SENATOR SAM | 2008-04-24
A lot of people have objected to my pretending to be a hick. By age sixteen I had reached a level of sophistication where I DESPISED self-styled "intellectuals" with the same vehemence that they despised "hicks."
In the case of nut cases like me and Senator Samuel Ervin of North Carolina, claiming to be "hicks" is pure egomania.
I am a "hick" in the sense that I can tell when something is simply SILLY. "Intellectuals" talk pure crap. Respectable conservatives answer this pure crap as if it were Serious Thought. By the time one gets through debating this crap as if it were real logic one has entered into their delusions. Entering into the delusions of a crazy person is one of the things one is taught to avoid in dealing with the mentally ill.
Senator Sam .acted like he was representing the hicks. "Intellectuals" thought he was laughing at the "hicks," the way the Kennedys were laughing at the Boston Southies who supported them slavishly.
It never occurred to the "intellectuals" that Senator Sam was laughing at THEM.
One brag I have made here is that I was an Honorary Boston Southie, that West Virginia coal miners said that "Whitaker speaks for us."
Hence my Proud Hickdom. That is what I read into Jesus's words about the Scribes and the Pharisees. He said that Evil with a PhD is Doctor Evil.
Senator Sam was not Jesus. I am not Jesus. For us, this attitude is unapologetic egomania.
In Washington, it was easy. I put on my deepest Southern accent, like Senator Sam Ervin with his "I'm just a country lawyer from North Carolina." People who knew that Senator Sam was a MAGNA Cum Laude graduate of the Harvard Law School found his claiming to be a hick DISGUSTING.
Senator Sam never deviated from that hick image because it WORKED. He (and I) found that Yankees in Washington, DC are absolutely INCURABLE. They are suffering from a form of hypnosis. No matter how many times they told themselves, "Senator Ervin is a brilliant man, he is a DANGEROUS man." they still fell under the spell of their entire life training about Southern accents.
No one without a Southern "accent" (WE don't HAVE an accent, YOU do) can get away with asking basic questions, over and over. But we Southerners are considered to be children. We can ask and ask and ask, demanding an answer the way a child does.
That made it hilarious for me to watch Senator Sam in action. You really have to be able to talk your ass off to make a career criminal seem like a victim of circumstances. Only Senator Sam could get away with repeating, "But isn't this guy just an evil person?"
To a Kennedy, the idea that someone is just "a bad person" is unthinking, judgmental, uncompassionate, anti-intellectual and so forth.
But even a Kennedy has to deal with the children. You have to answer the children who simply won't shut up.
I don't know how may of you have had the ego-deflating experience of trying to answer the insistent questions of a small child. You have a choice. You can 1) decide that the kid really is too young to understand the High Sophistication of what you are saying or 2) You can rethink what you are saying to the extent that some of it just doesn't make sense.
What protects Political Correctness is that no one has the guts to be seen as a child. Senator Sam enjoyed the game. I think I am so much smarter than self-styled "intellectuals' that I would be embarrassed at being accused of competing with them.