I met Joe Bageant last night. In a talk he called “Breaking the Beer Barrier,” Joe said,

Why can’t progressive media ever learn to communicate in redneck and born again bubba? I would guess that a lot of you are thinking, “Why would anybody want to?” One answer is the election of George Bush — but there are many others. For example, a third of all Americans live in the geographic South and over 50% live in the “cultural south” — which is to say places with white Southern Scots-Irish values — places such as western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire…

Yet, as much talk as there is about these fellow Americans, particularly during election season, most liberal and alternative media never speak to them or for them. And that’s a shame, because when we do that — we abandon the project of equality for all Americans — some of which happen to hunt, fish, drink Bud Light and enjoy NASCAR, Bon Jovi and Toby Keith.

Anyway, just telling our own truth to people who already agree with us isn’t going to do anything, regardless of our illusions about the power of the “blogosphere,” etc. As Bill Moyers said last year at this conference, despite all the new information platforms, cable, the Internet, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and MySpace — our resources for collective understanding as Americans are contracting, not expanding. To make matters worse, we progressives use these resources to talk to one another in a closed conversation, instead of reaching all the people.

Hard to argue with that.
Continue reading →