Cool quote, but I want the quote where he calls himself a "hillbilly." I searched Google News for "hillbilly" and didn't find it, but I ended up with other hillbilly news. I found: "Here Comes the Hillbilly, Again: What Honey Boo Boo really says about American culture."
As Anthony Harkins observes in Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, one of the hillbilly’s signature moves is to peak, popularity-wise, just when Americans sense that things in general are headed south....
And such ridicule has always been politically coded: The hillbilly figure allows middle-class white people to offload the venality and sin of the nation onto some other constituency, people who live somewhere—anywhere—else. The hillbilly’s backwardness highlights the progress more upstanding Americans in the cities or the suburbs have made. These fools haven’t crawled out of the muck, the story goes, because they don’t want to.ADDED: Here's a different lottery story in the news today about a man who hadn't noticed he'd won $52 million. The money had gone unclaimed for a month, and the state circulated surveillance camera video of the winner buying the ticket:
This idea that the hillbilly’s poverty is a choice allows more upscale Americans to feel comfortable while laughing at the antics before them. It also pushes some people to embrace the stereotype as a badge of honor. “Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music / It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on,” Dwight Yoakam once sang. For more contemporary examples of re-appropriation, you can attend any number of Tea Party rallies. The classist term “redneck,” originally coined to indicate those who worked so hard and so long in the sun that they sported sunburns in the designated anatomical location, likewise has been adopted in the name of all that’s good and holy.....
A friend spotted the footage on the news and told Agnite, 'That's you!'
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Some of us Scot's-Irish are proud of our roots. Mine are in Kintucky
Listen, my family was (and parts of it still are) hillbillies. Settled originally in Boone County, Kentucky.
Hillbillies are the greatest people on earth. Their music is so brilliant... I am in awe of the great hillbillies like Elvis and Bill Monroe.
I re-visited the Boone County Fair some years ago. Jesus, I've got to go again. They had spitting contests, tractor pull and good old boys hand wrestling. I had a great time.
And, the music was just killer. Family bluegrass and country bands. You can't beat that.
They are growing some awesome 420 in Kentucky, too.
And, remember when The Beverly Hillbillies was the most popular and influential show on TV?
I do. My family gathered up around the B&W TV every week to watch the show.
Still one of the great satires on hi-falutin' pretensions and the basic decency of hillbillies.
Them Hillbillies are Mountain Williams Now.
Funny Dwight Yoakam was playing in my background when I went to your blog. One of my favorite song lines in an altogether great song: "and I'm proud to say that I've been blessed and touched by their sweet hillbilly charms"
I dreamed I was there in hillbilly heaven!
Hillbillies are in the muck? Last time I checked there weren't any hillbilly flash mobs.
The Administration is trying to convert the Hillbillies to welfare queens, so this guy is no help.
PS Sarge, no apostrophe in Scots.
(although it's properly Scotch)
Shouting Thomas
The Scots-Irish made this nation what it is. Imagine no country music or bourbon. I also have ancestors who lived in Boone County, surnamed Wright. He was a Revolutionary War veteran who fought at King's Mountain. Late in life he received a grant of land in Kentucky, which was his due as a veteran. My mom, the genealogist, has a copy of the grant application. The family eventually moved on to Indiana, then Missouri and Texas.
About as off-topic as possible: I'm playing "Rocky Raccoon", and Windows Media Player says "John Lennon [Composer]".
Weird.
edutcher said...
PS Sarge, no apostrophe in Scots.
(although it's properly Scotch)
yeah, the pressure of trying to be first.
You of course are correct on the apostrophe, but on the other, I was taught that only applied to whiskey. For everything else, we used Scots or Scottish
I get a kick out of the new TV series, "Justified," about a law enforcement officer who is forced out of his "Miami Vice" job and returns to his home county in Kentucky.
It's the first time I've ever seen Southern Whites portrayed three-dimensionally on television, rather than as cardboard cut-outs for Stupid, Backward and most likely Racist or Misogynist.
There are some dumb ones on the show, but a common trope throughout all the episodes is the comeuppance of smart urban types (sometimes Hispanic, sometimes criminal) underestimating the folks in the holler and losing badly.
I grew up partly in the South, not enough to say I'm a Southerner, but I did come to respect them and later to resent the casual bigotry of blue-staters toward Southerners.
Lawson is doubly doomed. Instant wealth is a curse many times over and McDonald's food will put you in the grave.
Tyrone, the Scotch-Irish are one of the groups who made this country.
Granted, the original pioneer stock came from them, but the people who founded the nation were mostly English, WASPs, if you will.
The era of immigration that brought first the Irish and Germans, and the the people from Eastern and Southern Europe eventually eclipsed them, however, particularly from the Civil War on.
PS In the California Gold Rush, the Scotch-Irish types were known as "Pikes", from the song, "Sweet Betsy From Pike".
In Charlotte, we will have over 80,000 people watching the POTUS keynote. We will have every-one in the country listening and watching on telly.
We will out-debate Romney, Ryan, and the GOP.
We will bury Akin and his dis-taste for women.
We will savage Eastwood - thanks to Speilberg, Hanks, Dylan, who all have asked to be invited to be our mystery guests. We will have a guest per night. The last night, it will be Barbra Striesand.
We own the WH and no one in the GOP is going to take it away. Americans love us.
We are the stars, just ask Curiosity on Mars.
In Charlotte, we will have over 80,000 people watching the POTUS keynote. We will have every-one in the country listening and watching on telly.
We will out-debate Romney, Ryan, and the GOP.
We will bury Akin and his dis-taste for women.
We will savage Eastwood - thanks to Speilberg, Hanks, Dylan, who all have asked to be invited to be our mystery guests. We will have a guest per night. The last night, it will be Barbra Striesand.
We own the WH and no one in the GOP is going to take it away. Americans love us.
We are the stars, just ask Curiosity on Mars.
The guy is retiring from his job. He's a railroad engineer, so he's got a pretty good, pretty interesting job.
That might prove to be a mistake.
He seems like a good family oriented guy, but too much time on the hands without knowing what to do with it can be deadly.
"Hillbillys" have been the well-source of those heroes who have bet defended the Republic since its early days.
The Drill SGT said...
You of course are correct on the apostrophe, but on the other, I was taught that only applied to whiskey. For everything else, we used Scots or Scottish
In terms of objects, you are correct, but your forebears were known as Scotch-Irish (went to school with several) for 4 centuries until Senator Webb grew some pretensions when he decided to write a book.
Hillbillies went to Michigan for work, but they have the expat Appalachian soul-sadness of missing the sweet, sweet mountains.
You don't have to turn hillbillies into welfare queens, they already are. This is the land of transfer payments.
I was well trained in high school to eventually live and work here, by singing in the Chorus of L'il Abner:
It's a typical day
In Dogpatch USA
Where typical folks
Do things in a typical way
First we rub the sleep from our eyes
Get our grub and shoo way the flies
We spend what's negotiable
Then we get sociable
Sittin' around swappin' lies
And then we go down to collect unemployment pay
Which leads us to say it's a typical day in Dogpatch USA
In my town, we celebrate Hillbilly Days as our spring festival, every April. Jolly good fun. Come on down now, ya hear?
1940 movie Li'l Abner
based on the comic strip by Andy Capp
Obvious source for Beverly Hillbillies
The Scots-Irish made this nation what it is. Imagine no country music or bourbon.
I agree.
However, I have to say that there are a lot of other good things going on in the U.S., too.
I was born about as smack dab halfway between Chicago and Nashville as you can get, so I got a good dose of city slicker and hillbilly culture.
It was going on all around me as I grew up.
Chicago is the home of the blues. God, that's so wonderful. And, Nashville is the home of country. It was going on all me. My dad was a big fan of the Barn Dance radio show from the Grand Old Opry.
My understanding of hillbilly is that the word first became widely popular by the east coast big city media exploiting the Hatfield-McCoy feud in stories that were widely read and very popular. The word hillbilly was used to describe the maintain born and raised people who because of their isolation were poorly educated and backward though possessing plenty of Scotch-Irish fighting spirit.
Yoakum was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, which makes him a legit hillbilly, but he spent most of his formative time in not-quite-the-backwoods-capital Columbus, Ohio.
Born deep in the Ozarks, moved to big (ha) city. Have always found the liberal stereotypes of what hillbillies are like to be funny. Like the Slate article- wrong on about 10 counts.
Fierce independence, lovers of freedom and not at all right wing or bigoted.
I'll let you know what say about me. They say :
"Well, Jim's ole lady is a man-- nice feller"
No judgement, no hassle.
The Clicks are from/still in Floyd County, Kentucky. We're part of the Boone family and count the Webbs (Loretta Lynn & Crystal Gayle) among all the cousins.
While my dad was born in Los Angeles, he remembers going back there to live during the Depression. It's hardscrapple living, but about ten years ago my parents went to visit relatives my dad hadn't seen in 50 years and everyone was welcoming and loving.
My (2nd) cousin Charles has put together a genealogy record now upwards of 28,000 plus people. Some great old photos, too. If your family hails from Kentucky, take a look ...
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rice/
What a greedy SOB!
He should be donating some of that to the Treasury and then to a gift registry for the Obama campaign.
Bastard!
One of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I was a hillbilly -- Alvin C York.
God' truth follows.
My grandfather, born in 1897, plowed behind a mule in Muhlenburg County, KY. He returned to the farm after WW1 and plowed behind that mule.
Early in the thirties he WALKED to St. Louis to take a job as a printer, leaving his younger brothers to plow, living in a barracks here and sending 90% of his earnings home.
My many cousins-removed still farm in Western Kentucky (and the original acreage). They and I are still "hill people" by nature and choice, though we all have at least a Bachelor's degree.
The credentialed set can kiss my rosy RED ASS - but keep your government hands off my RED NECK.
The hillbillies are masters about maximizing their transfer payments.
Eric C. Conn is Mr. Social Security and advertises all over the place.
He is so successful at winning Social Security Disability claims, the Wall Street Journal wrote about him and his judge. So did the New York Times.
City, county, and state government officials love federal transfer payments. It brings money into the area without having to do anything difficult like economic development or creating jobs.
Needless to say, a largely Democrat area. Presidential election years, the dependents are rounded up and riled up to vote because [the Republican candidate] is going to take your check away!
Social Security Disability pays a lot more than just TANF welfare to single moms. A LOT more. SSI frosts that cake and of course you're eligible for the full suite of assistance such as Section 8 housing, Medicaid, EBT.
I prefer to work, but I was in bad shape after cancer treatment and lots of folks suggested that I could easily qualify for SS Disability. You'd have to shoot me! But if ever I needed or wanted to throw in the towel and get on the plantation, I know exactly who to talk to, to get coached in how to work the system. Lots of experts around here.
I love the positive side of Appalachian/hillbilly culture. There is much goodness to it but if you only value what Wall Street and Hollywood value, you won't be able to perceive it.
He's a self professed introvert. The spotlight is not what introverts seek, they hate it.
Mountain people tend to be musically talented and good story tellers. I read a few years ago that KY has more published writers per capita than any other state.
America's Politico said...
In Charlotte, we will have over 80,000 people watching the POTUS keynote. We will have every-one in the country listening and watching on telly.
In Charlotte, you'll only be an hour from hillbilly country. Better watch out!
Hillbillies winning the lottery isn't always a good thing. Exhibit A: Jack Whittaker. Although, it must be said, he was a small business owner and multimillionaire before he won. You'd think he'd have better sense than to carry around half a million dollars in a briefcase for the thieves to break into his vehicle and steal it.
"The hillbillies are masters about maximizing their transfer payments."
Because of a misguided big government nanny that has made it possible for people to take the easy way out by gaming the system for enough to get by on but not enough to have a truly good rewarding life, to become the people they could have been. Ultimately these people are being hurt by their government.
Remember these were a once proud people, self reliant and proud of it.
America's Politico--Sounds to me that he's trying real hard to convince himself. Go, AP, go.
edutcher
Of course I didn't mean to imply that only the Scots-Irish are responsible for the national character, but you must admit it would be vastly different without them.
The post was about pioneers, and the Scots-Irish were the vast majority of pioneers in the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries. They were the "economically disadvantaged" segment of pre- and post-revolution society, often having arrived here as indentured servants of your WASPS. They couldn't afford to buy land on the settled coast of America, so they moved west where land was for the taking. As for the Germans and the Irish, they were relative latecomers. My German ancestors settled in St. Charles County Mo. in 1836, where Daniel Boone lived and died. By that time the way west had already been laid out-- by the Scots-Irish.
I want to plug a hot new up and coming hillbilly music duo, Sundy Best.
Me and My Friends
Home
Kentucky Women
They're opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd in Pikeville on Sept. 13.
Re: Sundy Best.
Opening for the Skynyrds, huh? That's going to be fun.
The Sundy's are two guys? Brooks & Dunn fans?
I'll listen to them tomorrow. Gig today.
One thing I should have mentioned, nobody ever mentions another group that built this country in its first 2 centuries - the Dutch.
No Scotch-Irish in NY and few English for a long time. These were the guys who fought the Hurons and the Iroquois through 4 French and Indian Wars.
My father's family.
When they say "Althouse hillbillies," I always glow with pride.
You google "Althouse Hillbilly" you get a lot of fun hits, including this one.
Yes I want that T-shirt!
With this here "Hillbilly whar' thar' ain't no hills" story, we need David Allen Coe.
@dreams - agreed - and the old timers are the first to say that welfare destroyed the mountain people.
When LBJ helicoptered into Inez, Martin County, KY, and had his picture taken on Tom Fletcher's front patio, Homer Marcum didn't know he was poor.
If you think about it, LBJ could have got to some nearby urban ghettos a lot faster and easier, but had to show poor white people to be more persuasive to the sympathies of the public.
So now we are awash in welfare, and the young ladies get sociable and have their children out of wedlock, and people don't get married, and there's a huge tragic drug problem. All the welfare didn't make them happy enough to avoid Hillbilly Heroin.
Illini vs. Western Michigan from Champaign today!
Would that qualify as a Hillbilly Shootout?
Saint Croix said...
When they say "Althouse hillbillies," I always glow with pride.
Me, too.
kentuckyliz,
Yeah, we're on the page, I've read about the Oxycontin problem.
Still one of the great satires on hi-falutin' pretensions and the basic decency of hillbillies.
Stromboli: Jethro, that is a cello. You rest it on the floor to play it.
Jethro: On the floor?
Stromboli: That's what the point is for.
Jethro: Oh, I always wondered about that thing. Every time I put it up underneath my chin to play, it speared my adam's apple.
The terms redneck and hillbilly both have their origin in The Glorious Revolution of Britain in 1688. Northern Irish—Scots Irish—partisans of William of Orange wore red kerchiefs, helped depose James II and put William and Mary on the throne. They were called Orangemen, Rednecks, and Hillbillies. The last because they lived in the hills and supported William, also called Billy.
When they came to America, they were still called by these names. A British officer wrote home, during the American Revolution, that this rebellion was just an excuse for Presbyterian Rednecks to shoot at Redcoats.
After the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791, many of them left Western Pennsylvania and came down the Great Wagon Road into the mountain south, where their descendants still live today, some of them still making untaxed whiskey. They are still called rednecks and hillbillies but it has nothing to do with having a sunburned neck.
A Retired History Teacher
P.S. My ancestors came from Northern Ireland to South Carolina in 1788.
"wore red kerchiefs"
That was my understanding of the term redneck though I had less knowledge of the history.
The Wikipedia article on "redneck" treats that red kerchief thing as a disconnected archaic use and attributes the term to the sunburned necks of farmers.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology:
"Senses A. 3, A. 4, and A. 5 may all have alluded originally to the sunbaked or sunburnt skin of fair-skinned people in various different contexts, although it is only in the case of sense A. 5 that this is reasonably certain (albeit originally in Afrikaans rather than in English, and compare quot. 1900 at sense A. 5 for a dissenting view).
"The spec. use in quot. 1830 at sense A. 3 may or may not be connected with the later wider use at this sense. Some assume that this is the case, and that the wider use arose on account of the large numbers of Presbyterian settlers in rural areas of the southern United States. Alternatively, the wider use may simply allude to the sunbaked skin of white labourers; compare slightly later red-necked adj. 2. For an alternative suggestion that the reference may be to the effects of pellagra resulting from the diet of poor people in this region see Amer. Speech 59 (1984) 284. In spite of the chronology, it is possible that the use in quot. 1830 at sense A. 3 may simply show a narrower application of the wider use. Alternatively, it has been suggested that it may perhaps allude to pieces of red cloth worn by some Presbyterians around their necks as a commemoration of the tradition that some of the signatories of the Solemn League and Covenant (see covenant n. 9a) had signed using their own blood, but there is apparently no corroboration for this.
"Compare sense A. 4 for application of the same term to a quite different religious group; in this instance the use may perhaps refer to the characteristically fair skin of Irish people, and hence only by extension to other Roman Catholics, but this also is very uncertain."
It's "sense A.3." that we're talking about here: " 3. orig. N. Amer. (usu. derogatory). Originally: a poorly educated white person working as an agricultural labourer or from a rural area in the southern United States, typically considered as holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes. Now also more generally: any unsophisticated or poorly educated person, esp. one holding bigoted or reactionary attitudes."
The 1839 quote is: "This may be ascribed to the Red Necks, a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians in Fayetteville."
The Scotch-Irish were first emigrants to the Plantation of Ulster and the native Irish Catholic resistance and lack of political support during the Protestant Ascendancy left them dangling in a bad situation. They were supposed to seize land and create more support for the British occupancy/colonization in Ireland but it didn't work out well. So they came to America instead and took land from the Cherokee.
Hillbillies still hate Catholics. I know, I am a Catholic living in the land of hillbillies. However, a bunch are converting. Our parish is mostly converts.
One of the reasons why hillbillies love their guns and their Second Amendment is because they know they have been the civilian targets of deployed US troops firing at them. Something many Murkans know nothing about.
Battle of Blair Mountain
Matewan Massacre
The red necks (pro union fighters wearing red bandanas on their necks) became a union hero symbol, but "Red" got bad PR from the Commies so was eventually downplayed.
Video of check presentation with the expected flurry of inane questions from reporters and at 6:40 or so he proclaims he's a
Hillbilly
"My many cousins-removed still farm in Western Kentucky (and the original acreage). They and I are still "hill people" by nature and choice, though we all have at least a Bachelor's degree."
Senator Rand Paul of KY though not a native Kentuckian is married to an extremely attractive small town girl of Russellville,Ky whose relatives are long time farmers in western KY. Kentuckians going all the way back to Daniel Boone days and receiving their initial land via a land grant for fighting along with George Washington in the American Revolutionary War
"Battle of Blair Mountain"
I know of that from watching the history of appalachian hillbillies or whatever it is called on the history channel.
I liked the movie Matewan by John Sayles.
I can't claim hillbilly descent--although given the rampant immorality of so many of my foremothers who can really tell for sure. I can, however, fairly claim to be poor white trash, shanty Irish division.....Are hillbillies a subset of white trash or is the other way around? It seems to me that many here are trying to desanitize the term hillbilly and make it an ethnic group rather than a class. It if it is an ethnic group, it has less cohesion than any other ethnic group in America. I think Huckabee can fairly claim to be the hillbilly candidate. I don't recall the Scotch Irish flocking to his banner.....One last point about race and class. At the convention the most moving speeches were given by the outsiders--the blacks and children of immigrants who claim that they fulfilled their parents' dreams and hard work by becoming successful in America. That was also true of Huckabee but he got zero bonus points for the adversity he had overcome. When you're white, you're supposed to be successful. It's no big deal.
As Walpole said, "Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson". I think the Scots-Irish were the only ones mean and hard and Calvinistic enough to push the frontier where they did. I say that as a nice, soft, modern Calvinist descended from them on both sides. Some came to TX through KY, some through NC, GA, then on to AL and MS. Things got too quiet and they had to come be hard and mean in TX vs Santa Anna or the Comanches. Read the history of the Parker family in TX. Hardshell (hyper-Calvinist Baptists) Scots-Irish...fanatical, tough as old boots....John WayneNs movie The Searchers was based on old man Parkers's search for his daughter, niece, and nephews.
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo!
I loves me some reality TV, and just the name of this show was screaming "Watch me!"
And so I did.
" Yoakum was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, which makes him a legit hillbilly, but he spent most of his formative time in not-quite-the-backwoods-capital Columbus, Ohio."
He and his family traveled "the hillbilly highway" on weekends to visit his grandparents. Those Kentuckians like to go home.
How often do you hear the expression "Joie de vivre" and think of hillbillies or rednecks?
Precisely!
Ha ha
But you will if you watch "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo", Ms. and Mr. Fancypants.
In one of my favorite scenes, Alana's mom hires her a new dance coach for an upcoming beauty pageant. The little girl is starting to take her losses more seriously, so mom wants to help her do better next time.
The teacher decides that Alana will do an Elvis impersonation at the next pageant, and starts her off with a new and more complicated routine.
In the middle of practice, she asks Alana, "Do you know who Elvis is?" And without blinking, Honey Boo Boo says, "They's Santa's helpers!"
HA HA!
Kids say the darndest things. Eh Art Linkletter?
Sharyn McCrumb's ballad novels depict modern hillbilly culture in a beautifully lyrical fashion. For a while new attorneys for the State here in East Tennessee who came from elsewhere were encouraged to read them to gain insight into the culture.
Love the new spicy bites.
"My mother was a first-grade teacher, and a reporter had interviewed Thelma, her teacher's aide, and promised to send her a copy of the article if she would agree to answer a few questions. Accommodatingly, she did, and when the magazine article arrived in the mail, she asked my mother to read it to her. I was there. I saw her cry when she heard what the reporter had said about her and the condition of her home and the struggles her family endured to survive.
Thelma, this hard-working mother, was hurt and embarrassed to know that the world had been told her story in such a way."
linked via kentuckyliz at 9/1/12 10:50 AM
Over 90% of reporters today have the typical "aren't I a wonderful liberal" attitude as they go about changing the world with their reporting as no doubt did the reporter who wrote the story of Thelma and others in far Eastern Kentucky.
Yes...Diane Sawyer did it a few years ago and people still talk about it.
Dwight Yoakum is from about a mile from here, Mare Creek. I live on the Pike Floyd County line.
Garfield made a name for himself here during the Civil War (Union), such as in the Battle of Middle Creek.
It made the Union more popular with the locals, because the Confederate soldiers stole food, whereas Garfield brought in more food and medicine to help and win over (win the cooperation of) the locals.
Pike County is named after the explorer Zebulon Pike (after whom Pikes Peak is named). As is Pike County Ohio, a couple hours north of here.
"Sharyn McCrumb's ballad novels depict modern hillbilly culture in a beautifully lyrical fashion. For a while new attorneys for the State here in East Tennessee who came from elsewhere were encouraged to read them to gain insight into the culture."
Christy,
Thanks for sharing that info, I went to her her web site and read the Sharyn McCrumb Interview for Carolina Mountain Life.
Her books seem like the kind that I can really get into and I've already submitted a request for The ballad of Tom Dooley: A ballad Novel at my local library.
You're welcome. Haven't read that one yet. She Walks These Hills is my favorite and also the funniest.
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