Cletis
This was a while ago after the U.S. election but it is so good it is worth posting at any time. It's by Pete McMartin of the Vancouver Sun:
"By my reading of national and international opinion, the average Republican voter is a slack-jawed cracker named Cletis who lives in a double-wide in Hogspittle, Miss., where he worships rapturously at the First Baptist Church of the Second Coming. He loves NASCAR, hates hockey. He likes his beer with a shot, his shot in a double-barrel, and his double-barrel trained on gays, Darwinists and anyone with pigmentation duskier than his own. Cletis - quelle houreur! - believes in the Bible, the sanctity of heterosexual marriages, the war on terror and the idea that any peckerwood who buys a Honda Civic instead of a Dodge truck is a traitor. Cletis is not just a southerner by inclination or geography: His IQ is south of the Mason-Dixon line, too. He cain't read or write good, except to mark his "X" beside George Dubya's name.
I am also to understand Cletis is the new Osama. He is the new object of fear for Western liberals, who believe, at the core of things, that Cletis's vote, and the consideration that went into it has less gravitas then their own. Cletis isn't just wrong: he is dangerously, ignorantly wrong.
For this he inspires more fear among the liberals than the Islamofascists, who merely want to exterminate them. While the far-off Osamas can be blamed on the excesses of U.S. imperialism, Cletis is a more worrisome case - he lives right next door! He's got his pit bulls and his country music! And there is no telling what he might do next."
Correctly, McMartin concludes:
"The world - and that includes Canada .. - has, instead of trying to understand the roots of U.S. conservatism, preferred to talk down to it and caricature it.
We prefer to see the U.S. as a country controlled by a party made up of Cletis-es - a "coalition of the idiots" to quote an idiot of our own - and that isn't just wrong, it's positively Cletis-like."
"By my reading of national and international opinion, the average Republican voter is a slack-jawed cracker named Cletis who lives in a double-wide in Hogspittle, Miss., where he worships rapturously at the First Baptist Church of the Second Coming. He loves NASCAR, hates hockey. He likes his beer with a shot, his shot in a double-barrel, and his double-barrel trained on gays, Darwinists and anyone with pigmentation duskier than his own. Cletis - quelle houreur! - believes in the Bible, the sanctity of heterosexual marriages, the war on terror and the idea that any peckerwood who buys a Honda Civic instead of a Dodge truck is a traitor. Cletis is not just a southerner by inclination or geography: His IQ is south of the Mason-Dixon line, too. He cain't read or write good, except to mark his "X" beside George Dubya's name.
I am also to understand Cletis is the new Osama. He is the new object of fear for Western liberals, who believe, at the core of things, that Cletis's vote, and the consideration that went into it has less gravitas then their own. Cletis isn't just wrong: he is dangerously, ignorantly wrong.
For this he inspires more fear among the liberals than the Islamofascists, who merely want to exterminate them. While the far-off Osamas can be blamed on the excesses of U.S. imperialism, Cletis is a more worrisome case - he lives right next door! He's got his pit bulls and his country music! And there is no telling what he might do next."
Correctly, McMartin concludes:
"The world - and that includes Canada .. - has, instead of trying to understand the roots of U.S. conservatism, preferred to talk down to it and caricature it.
We prefer to see the U.S. as a country controlled by a party made up of Cletis-es - a "coalition of the idiots" to quote an idiot of our own - and that isn't just wrong, it's positively Cletis-like."
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