politics

to meet demand for VP candidate JD Vance's book

All the people I can think of who might buy that book now aren't exactly the type that, you know, read.

Is this yet another case of laundering campaign money via ghostwritten Republican books that exist only to be bought in bulk with said campaign money and given out as gifts at events? Because that's what it seems like.

Historian Bob Hutton wrote in Jacobin that Vance's argument relied on circular logic and eugenics, ignored existing scholarship on Appalachian poverty, and was "primarily a work of self-congratulation." Sarah Smarsh with The Guardian noted that "most downtrodden whites are not conservative male Protestants from Appalachia" and called into question Vance's generalizations about the white working class from his personal upbringing.

I almost watched this movie before I realized it was JD Vance's.

Appalachian History is super interesting and it's actually got a good cast.

But it's based off his auto biography, so you can't trust anything in the movie.

Soon to be found at your local Goodwill.

His childhood in “Appalachia” that actually was a suburb between Cincinnati and Dayton.

If he was actually from West Virginia, he’d know couches are for burning after a football game. (You can still fuck a burning couch but it’s the most dangerous game.)

I’m from New Orleans I don’t even like to claim to be from the South — I’m from the Northernmost point in the Caribbean — and this motherfucker is claiming West Virginia heritage when he grew up basically equidistant from Chicago.

I usually refuse to pirate ebooks, but I’m considering it in this case.

Fuck JD Vance and his stupid piece of shit book

From a quick glance at my résumé, you might think me an older, female version of Vance. I was born in Appalachia in the 1960s and grew up in the small city of Newark, Ohio. When I was 9, my parents divorced. My mom became a single mother of four, with only a high school education and little work experience. Life was tough; the five of us lived on $6,000 a year.

Like Vance, I attended Ohio State University on scholarship, working nights and weekends. I graduated at the top of my class and, again like Vance, attended Yale Law School on a financial-need scholarship. Today, I represent people who’ve been fired illegally from their jobs. And now that I’m running for Congress in Northeast Ohio, I speak often with folks who are trying hard but not making much money.

A self-described conservative, Vance largely concludes that his family and peers are trapped in poverty due to their own poor choices and negative attitudes. But I take great exception when he makes statements such as: “We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy. . . . Thrift is inimical to our being.”

Who is this “we” of whom he speaks? Vance’s statements don’t describe the family in which I grew up, and they don’t describe the families I meet who are struggling to make it in America today. I know that my family lived on $6,000 per year because as children, we sat down with pen and paper to help find a way for us to live on that amount. My mom couldn’t even qualify for a credit card, much less live on credit. She bought our clothes at discount stores.

Thrift was not inimical to our being; it was the very essence of our being.

With lines like “We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs,” Vance’s sweeping stereotypes are shark bait for conservative policymakers. They feed into the mythology that the undeserving poor make bad choices and are to blame for their own poverty, so taxpayer money should not be wasted on programs to help lift people out of poverty. Now these inaccurate and dangerous generalizations have been made required college reading.

[Bolding added]

e; fixed link (hopefully)

Are they at least going to restore the pages of sectional relations?