Kathryn Jean Lopez, on Cheney’s inbred West Virginians joke:
Honest question. I’m from New York City so I have no idea. If you’re from Wyoming, you can make jokes about West Virginia, can’t you? I know a New Yorker absolutely can’t make jokes about West Virginia. And I know a West Virginian can make jokes about a New Yorker. But if you’re from Wyoming, aren’t you — if you’re name isn’t Cheney, at least — part of the normal-American club and it’s all good?
I think it’s okay to make fun of the inbred if your family tree doesn’t branch. I’d like to make fun of Ms. Lopez here, but I don’t think it would be “all good” unless I lobotomize myself first.
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June 3, 2008 at 11:14 am
In the hierarchy of whom you can make fun of, you can always make fun of Appalachia, but not if you’re from Mississippi or Alabama. People from Wyoming, in so much as these people exist, can, in turn, only make fun of KLo.
Texans, surprisingly, can make fun of Wyomingians but then they have to offer them ExxonMobil stock or put them on the Board of Directors.
Everyone can make fun of San Francisco and Massachusetts, because people in San Francisco and Massachusetts don’t give a shit what the rest of you lesser mortals think anyway. We’re too busy having gay sex while decoding dna and making a microprocessor that can make its own electricity and beer.
June 3, 2008 at 11:32 am
That quote from k lo is hysterical in its…well, what would you call it? Its kind of naked, isn’t it?
“But if you’re from Wyoming, aren’t you — if you’re name isn’t Cheney, at least — part of the normal-American club and it’s all good? ”
Does she really think there is a “normal american club” and that west virginia and wyoming are both in it but the rest of us are not?
June 3, 2008 at 11:35 am
“Naked” is the exact word. I wish she’d put some clothes on it.
June 3, 2008 at 11:37 am
I can make fun of Ms. Lopez because I am hispanic, catholic, and actually know that salsa is, first and foremost, a dance and not that stuff where you dip your chips.
June 3, 2008 at 11:46 am
part of the normal-American club
Most boring club ever.
June 3, 2008 at 12:01 pm
“Does she really think there is a “normal american club” and that west virginia and wyoming are both in it but the rest of us are not?”
As a native Oklahoman and a current Montanan, I can say for certain that that club would far more bizarre and scary than most urbanites can even imagine. As a general rule of thumb, if you tell incest jokes about someone other than your own group (as those of us in the Oklahoma Ozarks were wont to do with those in the Arkansas Ozarks) please be sure to wear Kevlar if you ever visit their neighborhood.
June 3, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Everybody can make fun of Utah. If they want to, but they usually all forget Utah exists until some story about a goofball polygamist makes the national news.
June 3, 2008 at 12:59 pm
[…] (Via.) […]
June 3, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Yeah, I know that all the old-time bigots have their panties in a bunch, because they can’t use their favorite slurs anymore.
Really, they can, thanks to the magic of modern inter-tube technology. Just upload that slur, and *just* before hitting the “submit” button, make sure to:
s/[:slur:]/Jonah/g;
And voila!, it’s all good again.
June 3, 2008 at 1:59 pm
You know, if you’re going to appoint yourself patron saint of the flyovers and defender of mesoamerican community values, aren’t you more or less required to pretend you know what they are?
Offhand, I’d say there are very few places where it’s OK to call the residents inbred after you’ve sent their kids off to die.
June 3, 2008 at 2:07 pm
As someone from southwestern VA–which is if not culturally identical to WVA is at least nearby on the spectrum–and an Appalachian family to boot, I didn’t really care that much. It’s offensive, but practically speaking there are worse stereotypes. The hillbilly stereotype sucks but the pernicious effects of it, while they used to be bad say circa the 1950s in Uptown in Chicago, aren’t as bad as a lot of others.
The Big Deal, of course, is that “normal Americans” can obviously say that sort of thing but vice presidents have to work with important people who are representatives of their state. I’m actually inclined to cut Cheney a little slack because he’s actually from the middle of nowhere (and a much more unpleasant-seeming middle of nowhere at that; I don’t know WY very well, but it’s obviously not overwhelmingly beautiful like most of WVA), but otherwise it’s a fucking stupid (and old, and tiresome) joke.
June 3, 2008 at 2:09 pm
And when I say “normal Americans” I mean “people who sell t-shirts and write television shows,” obviously.
June 3, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Is “normal-American” another term for “white”? As opposed to African-American, Hispanic-American, etc.? Is Ms. Lopez tellling us that she is not normal? So confusing.
June 3, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Revised K-Lo:
What kind of world is it when an immensely wealthy and insanely powerful person can’t make jokes at the expense of some of the most impoverished people in the country?
June 3, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Hummm. The art editor of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution once described a painting thusly: “Green infects the figures, giving them an air of incipient madness, or that glazed look evinced by inbred mountain people.” (It was a painting of a lynch mob.)I read this in my daily paper in the mountains of North Georgia, and as I knew her editor, called here and pointed out that this was an unfortunate stereotype (as there is decent date to suggest mountaineers are no more inbred than most of the Us population, and rather less than some groups), and if she had used ‘black’ or ‘jewish’ she’d be out of a job. She told me I was taking it too seriously. I asked if her editor might think one should avoid insulting a portion of readership. She did allow that I had a point.
Some of us hillbillies have educations, do art, travel the world unnoticed, at least, as any American can.
But Mr. Cheney seems determined to be an asshole anywhere.
June 3, 2008 at 5:19 pm
But it was an honest question!
June 3, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Aren’t normal-Americans the same crew who just a very few years ago gave GeeDubyooBush a high five and a giant “America – Fuck, Yeah!” when he was busy greasing towelheads and mission-accomplishaming?
June 3, 2008 at 5:37 pm
i’m from two places:
one, massachusetts. i’ve been told for a long long time that this means i believe in all sorts of louche behavior and i’m gay and like to abort beautiful unicorns with my big gay assabortion machine.
and yet, i continue to note that divorce rates (amongst many other indicators) are much lower in my state than they are in your alabamas, your wyomings and so on. also, rte. 128 kind of developed everything we needed to stay ahead in this country in the 80s and early 90s, and we pay more in to the gov’t then we get out etc.
now i live in Hollywood, a place that is apparently the root of all evil and somewhere that anyone and everyone can make fun of or take swipes at. and yet i keep seeming to meet smart people of every ethnicity and social class here, and from all over the world as well, looking to live the american dream.
so at a certain point you lose interest in the whingeing of a bunch of fuckheads who vote against their own best interests half the time and whose state manages to be entirely consumed by pulling giant carbon buckets out of the ground while we in california continue to live a more efficient lifestyle, electricity-wise, then anywhere else in the country. perhaps if people in certain parts of this country started focusing more on clean and other tech and less on who fucks who or what church everyone goes to our country (and their counties) might be in a better place.
but i ask too much.
oh, and f cheney right in the a. shitheel.
June 3, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I got suspicious when she used the word ‘honest,’ and so at that point stopped reading whatever it was she had to say.
June 3, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Yo, peoples iz gettn’ hyphy fo diplomacy.
June 3, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Is it just me who is amazed that K-Lo thinks she’s a “normal-American”?
Hell, I wouldn’t even go so far as normal earthling.
June 4, 2008 at 12:15 am
I think the “normal american club” is the only weapon that can defeat her, and she just spilled the beans. Lopez is slipping.
June 4, 2008 at 8:17 am
whetstone, Wyoming is actually quite beautiful. Spectacular, even. Different from WVA, which is also beautiful. Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons are in Western Wyoming.
June 4, 2008 at 8:29 am
But Mr. Cheney seems determined to be an asshole anywhere.
The Vice Presidenting thing is just a temporary gig, assholery is his métier.
June 4, 2008 at 8:43 am
Simple rule: not only CAN you always make fun of inbreds, you SHOULD always make fun of inbreds.
June 4, 2008 at 8:45 am
O/T, but hoping the Eds will comment on VD Hanson’s recent honor:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/39613.html
Victor Davis Hanson awarded $250,000 honor
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — A prominent conservative foundation is lavishing a $250,000 award on Victor Davis Hanson, the Fresno-area farmer and classics professor turned public intellectual. ….
June 4, 2008 at 10:43 am
I like Wyoming because “Grand Tetons” means “Big Tits” in French.
June 5, 2008 at 7:24 am
But somehow “tetons” sounds so much nicer and less inbred than “tits.”
June 5, 2008 at 8:17 am
Jay B. I’m always wondering whether you are some kind of internet doppleganger of mine, or whether there are just way more people out there who think the way I do. I’ve *always* thought that about Grand Tetons.
aimai
June 6, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Speaking on behalf of your parents: Here’s The One sounding more like Bush every day
…I think it’s important for us to say to the Iraqis, “We’re not here for the long haul. It’s time for you guys to achieve agreement on the critical issues like how you’re dividing up oil revenues, how provincial government is relating to the national government.” But we have a lot of other interests. We’ve got to make sure that Afghanistan is not sliding into chaos. We’ve got to deal with Iran. And we have to tamp down the anti-American sentiment that has become so pervasive in the Middle East.
June 6, 2008 at 9:14 pm
“…I think it’s important for us to say to the Iraqis, “We’re not here for the long haul.”
No, I can’t imagine The Great Squinty One saying that. And not just because it’s a coherent thought.
June 8, 2008 at 6:12 pm
what the hell happened to rap over the last 20 years?
eric b for vice president.
December 20, 2008 at 12:13 pm
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