slept with a loser.
Lopez: What're the ingredients for a good rant?
Graham: Hypocrisy, pomposity, and lots of obvious sexual innuendos.
Lopez: What does the life of a pundit and that of a stand-up comedian have in common?
Graham: One makes his living inspiring laughter by making irrational and ridiculous statements, and the other works in a comedy club.
Lopez: You live in D.C. now. That must be like redneck central now, following the premise of Redneck Nation?
Graham: Absolutely! One of my favorite stories in the book is a Washington Post article written by Natalie Hopkinson, a black Post staffer who was upset that so many white people were moving into her neighborhood. D.C. is "Chocolate City," she insisted, and white people were ruining it by moving in.
"From our perspective," she wrote, "integration is overrated…We not only have to invest in the inner city, but we can't let white people beat us to it."
Her arguments could have come straight from the minutes of a "White Citizens Council" meeting from the 1960s, steeped as it was in racism, segregation, and imply intimidation ("We don't want your kind 'round here"). And the Post ran it!
When readers complained about this overtly segregationist screed, the Post ombudsman ran a piece explaining that (I'm paraphrasing) segregation is O.K. as long as black people like it. This inspired an even greater outcry. The values of 1960s liberalism — rationalism, merit, equal treatment under the law — are so dead, and the redneck values so prevalent that the Washington Post never saw the controversy coming.
Lopez: What's the funniest thing in your book?
Graham: The lack of noun-verb agreement.