A Down Under ‘Hillbilly Elegy’
Posted: July 30, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Mediasphere, Politics, Reading Room | Tags: Australia, Glenn Reynolds, Hillbilly Elegy, In Defence of the Bad, Meanjin Quarterly, Michael Barone, Shannon Burns, White Working Class | Leave a commentMichael Barone writes: “The habits of progressive social and political discourse almost seem calculated to alienate and aggravate lower class whites.” That sounds like something an American might say, but actually it was written by an Australian.
Shannon Burns, who is now an academic but grew up in what he describes as a lumpen neighborhood, grew up with working class whites and Asian immigrants in Adelaide, the largest city in South Australia and, incidentally, the home town of media baron Rupert Murdoch. His work appeared in the literary magazine Meanjin Quarterly, headlined “In Defence of the Bad, White Working Class,” and came to my attention thanks to Glenn Reynolds‘s invaluable Instapundit.
“I confess,” Burns goes on, “that if a well-dressed, university-educated middle-class person of any gender or ethnicity so much as hinted at my ‘white privilege’ while I was a lumpen child, or my ‘male privilege’ while I was an unskilled labourer who couldn’t afford basic necessities, or my ‘hetero-privilege’ while I was a homeless solitary, I’d have taken special pleasure in voting for their nightmare. And I would have been right to do so.” Read the rest of this entry »
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[VIDEO] J.D. Vance: Playing the ‘Hillbilly Card’
Posted: November 17, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Books, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, video | Leave a comment
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[VIDEO] Author J.D. Vance on His New Book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’
Posted: November 12, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, AK Steel Holding, Alt-right, Americans, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, Rust Belt, United States, Yale Law School | Leave a comment
J.D. Vance chronicles his life and the history and issues of hillbillies in America. Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, writes about growing up in a poor Rust Belt town and how his family never fully escapes the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma in their lives. Vance paints a broad, passionate, and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans.