The Destructive Magic of the "R" Word

The Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston pregnancy feeding frenzy is now officially "on." The newspapers, blogs, and everybody else are all over the story.

And the whole issue gets down to one little word that begins with "R."

After everything that John McCain's done to position himself to be elected president since 2000, it looks like his candidacy might be killed by one word appearing in the MySpace page of an 18 year old guy from Wasilla, Alaska named Levi Johnston.

That word is "redneck."

On his now famous "MySpace page," Levi Johnston says "I'm a "f - - - in' redneck" with the New York Post quoting him as liking snowboarding and riding dirt bikes as well.

Johnston goes on:

" . . . I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess."

"Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass," he added.

He also claims to be "in a relationship," but states, "I don't want kids."

But it's Levi Johnston calling himself a "fucking redneck" that I think will blow up John McCain's campaign. What Johnston's "redneck" self-characterization does is undercut everything that the McCain campaign has been trying to promote about Palin's Alaska background and provide an anchor for every criticism of Palin in a widely derided "white trash" stereotype.

The McCain campaign and the media have been promoting Sarah Palin's Alaska roots in terms of an outdoorsy rural authenticity of shooting bears and eating tasty mooseburgers. But as soon as Levi Johnston's macho preening about being a "fucking redneck" hit the internet, all that country chic began to look like "white trash" stupidity, ignorance, and awkwardness. Far from being something that "could happen to anyone," Bristol Palin's pregnancy is now "typical white trash behavior." Here's one internet site to illustrate the point but I started hearing the theme on my Eastern Kentucky campus even before I could check the internet after today's classes.

His name is Levi Johnston, and on his now private My Space page, he describes himself as a "fucking redneck." Nice, this does sound like Jamie Lynn Spears all over again. Maybe Casey Aldridge can give Levi some advice on how to handle things, like how to point guns at paparazzi, and how to throw a white trash barn brawl.

All of sudden Alaska looks a lot less like a paradise and a lot more like Kentucky, West Virginia, and Eastern Tennessee in its Deliverance-like patheticness. If the stereotypes work the way I think they will, Alaska behaviors like carrying guns, shooting bears, and dressing a moose will become emblems of the lack of manners, style, lack of intelligence in Alaska. It's all depressingly familiar from life in Eastern Kentucky and web sites are already reproducing pictures from Johnston's MySpace page as evidence of Alaskan backwardness.

In other words, it looks like "white trash."

It wouldn't be so back for the McCain campaign if Levi Johnston's "redneckness" stopped with him. But Levi Johnston is now connected with Sarah Palin's family and the destructive magic of stereotyping means that Sara Palin has already been pulled into the redneck stereotype just like everybody in Appalachia is pulled into hillbilly/redneck stereotyping whether they like it or not.

The power of the redneck stereotype reaches out to John McCain as well. Whether McCain thoroughly vetted Sarah Palin or not was an arcane matter of "inside politics" last weekend. But that's not the case anymore. McCain doesn't have to worry about being stereotyped as a redneck himself (being a long-time member of the political elite helps in that way). But I would bet that the issue of McCain's vetting Palin is going to be reformulated in terms of McCain avoiding the connection with the Palin family (and Alaska). In other words, people will be thinking that McCain could have avoided the whole disaster of connecting himself with Sara Palin, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston, and the whole "red-neck state of Alaska" if he'd just done his homework.

If that stereotype gets firmly established, McCain has no chance of winning.

After all of McCain's warmongering, race-baiting, policy flipflopping, and kowtowing to the religious right, it's ironic that his candidacy might be brought down because a clueless kid like Levi Johnston decided to brag about being a "fucking redneck" on MySpace.

A Note on Privacy--Sarah Palin's handlers put out a statement requesting that "the media `respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.'"

Then again, I'm not sure that bringing Levi Johnston to the Republican convention is a way to keep things private.