"REDNECKS" AND "REPTILES OF THE PRESS"

In response to my post of two days ago about the Leftist use of the term "Redneck" I got a lot of email. Below is one I particularly liked:

"Thank you so much for your post about rednecks, and the "compassionate" left's contempt for them. It's not often that we country folk hear nice things about ourselves. Having grown up in a one-horse town as a poor minister's daughter, I've seen every aspect of "trailer trash" life. Rednecks certainly do have their problems in terms of money, but I've never met a liberal who would give you the shirt right off his back--and I've never met a redneck who wouldn't. What the left doesn't understand, it mocks. The left is comprised mainly of people who've never wanted for anything, so when they look at the poor but proud, they wonder what the heck it is that they're so proud of. What they're proud of, in a nutshell, is something liberals can never have or understand--compassion for each other. Thanks for stickin' up for the little guy."

A couple of readers have mentioned to me that many of the people described as "Rednecks" don't reject the label but instead apply it rather gleefully to themselves -- just as many blacks refer to one another as "niggers". In both cases however, the term is derogatory when used by outsiders. And someone who is really enjoying derogatory labels just sent me a Christmas greeting "from deep in the "red" heart of the "Great Satan"! That did give me a laugh. It rather reminds me of the phrase "reptiles of the Press". Somebody, somewhere once used that expression in an attempt to pour scorn on journalists but journalists now (at least in Australia and Britain) routinely use that expression to refer to themselves (as in "fellow reptiles" etc) -- obviously seeing the expression as great fun. And similarly there is now a lot of Redneck comedy etc. I have been trying for years to find out who coined the term "reptiles of the Press" but nobody seems to know, so if any of my readers can tell me, I would be much obliged.

Interestingly, two of the people who emailed me have the same surname as mine, which figures, as "Ray" is an old Celtic name found throughout the British Isles in various spellings and "rednecks" and "crackers" do seems to be mainly of Celtic (Scotch-Irish) origin. Here is part of one of the emails concerned:

"As you say, cracker and redneck just mean that you're a working-class white person in the south. We do have a sense of humor about ourselves, but OTOH we're the last group left that you can openly mock and criticize in the crudest of terms. The good news is, however, that Redneck Culture -- NASCAR, bluegrass and country music, pro wresting, Jeff Foxworthy and the like, are huge. We're taking over, no matter what they say about us"

The term "Redneck" seems to have had usages in Britain long before it was used in America and I am always amused by the fact that, among Afrikaners, the term "Rooineck" (meaning "redneck") refers to the English! And (for good reasons in their case) the Afrikaners don't mean it kindly, either. Given my fair skin, I guess I too would be a redneck if I spent much time in the sun.

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ELSEWHERE

There is some well-deserved sarcasm here about Federal Air Marshal Service Director Thomas Quinn, the subnormal who insists that America's air marshalls dress in a way that makes them easily detectable by terrorists. Where does GWB find these wackos?

Evil feminist mentality at work: "A city fire captain who had been accused - and then cleared - of raping his daughter will go back to work next month, city officials said. Michael Tecklenburg had been on administrative leave since he was arrested Sept. 14 and charged on suspicion of raping his 15-year-old daughter, who had run away from home. But the girl testified that she had been pressured by investigators into making the allegations. Last week, a San Joaquin County Superior Court judge dismissed the charges, citing insufficient evidence".

I have never freaked out at the idea of national ID cards the way some conservatives do so I was pleased to see some realistic comments on the matter by Dick McDonald. Opposition from both Left and Right killed off the idea of a national ID card for Australians some time ago now.

There is a rather amusing article here reporting that the Europeans are finally getting ants in their pants about all the Muslim immigrants in their midst. The wisdom of "Cowboy" GWB's war on militant Islam might soon start to get through to them. How embarrassing that will be!

Iran: "Few countries have a more paradoxical relationship than the US and Iran. While the Iranian regime continues to be belligerently anti-American, the Iranian people are overtly pro-American"

Accuracy in Media has a list of the top 20 under-reported stories of the year. A few of them: How liberals tried to use federal agencies to delay or censor Sinclair Broadcasting's airing of Stolen Honor, showing how John Kerry's anti-war testimony led to the torture of our Vietnam POWs.; How and why MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, perhaps the country's leading climatologist, doesn't accept the man-made global warming theory; How Senator John Edwards used "junk science" in some of the cerebral palsy lawsuits that made him rich; John Kerry's failure to release all of his military and medical records.

Fred Reed uses satire to highlight the underlying logic of homosexual marriage. He ends up deciding he will marry his desk.

Albanian Muslims making assholes out of themselves: "The [Greek] government asked its citizens not to retaliate against immigrants Thursday, a day after two Albanian gunmen hijacked a bus. The 18-hour standoff near Athens ended peacefully early Thursday after police successfully negotiated the release of 23 hostages. The gunmen, Gaz Resuli and Leonard Murati, 24-year-old Albanian immigrants who surrendered shortly after midnight, had demanded $1.33 million in ransom and safe passage out of the country." [Bill Clinton bombed Christian Serbia for the sake of ethnic Albanians].

A reader has sent in his own theory of Leftism which I have just put up here. It has some interesting points in it.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftists are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions

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