LadyFish
Admiral
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,894
Thought this was an interesting read for our iboats Nascar fans.<br /><br />This from the Indianapolis Star via Fark: Enjoy<br />------------------------------------------------------<br />NASCAR sends a Dear Bubba letter to its redneck fans<br /><br />March 31, 2004<br /><br />NASCAR kicked its Winston Cup addiction.<br /><br />It has spiffed itself up and wants to be a sport everybody can embrace.<br /><br />Everybody, that is, except the people who loved it first.<br /><br />They're the good ol' boys and girls who were grilling possum in the infield long before the first latte was served in a Nextel Cup skybox.<br /><br />The Dear Bubba letter came when driver Derrike Cope showed up at the Las Vegas race with a new sponsor -- "RedneckJunk.com."<br /><br />The Web site sells outdoor gear, not moonshine. But NASCAR told him to remove the logo because it did not project the proper image. At the risk of sounding like a redneck: Huh?<br /><br />Get rid of pork rinds, tube tops, mullets and Confederate flags, and what does stock-car racing have?<br /><br />NASCAR thinks it will have a more marketable product.<br /><br />But in its obsessive drive to retool its image, NASCAR is being as bigoted as the average redneck supposedly is. The core question here is: What is a redneck? The dictionary has two definitions:<br /><br />"A disparaging term for a member of the white rural laboring class, especially in the southern United States."<br /><br />"A white person regarded as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted, attitude."<br /><br />NASCAR apparently is going with the second definition.<br /><br />No doubt there are bigoted race fans. It wouldn't bother me to never see another Confederate flag flapping over a Dale Earnhardt banner. Not that every Dixie flag-waver is a bigot, nor do I want to get near that debate.<br /><br />But too many people make the automatic jump from redneck to racist. The term came from the sun, toiling in the fields, getting the kind of farmer's tan you don't get in a salon.<br /><br />Rednecks worked for the plantation owners who sat on their porches counting money. Wealth doesn't change a redneck.<br /><br />It just allows them to buy bigger trucks and gaudier black-velvet Elvis paintings.<br /><br />We are allowed to make such generalizations because rednecks have no political-correctness rights.<br /><br />Unlike almost every other culture, it's acceptable to ridicule and assume what we wish.<br /><br />So why not assume rednecks are like every group, with mostly good and a few bad people?<br /><br />To say all rednecks are bigots is like saying all Polish are stupid or Muslims are terrorists.<br /><br />A Wal-Mart lifestyle doesn't make you unsavory.<br /><br />If any group should understand this, you'd think it would be NASCAR.<br /><br />"The majority of its fan base for the past 50 years have been rednecks," said Tom Connelly, the CEO of RedneckJunk.com.<br /><br />He's gotten about 3,000 e-mails from upset fans.<br /><br />Yes, rednecks own computers.<br /><br />That may shock NASCAR's modern-day image consultants.<br /><br />They gladly court beer and Viagra sponsors. Yet they fear somebody somewhere will be offended by the trailer dwellers in the infield.<br /><br />The people who ought to be offended are rednecks, who were supporting NASCAR before Jeff Gordon was ever invented.<br /><br />But take heart, Bubbas. At least one sport doesn't mind being associated with your kind.<br /><br />Dunlop recently introduced the Redneck putter.<br /><br />John Daly uses the $99 red-shafted stick. The PGA even allows him to wear a "Redneck" logo on his collar.<br /><br />"We're the product the blue-collar guy can afford," said Shane Duffy, Dunlop's vice president of marketing.<br /><br />We have officially entered a parallel universe, sports fans.<br /><br />Golf goes blue collar and NASCAR goes stuffed shirt.<br /><br />Whoever thought you'd see the day when rednecks weren't welcome?<br /><br />Then again, whoever thought NASCAR would think it's too good for its most loyal fans?
