[NYTr] A Journey into the Redneck State of Mind

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Texas Observer via Alternet - Sep 14, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62148/

AlterNet: A Journey into the Redneck State of Mind

By John MacCormack, Texas Observer

On a remote East Texas ranch, surrounded by thousands of rowdy Southern
whites, many drinking heavily and driving all-terrain vehicles at
eye-popping speeds, the young German confronted images of mayhem and
depravity. Flula Borg, a tall, curly haired musician, was an accidental
visitor to the Texas Redneck Games outside Athens in early August. He
came as part of a Los Angeles film crew keen on recording a bit of the
backwoods revelry.

The 26-year-old Borg's only preparation for the resulting cultural
collision had come in Germany, first from watching popular American
shows like the "The Dukes of Hazzard" as a child, later from grown-up
movies that cast rural Southern whites in a far harsher light.

With a goodly number of Confederate flags flying, crude signs asking
women to disrobe, and the occasional "White Pride" tattoo on a sallow
chest, the event's early signs were unsettling. "They seem friendly. I
was a little scared. You see movies. You think they'll be loud,
throwing people around," Borg said shortly after arriving, still
feeling conspicuous as a foreigner. Having a tall, black cameraman with
flowing dreadlocks in his group only added to Borg's anxiety.

"I was worried they'd be racist. I'm worried because I don't have
tattoos and everyone else is wearing wife-beaters," he confided early
that Saturday morning. Hours later, after viewing various gross and
silly contests, including some that resemble ancient rites of public
humiliation, and competing in the mattress chunk (taking third place),
Borg had relaxed.

"Wow, it's crazy. It feels a little like a movie. I don't know anything
like this in Germany," he said with open amazement.

As midnight approached that roasting Saturday, the fourth annual
edition of the games staggered toward a rowdy, wasted crescendo.
Half-clothed women screamed and threw panties at Kevin Fowler and his
band on stage while sunburned, mud-flecked men, buoyed on beer and
carnal impulses, bellowed out indelicate propositions.

Lost in the roiling, fetid scrum were the guys in black T-shirts from
"Girls Gone Wild," who had spent much of the day recording half-drunk
blondes in unclothed poses.

"It was a mob. Lots of beer-drinking. Lots of hell-raising. Girls on
guy's shoulders, lots of them without shirts. I saw a couple of naked
women driving ATVs. It was better than a titty bar," laughed Patrick
Holt, 40, a Fort Worth computer programmer with deep redneck roots.

With his head wrapped in a Confederate-flag bandana and wearing a shirt
that read, "Loud Pipes, Longnecks and Loose Women. Everything Else is
Just Bullshit," Holt could have written the game's dress code. While
many of the thousands at the four-day event on a sprawling 3,000-acre
ranch came to race ATVs on the backwoods trails, others wanted the
chance to turn loose their inner redneck animal.

"As long as we're out of harm's way, we're not hurting anyone, and
we're having fun. Life is short," Holt said later. "I didn't see too
much bad stuff. There was one guy who got way too drunk, fell off his
ATV, and gashed his head open. When people tried to help him, he
freaked out and started swinging. When security came, he ran, and they
had to tackle him."

Beyond the gimme caps, heavy drinking, and blue-collar rowdiness,
exactly what makes a redneck in this enlightened age?

"It's hard to explain. It's like the opposite of an Aggie," said Mike
Maxwell, a welder from Longview who spent the lost weekend in Athens
throwing strings of cheap beads at passing women.

While the etymology of the word redneck is not clear--it stems either
from the sunburned necks of hardworking Southern whites or, more
remotely, from red scarves worn centuries ago by rebel Scots unwilling
to accept the Anglican Church--until recently it held little ambiguity.
Redneck meant lowdown, poor, shifty, ignorant, bigoted, and hopelessly
sorry.

In 1974, Larry L. King wrote a lengthy piece for Texas Monthly reliving
his harsh, redneck upbringing in rural Texas and disabusing anyone of
the notion there was anything remotely attractive or glamorous about
any of it.

"Of late, the Redneck has been wildly romanticized; somehow he
threatens to become a cultural hero," wrote King, who grew up
hard-working poor in Eastland County and then moved to Midland to
continue as working poor.

"Perhaps this is because heroes are in short supply in these Watergate
years, or maybe it's a manifestation of our urge to return to simpler
times," he mused, harking back to a bygone time free of computers,
crooked politicians, and urban tangle. Then he rejected the popular
concept.

"Attempts to deify the Redneck, to represent his lifestyle as close to
that of the noble savage, are, at best, unreal and naïve," he wrote,
going on to analyze the redneck as a hapless creature worthy only of
pity and avoidance.

A decade and a half later, the unsavory image held, as songwriter Randy
Newman sold a bunch of copies of an album titled "Good Old Boys." It
included the song "Rednecks," which had memorable verses, including:

"We talk real funny down here. / We drink too much and we laugh too
loud. / We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town. / Keepin' the
niggers down."

For many Northerners and liberals, at least, that pretty much captured
it. But time works cultural miracles. Somehow, menacing Bull Connor of
Birmingham has become lovable Larry the Cable Guy.

As one certified redneckologist explained it, the term that was once a
crushing insult is now worn by many as a badge of cultural pride.

"It used to be America's most respectable ethnic slur. You could say
anything about Southern whites, and it was resented only by Southern
whites," said James Cobb, author, college professor, and
self-pronounced redneck.

"It's gone through this metamorphosis to where it's become more
acceptable for Southern whites to call themselves rednecks. It's an
aspect of the growing assimilation of the South into the rest of the
country and the greater confidence of the Southern white male," said
Cobb, who teaches history at the University of Georgia and writes books
about Southern culture.

Nowadays, he said, redneck also implies certain attractive
countercultural qualities, including self-reliance and a willingness to
buck mainstream convention. "In a way, the rednecks are the hippies of
the 1990s and early 21st century, sort of the dropouts from
conventional society without a lot of the ideological trappings," he
said. "A redneck does his own thing, regardless of what any bluenose,
middle-class person thinks about it, living in his mobile home, with
cars that don't run anymore up on blocks."

Pretenders are quick to latch onto a lifestyle once it becomes faddish,
Cobb agreed. Some of today's rednecks, with their cubicle jobs and
401(k)s, would never have rated the slur decades ago. "Of course most
people are playing games. It's a fairly convenient and cheap additional
identity you can take on, and Jeff Foxworthy has made millions doing
it," he said.

It was a bit over a decade ago that the original Redneck Games appeared
as a spoof in Georgia during the same year the Olympics came to
Atlanta. The Texas games started in 2003. Now even Canada has its own,
somewhat misplaced version. All three summer events poke harmless fun
at the stereotype of the lower-class, rural, white male who muddles
through modern life, making do as best he can.

Being a redneck has become so popular there is even a Redneck World
Magazine, published in Jacksonville, Florida, and claiming to sell
about 220,000 issues a quarter. A recent edition featured the usual
lame jokes about drunk rednecks, an article by Earl Pitts titled "White
Trash and Rednecks Ain't the Same," and a lengthy rant against illegal
immigrants.

Another Southern academic, Lana Wachniak, an associate dean at Kennesaw
State University in Georgia, said the growing popularity of the games
illustrates how the once-negative redneck stereotype has lifted.

"These games are more a caricature of the Southern Buffoon, if you
will. They are analogous to St. Patrick's Day festivities, when we all
become Irish. We can all reinvent ourselves. If you want to become
Bubba, its OK," she said. "By donning this redneck hat, you can get out
there and talk to people, have a good time, and feel you are
connecting."

As a promoter, Oscar Still knows that redneck sells. With such
crowd-pleasing gross-outs as the competitive Spam and jalapeno eating
contest and the redneck fear factor, in which contestants dip for
animal parts in a trough of red soup, the Texas games were geared
toward R-rated entertainment.

"The wet T-shirt contest is probably the biggest redneck game of all,"
said Still, 54, of Kilgore, and the man responsible for bringing the
games to Athens. "Of course I take advantage of it. People like to be
called redneck. I've got a doctor and a lawyer friend who will tell you
in a minute they are rednecks. It's a heritage, cultural thing."

The games offered a "Daisy Dukes Showoff" featuring women strutting
around onstage in cutoff shorts, as well as a coeducational butt-crack
contest, not for the faint of heart. It all added up to a large,
private adult party in the woods, with something for just about
everyone. For the women, outnumbered 10-to-1, a lifetime worth of male
attention was available in one weekend.

Not just white people attended, Still pointed out. "A lot of people
used to associate the name redneck with racism, but that's not true.
You can be a redneck and be a different color. You don't have to be a
white boy to be a redneck, and your neck doesn't have to be red," he
said.

A handful of African-Americans and at least one guy of color who spoke
English with a mild Spanish accent were spotted at the Athens games.
While most of the blacks were part of an Austin sound crew, a couple of
others attended for the same reasons as everyone else: Beer, girls, and
ATVs.

"The Confederate Flag doesn't bother me at all. There's no feelings to
it. I'm just here to have a good time, to see some women," said Nolan
Jackson, a skinny, 23-year-old black kid from nearby Canton. "I'll tell
you what's redneck--a stripper pole on a trailer. They had one last
night down by the pond."

Until the redneck games came along, Athens was best known as the "Black
Eyed Pea Capital of the World," a tribute to J.B. Henry, the local
farmer who a century ago figured out how to process the peas for human
consumption. From its birth, city fathers have tried to promote a
respectable image. History books tell us that it was not by chance it
bears the same name as the seat of ancient Greek culture.

A neat and industrious, blue-collar town of about 13,000 people, it has
a beautifully maintained courthouse on the square, a nice downtown
business district, and some two dozen churches. There are no bars or
package sales of alcohol, and the only drinks served come with food in
restaurants.

When Still brought his ocean of beer, bare-chested women, and legions
of crude-mouthed drunks to Athens, it did not go down well with
everyone. In particular, the other local branch of the so-called
redneck family, the one that goes to church, keeps its clothes on and
speaks civilly to unattended females, was somewhat frosted.

"There was a lot of nudity, rowdiness, intoxication, people running
wild on four-wheelers, underage drinking, and there was some assaults
and fighting and serious injuries," said Lt. Pat McWilliams of the
Henderson County Sheriff's Department.

"I'm from East Texas, and I know rednecks. Personally, I'm having
trouble distinguishing the rednecks from the white trash," he said.

Part of the law's beef with Still was the size of the crowd, which was
three to four times what Still had promised. It caused a crushing
gridlock on the grounds, creating difficulties for police and medical
personnel. By state law, any organized public gathering of over 2,500
people must have a permit that includes county oversight.

"We feel he lied to us. We know he did. He assured us there would be no
more than 2,000, possibly 2,500 people there, and we realized quite
soon that wasn't the case," McWilliams said.

So while the band dodged undergarments on stage that Saturday night, a
far different scene was unfolding just outside the ranch gates as
troopers and sheriff's deputies threw up a dragnet. Inside the festival
grounds, state alcoholic beverage agents trolled for underage drinkers.

By weekend's end, more than 300 warnings were handed out, and nearly
100 people had been arrested or given citations for offenses ranging
from driving while intoxicated to possession of marijuana to driving
without insurance. Two people were ticketed for illegal dumping.

Sunday morning, as a paralyzing hangover gripped the ranch grounds,
deputies with a search warrant seized Still's attendance records.
"We're ready to go to court, showing 6,000, and we're still counting.
It could go as high as 8,000," McWilliams said of festival attendance.

Dismissing the wholesale traffic stops and citations as "major
overkill," by police, Still also took issue with the remark about
"white trash."

"That's definitely an insult to the rednecks. White trash is basically
the criminal and drug aspect," he said.

Still said he might try to hold the games again in Athens next year,
despite a pending misdeamenor criminal charge against him and rumors
that a civil suit will soon be filed to block him.

Legal issues aside, it's clear that being a redneck ain't hardly what
it used to be, and that the Texas games are here to stay. After all,
this year, around 7,000 self-described rednecks were willing to travel
and spend a lot of money for the experience.

"If I stop drinking, this shoulder is gonna start killing me," said
Stuart Fulton, 36, an offshore oil-field worker from New Orleans who
earlier had nailed a stout tree with his Honda ATV.

"It's the freedom. A lot of these people work 60 hours a week, and all
they have off is the weekend," he said. "You've got thousands of people
out here. There's no fighting. There's no littering. There's just a
bunch of people having a good time."

[Veteran Texas journalist John MacCormack is a reporter for the San
Antonio Express-News.]

© 2007 Independent Media Institute