Noblesse Oblige vs. Poverty Porn
I live in the big city, but I have a cabin in the woods I like to go to escape from it all. Twice or so year I make visit. I was pleased new Dollar General just 3 miles from my cabin. This was quite a remarkable development. Right next to a trailer park and across from the rural elementary school. People from the trailer park can walk right over to the Dollar General and get some provisions, one of them was this old black lady. You can find these old boomer MAGA Moms will visit and chat with the lady well, as she has come over to pick pecans underneath the pecan trees. At the Dollar Store, the MAGA Mom agrees to allow the lady come pick pecans gratis, and the lady cracks and sells them for a few dollars a pound.
The store has a few regulars that set around and shoot the shit all day. They hold court and bust each other’s chops. Maga Mom goes to the Dollar General and meets up with the black lady and they start to chat. The old dudes, the regulars holding court, are taken aback, as if it were a big surprise. “You know HER?” is the question.
“Aww yes, chile, she’s My Massa.”
Holy cow did everyone get a laugh out of that. “My Massa”. Hard to believe anyone even talks this way anymore. MAGA Mom’s house isn’t much bigger than the trailer the black lady lives in, but this is the currency that greases the wheels for the noblesse oblige that provides pecans and thus a little walking around money.
This type of slice-of-life scene is often portrayed by cultural commentator Chris Arnade in a bit of overwrought poverty porn and to be honest I am torn. On the one hand it is nice to see coastal elite liberals not actively denigrating flyover country but rather attempt to engage it. It is a refreshing change from every other big foot reporter who could not set foot outside Manhattan without recoiling in horror. I like how he highlights how corporate culture has dominated our social spaces, with all the old timers having breakfast at McDonald’s instead of a Mom & Pop diner. Everybody eating at McDonald’s, you wonder if they sponsor Chris.
Since 2016, there is a market to investigate, just who are the forgotten people that Trump talks about so much? What’s the story of the manager who works at McDonald's for 25 years? The people that lost out on entire industries that left for China or Mexico? On the other hand it does come across as exploitative. The good guys are minorities (Arnade favors Native Americans), white guys are the weird ones. In Chris’s recent interaction with a redneck, he appeals to his audience quite overtly, and Twitter being twitter he gets a sound trashing.
Part of me believes Chris did not actually confront the man but made it up after the fact. Either way he is a whiny liberal preener, and I am sure he has some scripts at the ready to address “fellow white people”. The difference between my story and Chris’ is that Chris seems to focus on the dour situation and lean so heavy on it, regularly. ‘Aw look at these pathetic flyover people, somebody needs to help them.’ Yes, drug addiction is a serious problem, especially now, but Chris could do a better job at showing some light at the end of the tunnel instead of perpetually cursing the darkness. Flyover country has a lot of great aspects to it, much less of a police state, less schizophrenia, less violent crime, no housing bubble. I see a lot of untapped human potential there.
So, even if Chris did “grow up in the South”, I doubt anyone ever called him Massa.