The Enlightened Redneck

Posted on 02.06.12 by Danny Glover @ 3:06 pm

My wife desperately wants to raise her own chickens. We live in a city. This story explains why my wife, thankfully, will never get her way:

[O]n Jan. 27, [humane officer Clarence] Carte, 60, caught a rogue rooster on Charleston’s East End. Another humane officer, Jesse Harris, had been on the rooster’s tail for a few weeks, ever since East End residents started calling and complaining about the animal’s early-morning wake-up calls. …

The rooster apparently was using a windowsill for its roost. Carte said no one in the neighborhood knew where the bird, a small black game rooster, came from.

“They just said he was walking around in the neighborhood one morning,” he said.

Chickens belong in one of two places — in the country or on a platter.

Filed under: Culture and Family and Rednecks and West Virginia
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Punxsutawney Phil On A Platter

Posted on 02.02.12 by Danny Glover @ 1:52 pm

Yes, the day we all dread every winter — Groundhog Day — is here, and the world’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, saw his shadow. According to rural legend, that means we should expect six more weeks of winter.

That might not sound so bad during this winter of balmy weather, especially to skiers. But spring-loving rednecks who want revenge against the prophetic Phil and his Phamily of rodents should go here, where you’ll find a recipe for roasting your neighborhood groundhog, literally.

Why would you want to eat a groundhog? Every redneck knows the answer:
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Filed under: Culture and Food and Hunting & Guns and Rednecks and West Virginia and Wildlife
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Jay Leno Was Wrong About W.Va. — Again

Posted on 01.16.12 by Danny Glover @ 2:19 pm

I’ve had my work published in some of America’s top publications, including The New York Times, but there’s something special about seeing my byline for the first time in the local newspaper I delivered as a child — and in defense of my fellow West Virginians and Mountaineers.

After writing a blog post about Jay Leno’s West Virginia jokes, I asked the executive editor of The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register if he would be interested in publishing a column on the issue. He agreed. It ran in print yesterday and went online today.

Here are excerpts from the column (with one background link added by me):

For one magnificent moment after the Orange Bowl on Jan. 4, West Virginia University and the entire state of West Virginia were the talk of America. Sports fans were in awe of the Mountaineers, who set record after record in one of the greatest football games in college history.

We West Virginians should have known the hillbilly bashers wouldn’t let us bask in the glory for long, and sure enough, the predictable slam came less than 24 hours after the final whistle.

“And West Virginia beat Clemson in the Orange Bowl last night by a score of 70-33,” Jay Leno said in his “Tonight Show” monologue the day after the game. “West Virginia scored 70 points? Huh, West Virginia? They don’t score that high on their SATs.”

Leno apparently holds to the comedic philosophy that when all else fails — and the “Tonight Show” has been one big fail after another for the past two years — just tell a West Virginia joke. …

Leno hasn’t yet sunk as low as Vice President Dick Cheney, who scored a cheap laugh in 2008 by characterizing West Virginia as a state full of inbreeding rednecks. But he’s sliding toward that gutter. His latest jab alienated the West Virginians who still watch Leno and further infuriated those who long ago tuned out the “Tonight Show.” …

But that’s OK. We West Virginians don’t need the affirmation of entertainers or politicians or anyone else who finds joy in insulting us. Most Americans voted against West Virginia before the Orange Bowl, and as our Mountaineers boasted at the end of the game, most Americans were wrong.

They always are when it comes to Almost Heaven.

Read the whole column at the newspaper’s website.

Filed under: Hatin' On Rednecks and Media and People and Rednecks and Sports and West Virginia
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How To Make A Slingshot Crossbow

Posted on 01.12.12 by Danny Glover @ 12:43 pm

Remarkable redneck ingenuity is on display in this video, which demonstrates how you can turn your Christmas tree into a deadly slingshot crossbow:

Filed under: Holidays and Human Interest and Hunting & Guns and Rednecks and Sports and Video
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How To Make A RedNek Fortune

Posted on 12.20.11 by Danny Glover @ 11:43 pm

Today I had one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments — the kind you experience when you realize you could have made millions of dollars if only you had thought of that oh-so-obvious creation before someone else created it and made millions.

I’m talking about the Original RedNek Wine Glass, the kind of novelty item that would have been a perfect gimmick for a blog written by an enlightened redneck. A best seller on Amazon.com this holiday season, the Bell Mason jar glued to a Libby candlestick holder has generated $5 million in sales in just 10 months.

Okie Morris of Newport News, Va., got the idea after seeing the two separate items in a thrift store. She thought it would be neat to forge them together and later sold the rights to a family-owned business in Pennsylvania. The rest is online marketing history.

The uppity folks at Village Voice mocked the RedNek Wine Glass as “tackiness” and said it is “for country bumpkins with class,” but like me, they’re just jealous they didn’t have a multimillion-dollar stroke of redneck genius.

Filed under: Business and Culture and Holidays and Rednecks
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MeatEater: Red Meat For Rednecks

Posted on 12.15.11 by Danny Glover @ 5:31 pm

Finally, some enlightened entertainment for rednecks! MeatEater, a new series that premieres Jan. 1 on the Sportsman Channel, will unabashedly celebrate the carnivorous lifestyle combined with the sheer joy of hunting and bagging your own game.

[The hunts will] introduce you to some of the wildest tasting foods that you’ve ever seen. I’m talking about coues deer heart wrapped in the animal’s own abdominal lining and cooked in the field over a stone hearth; cubed black bear meat deep-fried in rendered bear oil; mallard ducks, spatchcocked and spit-roasted over a fire of black spruce; mule deer stew simmered in melted snow; and scalded and scraped javelina cooked through an ingenous method that I learned from Amerindian hunters in the South American jungle.

The bad news: We have Comcast, and a colleague of mine just noted on Facebook that Comcast doesn’t offer the Sportsman Channel. How unenlightened!

Filed under: Entertainment and Hunting & Guns and Rednecks
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Redneck Insulation

Posted on 11.25.11 by Danny Glover @ 7:12 pm

You might be a redneck … if you insulate your shed with beer boxes. That’s what we discovered today when visiting my grandfather’s West Virginia farm, which has been abandoned for about two years since my uncle’s death.

For the record, a previous tenant from long ago added the insulation. We visited the same shed years ago while that tenant lived there, and the shed also was full of deer hides and beer cans. I was glad when my uncle returned home and we finally quit renting the property to that bum.

What I don’t know is if the tenant also is responsible for the bullet holes that riddle the door and walls of the same shed. I didn’t notice those bullet holes until today, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the guy who rented the place entertained himself by sitting on the front porch and shooting the shed across Indian Creek Road from the house.

Filed under: Family and Hunting & Guns and Just For Laughs and Redneck Humor and Rednecks and West Virginia
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Rep. Paul Ryan, Deer Slayer

Posted on 11.23.11 by Danny Glover @ 6:35 pm

During the legislative season, Paul Ryan is a budget geek in Congress. But when hunting season comes, he’s a whitetail wonk and a sharpshooter in the wilds of Wisconsin.

The proof is in this picture that Ryan, R-Wis., posted to his Facebook page today:

“I butcher my own deer, grind the meat, stuff it in casings and then smoke it,” Ryan told Politico. “Not much to it.”

That, my friends, is an enlightened redneck.

Filed under: An Enlightened Redneck ... and Government and Hunting & Guns and People and Photography and Rednecks and Wildlife
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How To Lose ‘The Hick Vote’

Posted on 10.17.11 by Danny Glover @ 5:55 pm

Politicians who say “I’m going for the hick vote” significantly lower their chances of getting it.

Liberal Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who fancies herself an “elite hick,” made that mistake last week on the LeftAhead podcast, Politico reports. Here’s what she told her interviewer, who also touted his redneck roots in Oklahoma and West Virginia:

I’m going for the hick vote here, I just want you to know. Maybe we could start wearing stickers that say ‘Hicks for Elizabeth’ – could we do that?

Warren undoubtedly is an elite and may well be an elite hick. But that’s a fer piece (as we hicks say) from “enlightened redneck.” True hicks and rednecks don’t have to tell people that’s what they are. They live it. I have yet to see it in Warren.

Filed under: News & Politics and People and Rednecks and West Virginia
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Welcome To The D.C. Snoburbs!

Posted on 09.24.11 by Danny Glover @ 11:28 am

I discovered an awesome blog and website called Snoburbia in the latest issue of SOJ Insider, the magazine of the journalism school at West Virginia University.

Snoburbia is the work of Lydia Sullivan, a fellow Mountaineer who graduated in 1984, a few years before me, and who currently lives and works as a freelance editor in the Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md. Though our paths have never crossed in West Virginia or in the D.C. journalism community, we clearly have much in common, including the world view of our blogs.

Snoburbia is the kind of blog enlightened rednecks can appreciate. I love this insight into the blog from the SOJ Insider story:

Sullivan has many pet peeves about upper-middle-class suburban life, including a particular averstion to food snobbery and “foodies.”

“When I go to a party … I can usually be found by the potato chip bowl,” Sullivan said. “I live on the nuclear-orange Cheetos (I know, I know) and Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies. I recently proclaimed my love for Nutella on my blog, and someone told me I was destroying the ecosystem of Borneo or something.”

I love Nutella, too, and I’m not ashamed to “check in” at fast-food places via location-based services like Foursquare or to eat at chain restaurants like Applebee’s — two decisions which have surprised some D.C. friends. One day I may even order a Redneck Snack Basket.

Sullivan has turned Snoburbia into the kind of brand I’d love to have for enlightened rednecks. She sells t-shirts and an array of other products that illustrate the absurdity and condescension of suburbia. The image above of a U.S. map as coastal snobs see it is my favorite.

Filed under: Blogging and Food and Rednecks and West Virginia
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Baby’s First Buck

Posted on 12.06.10 by Danny Glover @ 11:48 am

I love redneck baby pictures, especially when they involve trophy bucks. I’m jealous of this camouflaged deer slayer in the making:

Filed under: Hunting & Guns and Photography and Redneck Humor and Rednecks and Wildlife
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The Ax Man Cometh

Posted on 11.01.10 by Danny Glover @ 3:25 pm

Sean Duffy wants a seat in Congress, and he likes to throw axes. He’s good at it, too. If I lived in his Wisconsin district, I’d be tempted to give him my vote for that reason alone.

Duffy ran another ax-themed ad earlier this fall:

He’s the latest candidate to appeal to the bitter, gun- and ax-clinging electorate in a year when, no matter what President Obama and tea-party-bashing Democrats say, it’s cool to be redneck.

Filed under: Hunting & Guns and News & Politics and Rednecks and Video and West Virginia
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How To Carve A Jack-O-Lantern

Posted on 10.30.10 by Danny Glover @ 7:01 pm

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and in the eye of a redneck who has a pumpkin in his pistol sights, the making of the art is a wonder to behold:

The truly amazing part of this video is the shooter’s steady hand and pinpoint accuracy in shot after shot. I wish had that kind of marksmanship.

Filed under: Holidays and Hunting & Guns and Just For Laughs and Rednecks and Video
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How To Win (And Lose) The Redneck Vote

Posted on 10.11.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:52 pm

The race to replace West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd has taken center stage on the national political scene over the past week thanks to a series of campaign advertisements, both good and bad.

The flurry of activity started with an ad released by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Called “Stop Obama,” the ad featured flannel-clad actors in worn baseball caps saying West Virginians should keep Democratic candidate Joe Manchin, the current governor, in West Virginia so he doesn’t become “Washington Joe” and rubber stamp President Obama’s agenda.

The ad’s messaging and casting were brilliant, but the “casting call,” written by a consulting firm to the NRSC, was tone deaf. One five-letter word in the casting call that isn’t even a word — “hicky” — completely undermined the ad and forced the NRSC to pull it.

The ad gave Manchin ammunition to blast Republican rival John Raese and his national GOP allies for embracing the stereotype of West Virginians as hicks. Coming soon after news broke that Raese’s family lives in a Florida mansion whose driveway is paved in marble, the ad amplified the Democratic narrative that Raese doesn’t understand or appreciate the hard-working folk in the blue-collar Mountain State.

Manchin answered with his own ad over the weekend. “John Raese thinks we’re hicks,” the opening says as the NRSC ad plays in the background. “… It’s insulting — and he didn’t even apologize.”

Had Manchin stopped at that line of attack, he might have scored a few points with fence-sitting voters in the race. But the ad closed with a juvenile potshot at Raese’s wife: “Raese’s wife is registered in Florida, so she can’t event vote for him.”
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Filed under: Hatin' On Rednecks and Hunting & Guns and News & Politics and People and Rednecks and Video and West Virginia
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Living Elitist In Small-Town America

Posted on 08.25.10 by Danny Glover @ 10:39 pm

Amy Hinds, a teacher in Missouri, the author of the blog Living Single in Small-Town America, and a talented photographer, fancies herself a teacher. But by my reading of her latest blog entry, “Really … I Don’t Hate Rednecks,” she has much to learn, too.

It’s clear from the title and lighthearted tone of of Hinds’ essay that she’s not as hostile as most people who make a sport of mocking rednecks these days. But she has an elitist streak that is blinding her to who we rednecks really are.

A stubborn embrace of the Confederate flag does not a redneck make. Neither are sexism nor a contempt for English class the exclusive domain of rednecks. Plenty of highly educated men are chauvinist pigs who can’t write or speak coherently, and whose idea of a good book is the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Ironically, Hinds plans to use her own redneck past to better connect with her students:

I am going to talk about growing up on a big farm, doing lots of farm chores, and how I still basically live on a farm. I’m going to tell my crazy stories about wild animals getting into my house and my having to shoot things like possums and raccoons. I’m going to put pictures I’ve taken of our farm (animals, equipment, etc.) and my niece and nephews dressed up in John Deere and hanging out on the farm as my screen saver for my school computer. Often, my screen saver is projected on the board, so they will see the pictures.

It’s a smart move on her part. Hopefully she’ll learn as much about rednecks this year as they learn from her. It sounds like they all need a good education.

Filed under: Grammar and Hatin' On Rednecks and People and Rednecks
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