"Blazing Saddles" in wild western Pennsylvania?
Last week Brad DeLong linked to this post at Fivethiryeight.com about a pollster in the county seat of the county just east of where I live:So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."
(The stars bleeping out part of the offensive word are on the Fivethirtyeight website now, but I don't think they were last week.)
I posted this response on Brad's blog, discussing some of my reaction, as a native of Western Pa. who has been back there recently, and (as mentioned) still lives nearby. And John Murtha, the decorated Vietnam vet (and my fellow Pitt alumnus) who has been the congressman for that district for a very long time*, has taken some flack for mentioning that there are racists in the area. (He was not in favor of racism, which makes me wonder about the people who are complaining about what he said.
Here's another blogger** from Western Pa. -- closer to where I grew up (and visited 10 days ago) than Murtha's district -- who also has some comments about racism in the area. Including links between the (no longer in business) locally-owned five-and-ten chain G.C. Murphy to Bob Jones University. I didn't know that part! But yeah, my parents used to talk about KKK rallies in the area when they were kids in the Twenties. They were roaring in all kinds of ways, those Twenties. And racism was rampant. My dad never quite shook the habit of using the "n word" bleeped out above, though after he used it (in front of me, at least) he would look sad and apologize. Indeed, he would then tell me about how, back in his childhood, white people took so little mind of the racism in that word that when Dad was about ten he had a dog whose name was that word. He realized it was politically incorrect nowadays (Dad died in 1995, so "nowadays" is "thenadays" but not as far back as the Twenties) but Dad was, in his mid-seventies, an old dog who never quite learned that new trick.
*My sister and her husband live in Murtha's district, gerrymandered as it is, and she works in downtown Washington, which is a very nice place with a lot of history, including an Underground Railroad museum. Not everyone there is racist.
** Next time I update my blog roll, Tube City Almanac will be there. "Worthy of all Yohogania". That's how I found that blog, looking up "Yohogania" in a search engine. (Not Google, one I was trying out after reading an article. I forget which search engine it was now,but I'm grateful to it.)
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."
(The stars bleeping out part of the offensive word are on the Fivethirtyeight website now, but I don't think they were last week.)
I posted this response on Brad's blog, discussing some of my reaction, as a native of Western Pa. who has been back there recently, and (as mentioned) still lives nearby. And John Murtha, the decorated Vietnam vet (and my fellow Pitt alumnus) who has been the congressman for that district for a very long time*, has taken some flack for mentioning that there are racists in the area. (He was not in favor of racism, which makes me wonder about the people who are complaining about what he said.
Here's another blogger** from Western Pa. -- closer to where I grew up (and visited 10 days ago) than Murtha's district -- who also has some comments about racism in the area. Including links between the (no longer in business) locally-owned five-and-ten chain G.C. Murphy to Bob Jones University. I didn't know that part! But yeah, my parents used to talk about KKK rallies in the area when they were kids in the Twenties. They were roaring in all kinds of ways, those Twenties. And racism was rampant. My dad never quite shook the habit of using the "n word" bleeped out above, though after he used it (in front of me, at least) he would look sad and apologize. Indeed, he would then tell me about how, back in his childhood, white people took so little mind of the racism in that word that when Dad was about ten he had a dog whose name was that word. He realized it was politically incorrect nowadays (Dad died in 1995, so "nowadays" is "thenadays" but not as far back as the Twenties) but Dad was, in his mid-seventies, an old dog who never quite learned that new trick.
*My sister and her husband live in Murtha's district, gerrymandered as it is, and she works in downtown Washington, which is a very nice place with a lot of history, including an Underground Railroad museum. Not everyone there is racist.
** Next time I update my blog roll, Tube City Almanac will be there. "Worthy of all Yohogania". That's how I found that blog, looking up "Yohogania" in a search engine. (Not Google, one I was trying out after reading an article. I forget which search engine it was now,but I'm grateful to it.)