Dear Ammonite,

Your term “Joe's home grown philosophy” doesn't sit well with me for some reason. Perhaps I'm more comfortable with 'Joe's perspective'.

It is a perspective we aren't use to hearing elucidated so it appears to have a uniqueness, but millions of 'poor white trash' to some degree have shared the same.

If there is a philosophy it is one of worker solidarity and while it can be said to be home developed it is a universal thread through much of the world's history over the last 150 years. The latest round of union-bashing laws in the US would have Joe trumpeting from the page if he was still with us.

I was intrigued by the thought of a Joanne Bageant. It set up a line of thinking that for some strange reason landed me at...wait for it...Oprah Winfrey. You will be thinking she is about as far away from 'white trash' as you could get, and you would be right. I could get caned for this.

Bear with me though. Oprah was born to a single teenage mother in rural Mississippi, never knew her father, raped at nine, sexually abused by family members for four years, pregnant at fourteen, lost the child, lost several siblings to drugs and suicide, used crack cocaine, battled weight problems etc but ended up being the first black female billionaire.

Looking past what is the 'quintessential American success story' what was it that made her so successful? Like Joe she had empathy in spades. That she, to some degree, com-modified it to bring her great wealth shouldn't detract from the fact that it is an undeniable facet of her character.

She has managed to survive criticizing the war in a country that usually attempts to tear people down for less. Look at the Dixie Chicks.

While there are those who learn their learn their leftist views from manifestos Bageant (and to a lesser extent Winfrey) has the street cred that gave his perspective its potency.

He will be missed.

Jesus csteele! That was a bit low wasn't it? Oprah!

I have to confess to be ill informed here, since I've never watched her show but it seems to me she is a winner in the USA because she has tapped into the dominant, indeed, only US meme on sale.

Like their current 'white' president, she hardly oozes 'black' anywhere.

Even her 'story' sounds just a little too confected to be real, even if every single word of it is.

It has all the hallmarks of an evangelical Christian 'change over' life story about it and it certainly ticks all the boxes to comply with the US success meme.

Angela Davies might have made the spot, but hardly Oprah. Sorry.

csteele

"home grown philosophy" was not meant to be an insult - it means that Joe was not indoctrinated into any formal ideology (as people often are through religion or tertiary education) which enabled his original thinking, think you are being a bit precious.

As for 'Joanna Bageant', I think an equivalent need be white - black is a different perspective again. As for Oprah and Angela Davis - kudos to them both but my hero is Rosa Parks - what she did took a level of courage few have. And no white woman (even if she was trailer park resident) would've had to sit in the back of a bus.

Most influential white women come from the middle class - anyone think of female white equivalent to Joe Bageant? Maybe black women have had to be stronger, dunno, maybe white women are not noticed - like women's contributions are largely absent from history.

Please understand I am not looking for a gender war argument here - just thinking about how some people manage to break through - like Joe and Rosa and others don't or we just don't know about them.

Dear TBC,

I thought I might get a caning. As Joe says in Rainbow Pie;
"Not only can poverty not be bought, but the very memories of it's psychological pain, losses, and defeated dreams can shapeshift, reinvent themselves, and come prancing back in new raiment to rule over a past that never was."

But I think Joe and Oprah, both for very different reasons got to stages in their lives where they were answerable to no one. Climbing the ladder in America has always meant being differential to those above. Freedom generally only comes with wealth and power usually only afforded to the privileged classes. 

These two were not from there. That is why their freedom combined with deep empathy and good communication skills is such a potent mix.

Dear Ammonite,

My goodness I hope I wasn't being precious since that was not my intention. To me Joe was more about stating through research, examples, and testimony, self evident truths. There was an expectation on his part that the reader possessed a common decency and that all he has to do was inform them of those truths for their own innate philosophies to kick in.

I know there was a bit more to him than that but I saw him less trying to covert us with new ideas but more with new perspectives. That to me was his genius. Happy to be shown different though.

Oh come now csteele, I am not 'caning' you at all. I was shocked that anyone could think of Oprah in such a light, is all.

Yes, she has wealth and power, and that is central to the US meme.

I understand your hunt for Ammonites female Joe (was it Ammo?) but I'd prefer Rosa over Oprah.

I doubt Rosa made a motza, which is what Oprah is all about.