Hillbilly Elegy

 

A family member I respect a great deal asked me to read J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, before the election. My family member said he thought Vance made some good points and asked me to take a critical look.

Vance does make several good points. The most salient is that hillbillies have good reason to harbor resentment toward much of the rest of the country. Aside from the jokes, they always seem to get left out when economic advances are made. Doesn’t matter what happens elsewhere, things never seem to get better in Harlan County, for instance.

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania during the 70s, so I get this. Even though Pittsburgh rebounded years ago, the towns up and down the rivers have yet to make similar recoveries. Advances are at the margins and much local business consists of, in the words of my late father, people helping each other go under slower.

So I’m with Vance on that. What I’m not down with is how he has used those conditions in a remarkably cynical manner for political gain. Nowhere in his campaigning have I noticed him coming up with anything to help these folks. It’s all been demagoguery to play on the emotions generated by whipping them up to ever higher levels of resentment.

It was Vance who came up with the story that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. This was the baldest of lies, and Vance copped to it only after the damage had been done. His reasoning excuse? “Sometimes you have to make up a story to make a point.”

Well, yeah. It’s called fiction. I’m well aware of it. It’s an old saying that fiction writers use lies to tell the truth. Dennis Lehane covered much of the same ground – working class people feeling put upon for too long and reacting badly – in his brilliant novel Small Mercies. The difference is Lehane made no bones that the book was fiction, even though it was set in the context of actual events that took place during the Boston busing riots. Vance passed off the Haitian story as a fact to be considered when deciding how to vote and only pulled it back after the damage had been done. That’s reprehensible.

Vance also whined about being fact checked during the vice presidential debate. The only kind of person who complains about getting fact checked is someone who intends to lie.

These examples of Vance’s character flaws cast doubt on everything in the book. A couple of other things led me to think even less of him. I’ll talk more about that next time.