Times: My guide to the mysteries of redneck culture is a shambling, garrulous, bourbon-loving writer named Joe Bageant. Raised in the backwoods of Appalachia, he returned to his roots after a 30-year absence and wrote one of those books that change the way you think of the US and the tarnished American dream. Joe, 61, is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, just published in Britain. It’s partly a scathing portrait of a small Virginia town divided by money, class and race; mostly it’s a lovesick and frequently hilarious rant about the poor, hopeless working-class Americans who “stay dumb and drink beer and vote Republican because no real liberal voice, the kind that speaks the rock-bottom, undeniable truth, ever enters their lives”.
Joe has a great deal to say about rednecks, God and guns, and the way that Democratic idols like Obama have failed to connect with what he calls “the white ghetto of the working poor”.
First, though, we drive out to that mountain-top honky-tonk known as the Troubadour Park, which is the home of a popular country-music guitarist, Joltin’ Jim McCoy. The occasion is Jim Jam 2008, a fundraising benefit to pay for McCoy’s bandstand, which was rebuilt this summer after the old one was hit by lightning and burnt to the ground. It’s a big outdoor space with lovely views across the West Virginia hills, but the redneck hordes are conspicuously absent when Joe and I arrive. On stage, a trio of cowpoke crooners is singing a song about “your cheatin’ heart” to an audience of five. Beside the arena, a couple of sweating barbecue cooks turn the burgers and hot dogs next to an oven shaped like a giant Colt revolver.
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“People just don’t have the cash to go out right now,” Judy says forlornly. Her husband, Tom Shifflett, a retired factory worker, talks about the mortgage crisis and the easy money that flowed as banks abandoned lending caution and grateful West Virginians plunged up to their ears in debt.
“A lot of it is their own fault,” Tom says. “They couldn’t wait for their new car, their new house, and if you asked them how they would pay for it, they’d say, ‘We’ll get lots of overtime.’ But now there’s no more overtime and they can’t afford the repayments and they’ve lost their credit, their cars and a lot of them are losing their homes.”
Whoever is to blame for America’s mortgage meltdown, it occurred under Republican rule and seems tailor-made to benefit the Democrats this year. Shouldn’t all these faltering rednecks, the front line of victims of Wall Street excess, be beating a path to Obama’s door? Or is there really so much racism in working-class America that they won’t vote for a Democratic would-be saviour just because he is black?
According to the story, Obama aides sought Bageant's help.
