This video grew on me. At first glance I was looking down on the rural white boy, the wannabe rocker, the silly get up that has become his uniform, his career at Steak & Shake, Metalica, the sideburns, Southern Man and how many emails he got from girls.
But on the second go round I didn’t laugh at Cyrus. How many Cyrus’s are there? Whether it be rappers, country or rockers who define themselves by their music? What is wrong with that? In fact there is nothing wrong with Cyrus at all, he is just a guy doing the best he can, a working class hero. It’s the people he votes for who are laughing at him.
The greatest political divide in America other than race, is rural / urban which brings to mind my recent travels into the boondocks of Wisconsin. I had lunch with some old friends who are now white, overweight, Right-wing lunatics with hearing aids. All upfront on the why of their politics, they don’t want their hard earned money going to all those lazy bums down in Milwaukee.
But something else dominated the conversation I had not much thought about before. It being the Fall, their central topic of discussion was what they had killed last week, what they intended to kill in the next week and how they spent most of the rest of the year planing and practicing in the Fall Killing Season. For the first half of my life I was in that same place so I do understand it.
Up in the boondocks there is little to challenge the mind, no museums, no art, no concert halls, no theater, no lecture halls, no movie complexes… But they have more than enough TV, beer, guns and stuff that needs killing, which makes them happy. And being happy rubs off on others. Happy is what to be.