All Shock, No Therapy

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Sun Jan 28 09:53:23 PST 2001


Yoshie:
>To make an abstract problem concrete, consider, for instance, the
>case of homeless persons & how they are treated in the USA (and
>elsewhere, too). Lars Eighner's _Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years
>on the Road and on the Streets_ (NY: Fawcett Columbine, 1993) helps
>to illustrate the problem. In Chapter 9 "Phlebitis: At the Public
>Hospital," Eighner recounts how he -- then a homeless man -- was
>treated at the hospital. Though his illness was phlebitis, the
>hospital staff kept subjecting him to a battery of tests & questions
>that had nothing to do with his ailment.

Slightly up the "ladder of being" (as Eighner calls it) in America are the so-called "white trash." (see Spike Jonze's character in _Three Kings_.) Or "trailer trash". The folks you see on Jerry Springer and other similar day-time TV shows. It may not be pc to condescend to blacks, latinos or gays - or for men to condescend to women - but in our "meritocracy" it's pc to describe someone's uncouth behavior as "white trash" behavior. It's a way of defining oneself against the other and of being snobbish without being country club snobbish or even trendy, hip alternative snobbish. It's also a way to rationalize the mad scramble for money and accumulation of debt. See Ehrenreich's _Fear of Falling._

Yoshie, some more:
>What demands this myth? Why does the dominant ideology allow only
>the liberal & conservative explanations: a character flaw or a
>disease? Because the myth helps to preserve the economic myth of
>social harmony created through economic equilibrium which is supposed
>to result from "Freedom, Equality, Property, & Bentham" (no reserve
>army of the unemployed in this myth); because the myth helps to
>provide for "minor exceptions" (the drug addict, the alcoholic, & the
>insane) for the ideological "rule of autonomy."

For "white trash", I guess conservatives would blame it on character flaws and a lack of "culture." Liberals, too, might point towards a lack of education or refinement in taste.

And yet some of the "acceptable" types who play by the rules, admire the "art" created by so-called "white trash" types. Witness Indiana, poor boy Axel Rose's recent resurgence. Well, perhaps he's not so poor anymore. But the line is even though he had all that success, he can't "shake who he was." A friend of mine went to the New Year's Eve Guns 'n Roses show - sans Slash - in Las Vegas. It was supposed to start at 1 a.m. Mr. Rose didn't show up until 4 a.m.

"White trash" is phrase I refuse to use in regular conversation, even in reference to certain resentful white males who helped elect George W. Bush.

Peter



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