That Term “Poor and Rural,” I Do Not Think…
By The man who considers Cinderella Man one of the peaks of Western Civilization has yet more Deep Thoughts about culture to share:
What does a poor or lower-middle-class white person, especially one from the South or Southwest, have to do to get a break from fancy high-end TV producers? It is a remarkable fact about this new Golden Age of television, which began with The Sopranos in 1999, that its primary focus of attention is the population cohort known (with the exquisite cultural sensitivity we have all learned in the era of political correctness) as “white trash.”
[…]
Still, rich Hollywood folk making mincemeat out of poor rural folk is another element of the ongoing American culture war that should not go unremarked.
As Scocca notes, J-Pod’s examples of “poor rural folk” include:
- Tony Soprano, a millionaire who lives in a mansion in New Jersey.
- Walter White, a middle-class schoolteacher.
- Don Draper, a prosperous advertising executive who works in New York City.
And also Bill Henrickson, a wealthy suburbanite who ultimately becomes a state senator. Although at least he is from the southwest, so as with Walter White at least one out of three on that one!
You have probably already guessed that the punchline is something about how Democrats, unlike rich white Manhattan Republicans, are clueless about the rural poor. There is nobody who can refute himself like J-Pod.