I'm normally all for laying it on Dick Cheney, but this inbreeding joke of his is too damn good. Seriously. "I've got Cheneys on both sides of my family, and I'm not even from West Virginia." That's good humor.
I'm thinking that West Virginia needs to stop fighting this image of being inbred hillbillies and to start using it as a marketing tool.
"West Virginia -- We're all family!"
"West Virginia -- Whether you're friends or family, it's all the same!"
It's really a good time for it, what with the too-Mormon-for-regular-Mormons down in Texas getting all the sympathy for the big bad state of Texas taking away their kids (and their wives...it's all the same apparently -- reminds me of Chinatown..."my sister, my daughter, my sister, my daughter..."), and West Virginia could capitalize on all the excitement generated by cross-generational inbreeding.
The first task, of course, is to jettison the term "inbreeding": it's too fraught with negative connotations. Likewise "incest." These are concerned communities that practice "genetic preservation." You still have to be careful with that term, too, lest you fall into the same connotative school as the white supremacists, because even if the shoe fits, you sure don't want to look proud wearing it.
So how can WV take back the stereotype? How can they own it?
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