The O'Reilly Factor Factor

[Rob Neufeld]

Gary Carden--on this site and on his blog-- holler notes, has drawn particular attention to Bill O'Reilly's ignorant, bigoted comments about Appalachia.

It has initiated a critical and timely discussion about the truth about Southern Appalachian culture; and about media bias.

The discussion follows. I also would like to stimulate a study of who O'Reilly is--without bias, and see what we get. There is a pattern to popular hatred that is worth knowing,

For instance, when Bill was 2 in 1951, his family moved to Levittown, N.Y., the symbol of homogenous suburban housing in America. His father worked as an accountant for California Texas Oil Company, a joint venture of what would become Texaco and Chevron. He attended St. Brigid parochial school; then Chaminade High School, a private Catholic high school; then Marist College. I wonder what his early thinking had been; and what the tenor of his early journalism was. His dispute with Bob Schieffer over what he claims was a stolen story led to Bill fictionally murdering a fictional Bob in his 1998 novel, Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder.

As I say, this is just a beginning, to get at the root of political and cultural bigotry.

[Gary Carden]

Rob,
Glad to see you have provided us with an opportunity to honor Mr. O'Reilly. I intend to check around and find some eager souls who will come here and post, and possibly repeat their former posts on hollernotes.blogspot.com Right now, I have to go do my program up at the Mountain Heritage Center at WCU. One of the things I want to discuss is just how extensive Mr. O'Reilly's views are. Some even end up being Pulitzer nominations. Back later with some prize posters.

[Gary Carden]

I would like to mention a literary work that was published about a dozen years ago that managed to attract the ire of a host of Appalachian writers. I am talking about a massive drama entitled The Kentucky Cycle. Let me note that although the title suggests that its sole topic is Kentucky, such is not the case. The play's subject is the origin of Appalachian culture and tradition which, according to the playwright, begins in Kentucky and spread throughout the region. If I may be granted the right to simplify a bit, the play attempts to demonstrate that the evils (deceit, greed, avarice, etc.) of the beginning settlers poisoned future generations down to the present day.

The first time that I heard of the play, I was delighted and went to considerable trouble to acquire a copy of it. I was led to believe that it was about the courage and resilience of our forefathers. Further, when it began reading it (the entire work is over eight hours long and was produced on three successive nights), I found myself moved by the beauty of the writing. Only gradually did I begin to sense something else: the dramatization of a history of Appalachia that stressed a dark corruption in the hearts of our forefathers that has fostered a diseased modern culture. In other words, the alcoholism, stupidity and "propensity for violence" that the author sees in modern Appalachia is a kind of judgment/curse visited on the whole culture for its "original sin."

It may be that this particular work is too complex and deceptive to be discussed here, but I feel obligated to give it a shot. It was only after it received a Pulitizer Prize (sorry about the spelling) and The Kentucky Cycle began a national tour that some of us belatedly realized that this drama that was being praised by national critics (not an Appalachian in the crowd) said some things about us that not only were not true, but was doing considerable damage to our image in the eyes of the rest of the world. Protesters began to show up at the theaters, and an irate group of Appalachians began to speak out. By the time the tour had reached New York, attendance was falling off. In all fairness, that may have been due to the length of the play since sitting through three 2 and 1/2 hour performances is a daunting experience.

Let me see if I can conclude this lengthy post by saying that the author spent a weekend in Kentucky before he wrote the play. Most of this work's basic theme was taken from the writings of Harry Caudill, especially a book entitled Night Comes to the Cumberlands which the playwright had read. The play is still around. In fact, it was produced at Western Carolina University a few years ago and apparently, it didn't upset anyone there. There are sections of the play that are so beautifully written, they elicit tears and cheers. It is only in retrospect that Appalachian audiences begin to realize that perhaps even a destructive lie can be molded into a beautiful thing.

Well, I'll hush. I just wanted to make the point that it isn't always the stereotypical hillbilly that may present us in an unflattering light. Sometimes, our gifted artists accomplish the same thing.

[Gary Carden]

In making the post above, I wrote off the top of my head and avoided giving the playwright's name who wrote The Kentucky Cycle because I knew I couldn't spell it. Now, I am armed with information from Google and can tell you his name was/is: Robert Schenkkan. I also discovered that the play angered so many people, a book was published that consisted entirely of essays about the continued abuse of Appalachia by varied forms of sterotyping. Some of the essays were written by folks like Jim Wayne Miller, Bobbie Mason, Royal Jones, George Ella Lyon and Gurney Norman - all folks who care about how we are perceived by the rest of the world. The scary thing is the fact that The Kentucky Cycle won the Pulitzer Prize and resides on the shelf with other dramatic works that have that distinction: Our Town, State of the Nations, Angels in America, etc..

[Steve Brady]

One thing that occurs to me about the continuing portrayal of Appalachia through stereotypes is that we are a region and culture but not a distinct ethnic group, aside from the fact that many of us are Scots-Irish. We don’t have recourse to a group like the NAACP to defend us or lodge protests when we are depicted in a negative light. I fear this perception will continue until it dies away gradually over generations. As for Mr. O’Reilly’s comment that we should move to Miami- well I’ve been in Miami on numerous occasions and it’s nothing but a glitzy, steamy, environmental wasteland of concrete and wretched homeless people sleeping under cardboard on the streets while the ultra rich languish in their mansions along Biscayne Bay. Obviously Mr. O’Reilly doesn’t know what we’ve known all our lives- the people in Miami all want to move up here! Also, it appears he’s never read Carl Hiassen who lampoons the morons who spoiled the tropical paradise and natural wonder of southern Florida. One thing about it, if it all goes bust we’ll survive here. I’m not much of a gardener but I grew up hunting- if it becomes necessary I guarantee you I can still make mighty fine squirrel gravy. That might sound stereotypical to some people but I bet Mr. O’Reilly doesn’t know how to do that. We, on the other hand, are equally adept at surviving in his world.

[nancy dillingham]

I'm with you re Bill O'Reilly! I know that he was a reporter with ABC--then moderated "Inside Edition." Apparently he was always feuding with his superiors and fellow workers.
The most repugnant story is his sexual harassment of one of his young producers. The way that he tried to intimidate her, discredit her, and use his power against her (successfully, apparently--as he continued with his job) when she called him on it is classic re bullies, egotists, and misogynists. The tapes she had were disgusting--you don't even want to know!
Nancy

[Gary Carden]

Yeah, I know that O'Reilly has always been an arrogant creep and I do know about all of his activities relating to sexual abuse of his co-workers and his amazing fits of temper on camera, but that is not what I am upset about. He was just another unpleasant media creep that I could ignore until he did this...specifically this. He attacked Appalachian culture and demeaned us..US! This is not the usual gossip about Dr. Phil and Ophra, this is about what WE are.

[Rob Neufeld]

Yes, I agree, character assassination is one thing, and culture assassination is another. But there may be an important connection.

I was born when the McCarthy hearings began, and my mother nursed me while listening to the radio broadcasts. So, during one of my never finished literary explorations, I dug into the life of McCarthy to see how his ugly episode had developed in American history. There's a formula, and it pertains to O'Reilly. The tail end of that formula is elite groups latching onto a certain kind of leader, and then finding it gets out of control. Eisenhower had been ready to start a third party.

The culture war against Appalachia is in part economically oriented, as we know. Gotta get that lumber, coal, soft water, stream power, romantic locations, and cheap labor! How do you lower the price on the goods? Say that the stewards of it are low class. Same with the Indians, whose civilization before Columbus had been greater than London and Paris, and much more hygienic.

Robert Schenkken’s had based much of The Kentucky Cycle on the novels of John Fox, Jr. Fox himself had garnered a lot of his information about the coal industry from his older half-brother, James, a coal speculator.

The book of essays on Schenkkan's anti-Appalachian bias is Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, published by the University of Kentucky in December, 2000.

[Gary Carden]

Bravo! Well said!

[Rob Neufeld]

I found a little piece I'd written about The Kentucky Cycle. Here it is:

Take the University of Kentucky’s recent study, “Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes,” edited by Dwight Billings and others. It started off as a reaction to Robert Schenkkan’s 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Kentucky Cycle,” in which a coal company engineer rescues an innocent girl from her demeaning environment.

Schenkkan based his play on reading Harry Caudill’s “Night Comes to the Cumberlands” and John Fox’s “Trail of the Lonseome Pine” and combining that with a Joseph Campbell-inspired “Myth of the Frontier.” It’s fantasy. Harry Caudill perpetuated a view of Appalachian settlers as resentful refugees that equals the pioneer view of Indians as savages in its distortion. John Fox was a member of a coal company-owning family.

[Betty Cloer Wallace]

Hillbilly stereotypes: picking up pine knots and going to war
By Betty Cloer Wallace

Bill O’Reilly’s recent contemptible rant against Appalachian Americans is only the latest example of the widespread and multigenerational problem of Appalachian hillbilly stereotypes. Quite simply, O’Reilly reminded the world once again that people of the Appalachian Mountains are still the only cultural group in America that many people have the audacity to ridicule publicly as being of low intelligence, and worse. 



Can you imagine if O'Reilly had made the same despicable statements about ________ in _________, or ________ in ________, or _______ in ________. (Fill in the blanks with any racial or ethnic or cultural slurs you can imagine, the more insensitive the better.)

How can we as a people ever overcome this pervasive hillbilly stereotype? Why do we continue to pull in our heads like turtles and pretend we don't care and that we will survive regardless of the outside world? Well, I do care—for myself, my family and friends, and my culture—and I don't believe that we are surviving very well or will survive in the future as a culture with a shred of honor and dignity if we do not rise up, en masse, and protest at every opportunity this kind of insensitive abuse.

We continue to loll about in our insular Snuffy Smith, Lil Abner, Mammy Yokum, Jed Clampett, grits-and-possum stereotype as if the opinion of the rest of the world does not matter, even while we are being brutalized every time someone laughs at our dialect or accent, or asks WHERE are you from, or rejects us for a job, or does not publish our writing because how could an ignorant hillbilly possibly have something to say.

A professor at the University of Colorado once said to our own Charles Frazier, "Imagine that! A hillbilly with a Ph.D.!" Even worse than the professor thinking such a misbegotten thought was that she felt entitled to publicly say it right to his face. Can you imagine her making that statement to a person of any other racial or ethnic or cultural group? "Imagine that! A ______ with a Ph.D.!"



As much as I love COLD MOUNTAIN, both book and movie, I hated the "Young Mammy Yokum" portrayal of Ruby by Renee Zellweger who won an Academy Award for it. (Frazier’s Ruby in the book had a quiet strength and wisdom, as do most native Appalachian people.) As much as I love our bluegrass music, I hated the stereotypical portrayal of ignorance in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

And, when I worked in the Alaskan Arctic, an Eskimo woman who had seen a "Songcatcher" DVD asked me why hillbillies don't fix up their houses. She thought the stage-set ramshackle buildings in that movie were really the kind in which we actually live—rather like us stereotyping Eskimos as living in ice-block igloos, the difference being that we are stereotyped as being too dumb or lazy to fix up our houses while Eskimos are stereotyped as being intelligent enough to survive in an extreme place. 



In the age of global communication, this debilitating hillbilly stereotype is pervasive even internationally, and it affects us negatively on so many levels.

For the past century, companies that have considered our region for placing new enterprises have looked for local "hands" to do their low-level jobs, while bringing in management and executives (the “brains”) from outside; and now no one even considers Appalachia as a place where management would want to bring their own families to live or where intelligent local people might be available for employment. 



Further compounding the problem, too many of our local governments are now made up of second-tier pseudo-leaders who are interested primarily in promoting tourism; but who, we should ask ourselves, will own the new hotels and mountaintop second-homes and assorted eateries the appointed tourist boards and self-serving chambers of commerce say we need—and who will be paying increased taxes for infrastructure to support them, and cleaning their rooms and waiting their tables and manicuring their lawns?

The local "hands," of course, are expected to do those low-level jobs. This servant mentality is deeply embedded in our history and culture and language, and all of us have perpetuated it simply by not rising up and fighting it. “He/she is a good hand to_____," we say.



Zell Miller of Georgia is the only well-known person who has ever stood up publicly to try to end this crippling multigenerational Appalachian stereotype. He single-handedly created enough flak several years ago to prevent television producers from creating a Beverly Hillbillies Reality Show that would have placed an Appalachian family in a Beverly Hills mansion and ridiculed them for a year. Can you imagine if the producers had even suggested doing the same with a Beverly _____ Reality Show? (You fill in the blank with the most insensitive racial or ethnic or cultural slur you can think of.)

The reality show producers even advertised in our local newspapers for an ignorant mountain family, all expenses paid. Can you imagine the justifiable outrage if they had placed such advertisements in the Atlanta or Birmingham or New York papers for an ignorant _____ family to send out to Beverly Hills and ridicule for a year.



While some racial and ethnic and cultural groups recently tried to get a newspaper cartoonist fired, and rightfully so, for depicting the shooting of a "stimulus plan gorilla,” O'Reilly was shooting down the future of an entire culture by perpetuating a century-old stereotype in the most egregious and offensive manner—and we ought to be outraged. We ought to care, and care deeply, because the issue is infinitely larger and more far-reaching than simply our own personal irritation with O’Reilly.

Actually, O'Reilly is small potatoes when one considers what we as a culture are up against. This negative stereotyping of our culture is becoming more focused and pronounced than ever before, simply because it has become politically incorrect to target other groups. Think of all the other minorities in this country who are discriminated against. Are any of them summarily and publicly declared to be ignorant and of low IQ? Can you name any other such group?

Other minorities may be insidiously stereotyped and discriminated against for assorted other reasons, but they are not blatantly and openly ridiculed as ignorant. And now, O'Reilly has added "immoral" and "drug-addicted" to our litany of Appalachian stereotypes, as well as our being unworthy to live in our own mountain homeland. Our children should move to Miami, he says. Oh, my.

Even "rednecks," who are everywhere and are a social class rather than a culture, are not dismissed as ignorant and inferior to other people because of intelligence. In fact, rednecks are often praised for their many independent and self-sufficient attributes, except for those rednecks who also happen to be classified as ignorant hillbillies in one-gallused overalls sleeping with their sisters and the farm animals.

Fortunately some "outlanders" do "get it" and are embarrassed by the likes of O’Reilly, but the fact remains that no one outside of an abused group can truly "feel" it without having "felt" it. No one without minority physical characteristics or other personal differences can truly "feel" that discrimination. No one outside someone with a mountain accent (or any other accent or dialect outside the prevailing norm) can "feel" a job interviewer lose interest when you open your mouth to answer a question.

O'Reilly is hate-filled, but he is not a fool. He has built an empire by spouting the poisonous hatred that millions of people want to hear. They do listen to him and are influenced by him. While he himself is not fully the issue, he is a flash point for bigotry and intolerance, and that is why he is dangerous.



Yes, O’Reilly is a catalyst, but he is not the source of our problem. We are. We are to blame for not doing everything we can to root out such ignorant O’Reilly-type bigotry, to expose it for what it is, and then to replace it by honoring who we really are—by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.

Why can we not pick up our pine knots and go to war against this blatant, insidious destruction of our culture? It will not take care of itself, and no one else is going to do it for us. 



For the past 125 years, especially during wars and periods of economic depression, people have come into our mountains to exploit us as easy targets as they irreversibly destroy our forests, scalp our mountaintops, pollute our rivers, turn our community schools into mega-institutions, raise our taxes, rape our land with roads and airports and cookie-cutter shopping malls, and ultimately pollute our DNA. 



It becomes increasingly harder to identify real native mountaineers, and within a few more generations our real culture, like that of the Melungeons, may fade into oblivion long before the stereotypes disappear. Our centuries-old physical characteristics will be gone, along with our language, values, customs, ethics, and morals; and that is why it is important for writers and storytellers and videographers to work overtime now to record our rapidly vanishing culture, to record who we are.

Children in the future may be asking, "Who exactly were the hillbillies? Where did they live? Where did they come from? Where did they go?" And their mothers will respond, “You must not say that ‘H’ word. It is politically incorrect.”

Let us now pick up our pine knots and go to war—to save ourselves.

___________________

Betty Cloer Wallace resides in Western North Carolina and is a direct descendant of Roderick Shelton, first English settler in Madison County, NC. She teaches writing and literature in a local community college.

[e-mail]

2/27/09

[Betty Cloer Wallace]

I remember distinctly about 1950 when I heard my family discussing the book and film, TOBACCO ROAD, with abject sadness that our culture was so misrepresented by the national media. That was my first inkling that the rest of the country did not see us as we saw ourselves.

The news and entertainment media have never represented us in a positive light, and they have, in fact, erroneously defined us negatively for a century, which has always been the justification, of course, for destroying our environment and our real culture; and they continue to do so--and millions of people worldwide believe them!

That is why we should go to war with the national media, in whatever way we can, to replace those insidious stereotypes with representations of who we really are--by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, language, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.

[Betty Cloer Wallace]

Friends, this might be my favorite exchange so far, among many, regarding "pine knots".......


(This is what I wrote on someone's blog:)

The media has already and long ago, for more than a century, defined who we are by portraying us to the whole world as ignorant, genetically deformed, immoral Tobacco Road characters (if you have not read the book or seen this culture-defining film, please do so), as well as lazy Snuffy Smith and Lil Abner cartoons with one-gallused overalls kicking dogs off the porch, hot-to-trot Daisy Maes and Daisy Dukes, Clampetts in Beverly Hills, and O Brother convicts without enough sense to get in out of the rain, let alone be able to do jobs requiring some semblance of intelligence and literacy.

But we are not those characters, those cartoons, as long defined by the entertainment and news media and believed by millions of people worldwide as accurate portrayals.

We have real heritages centuries old, with legends and literature and ways to live on the earth and with each other. We are descended from people who left Scotland and England and Ireland and Wales and Germany for many reasons (mostly desperate reasons having to do with hunger or religion), people who came here and intermarried with each other and with native Americans of various tribes (Cherokee in my neck of the woods); and we go on into the future the best way we can, trying to hold onto the culture(s) of our past and looking forward to a non-discriminatory future for our children... but that future is growing increasingly impossible.

What happened to the spark in us that made us (our forefathers) stand up to tyranny? Why do we now think we can simply draw a circle around ourselves and shut out the rest of the world as if they don't matter? As if they cannot affect us?

I want us to be able to be who we really are, and to live as we so choose, with a place at the national and international table for every one us, and the chance for our descendants to be President of the United States or greeters at Wal-Mart or whatever they want to be.

I am neither a character from Tobacco Road nor Mammy Yokum nor Daisy Duke nor Granny Clampett nor any other cartoonish misrepresentation of our culture as portrayed by a century of entertainment and news media..... and I hate it when the media (FOX's O'Reilly and others in television and movies)---and ultimately the general public across the country--- continues to define who we are in the most despicable way.

So, you tell me who (if not the news and entertainment media) is the cause of the predicament we find ourselves in---the only cultural group in the United States that O'Reilly or anyone else would dare castigate and ridicule with such hatred on national television. You tell me what would happen if coal companies started bulldozing down the Rocky Mountains or any other mountains in the United States or suggested that children leave New York or Montana or Texas or California to find a better life in Miami because where their families have lived for 200 years is a hopeless place, a culture of ignorance.

Yes, O'Reilly himself is small potatoes, merely a media mouthpiece and irritant, but thousands of people worldwide do believe him and others of his kind, and therein lies the problem with our future and the future of our children and grandchildren.

7:30 PM


(This is the response I got back:)

Anonymous said...
bill just plain sucks

you cannot change what people think

hillbilly is a sub set of People who live in the South many think people in the South are stupid and don't wear shoes

I think women in Chicago have thick ankles
none of it matters... at all.. not at all

7:41 PM