I mean, in all honesty, no one paid much attention to Appalachia, okay, that's a bit of a stretch, until we had a bunch of politicians shouting "coal country" ad nauseam for however long they've been shouting it. Five bucks says we'll see something similar happen in the gulf states when oil falls out of fashion.And the difference between Reserve, NM and whereverthefuck WV this article is set is that nobody ever paid any attention to Reserve, NM.
What the fuck ever, dude. WPA, TVA, goddamn all of bluegrass music, fuckin' hatfields and clampetts, mutherfuckin' Snuffy Smith, fuckin' Pogo, My Entire Goddamn Life has been chockablock with goddamn hillbillies and how they're the real Americans while all us half-wetbacks out here ceased to fucking matter as soon as Billy the Kid was dead. "Real America" has been some fuckin' hillbilly down in the goddamn holler since fucking 1866.
I mean, I guess if we're willing to ignore the massive cultural influence that is L.A., the tech influence that is silicon valley, the educational influence that is New England, the economic influence that is New York, and the political influence that is D.C., maybe that'd be a sound argument? There's a lot of different facets to America and it's not like the mid-west has a monopoly in ideas of what makes this country what it is. Shoot. We all have our problems. Ample attention has been given to the housing crunch that is taking place on the west coast, about the jobs being lost pretty much everywhere period, the amount of hay wireness that the environment is wreaking on us, from hurricanes and disappearing coasts to messed up farmlands and tornadoes, to outrageous wildfires. You can shit on the mid-west. That's fine. You can say its inhabitants made its bed and now they're forced to lie in it and that's fine. The mid-west isn't the only place getting attention though. It wasn't yesterday, it's not today, and it won't be tomorrow.
No mutherfucker sit down. Your statement was Which, as evidenced by every name I posted, is rank bullshit. Sure - there are other parts of the country. Sure - they get media coverage. But for as long as I can remember, paeans to "real America" have always put it east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line. "Country" music is all about Nashville. Fried chicken is for Americans and clam chowder is for effete snobs. Yeah - New England has done a lot more for education. New York is a commerce hub. DC is where the laws are made. But whenever "real Americans" are portrayed, they're portrayed via the outsize influence of those fuckin' coal miners from fuckin' rural Appalachia. Population of Appalachia: 25 million. Population of California: 40 million. But we're the fuckin' outlanders over here. Probably 'cuz we got 2 senators and Appalachia has 24. There are more people working for Sears than there are working for the coal industry but I don't wake up every goddamn morning to someone spewing bullshit about the plight of Sears workers.I mean, in all honesty, no one paid much attention to Appalachia
The mid-west isn't the only place getting attention though.
Can we chill for a bit? I'm trying to have a conversation here, not a nasty argument. I know we disagree a lot, but at least on my end I can very much say that our disagreements don't come from a place of antagonism. When I said no one paid much attention to Appalachia, I mean no one paid much attention to Appalachia in the news and I don't think that you're accurate in your assessment that Appalachia is considered American culture. Anyone could do that with almost any movement. I could choose the subgenre of surf culture and point to movies populated by the likes of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, the T.V. show Gidget, bands like The Ventures and The Beast Boys, and on and on. That's easy. Obviously I could talk about Westerns and how a huge characteristic embraced by Westerns are the ideas of independence, ruggedness, and determination, and that those ideals are a base thread in America's ideals to this very day. Half the movies you see on TCM take place in cities like New York, Chicago, or L.A. or feature rich ass folks in rich ass houses doing rich ass things and being glamorous as shit. Modern movies are very much the same way. I can go on and on about the art scenes from various metro hubs, movements in labor and politics that came out of this region or that, and so on and so forth. It's not all about senator counts either. California and Silicon Valley are economic powerhouses and they use that influence like a fucking club sometimes. Sonny Bono and the whole Copyright Term Extension Act is a great example or companies like Facebook and Google dodging taxes like Neo dodges bullets is another example and let's not forget DRM. I know that retail is more important than coal mining in terms of job numbers. I'm the one who started the tag #retailhell and I even went back to before I even joined Hubski and retroactively tagged some threads with that tag. Retail is a mess and it's scary, partly because it's a mess, but also because so many people who depend on retail for employment already have so little to begin with. I could post retail news all day every day, mergers and acquisitions and layoffs and stock values and on and on. It's all I ever see sometimes. But I don't want to post about retail every day, because I don't want to sound like a broken record for one (which leads to conversations like this) and because I honestly think that at this point, as far as large corporate retail is concerned, I don't think things are fixable until things get well past broken so we can see the pieces we have left to work with. That's something I don't want to spend too much time thinking about.
I: - started the thread with a hulk jpg - explained how the term "coal miner" shuts down my empathy pathways - stated that I go into "full plague on both your houses mode" I'm not going to calm down on this one. Your argument, as a midwesterner, is that somehow the part of the country you live in is not grossly overrepresented in popular culture. Why did Clinton lose the election? She didn't fellate the midwest and the south enough. Why should liberals be ashamed? We didn't consider the fucking south. Where's "Middle America?" somewhere with lots of white people in industries that no longer exist because (A) NAFTA (B) the collapse of family values (C) immigration (D) all of the above. Where do the limey fucks go to write a human interest story about Walmart? Fuckin' coal country. This article: boo hoo I have to drive an hour to Walmart. This article: Angelinos are leading a Dickensian existence. But hey, what's the advice? Midwesterners reading about strife in cities: "why would you live in a city? Come to the midwest where everything is cheap!" Midwesterners reading about strive in the Midwest: "liberal elites in cities don't understand just how rough it is here in real America." Sure, it's all about Hollywierd. As evidence, Frankie and Annette. One of 'em is even still alive! When you throw up ogres like Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul... Facebook and Google and taxes oh my? Oh yes. Let's do go there. Art scenes? My art scene didn't vote to put a wall up to keep your art scene out. My art scene isn't trying to take your healthcare away. And you're right - you don't want a fight but you clearly missed the cues that I am out of fucking patience with all the goddamn human interest stories about those poor benighted ex-coal miners and their woebegone Walmarts.I just don't understand the appeal of spending all your money to live in LA.
California and Silicon Valley are economic powerhouses and they use that influence like a fucking club sometimes.
