Wow. What an idiot.
Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby, during a floor debate on the Democratic Party’s dishonest gerrymandering scheme, was trying to refute Republicans who argued that Democrats don’t understand the needs of that rural Virginians they are trying to disenfranchise.
So he said this. He really did. No, I wouldn’t make this up, I’m an ethicist!
“I grew up watching ‘The Waltons.’ I grew up with Opie. I even watched ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America “I’m not just here for Theo. I’m not just here for Arnold or Willis. I’m here for Opie, John Boy. Blossom, Topanga.”
Bagby was saying that he understands 21st Century rural communities in Virginia because he watched a TV show about a Virginia mountain family during the Depression, an idealized Sixties sitcom about a small town sheriff in North Carolina, and a notorious good ol’ boy TV farce about bootleggers in Georgia that lowered one’s IQ by several points every time one watched it. This is on the same plane as arguing that you are qualified to work for NASA because you were a fan of William Shatner’s “Star Trek.”
As for his other TV references, they make even less sense. “Blossom” lived in Los Angeles. “Boy Meets World,” which is his “Topanga” reference, was set in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Different Strokes” (Arnold and Willis) was set in penthouse at 900 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.
This moron couldn’t even get his own ridiculous argument straight. I’ll tolerate political cretinism, but when these fools start misrepresenting old TV show, I really get angry.
Be proud, Virginia Democrats. This is the quality of the people you chose to govern your state.
Ethics Alarms 
“There’s this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys are simple folk from the countryside …while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes”
”primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn’t exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed”
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
There’s so much to unpack with this stereotype, which seems to be universally accepted as fact among our leadership.
Having grown up in the South, I always got a kick out of “Andy of Mayberry’s” version of North Carolina. It is the South as envisioned by Jewish television comedy writers from Brooklyn living in Los Angeles and sitting in a writer’s room. The only time they’d ever been in the South was while visiting their parents on Miami Beach.
Our son loved watching “The Dukes of Hazzard” when he was six. Hilariously, he mistakenly called them “The Dupes.”
“Lamont Bagby?” Sounds like a character in “Gone with the Wind.”
At least he didn’t say that he forged his entrepreneurial skills by watching “Sanford & Son.”
jvb
Never saw those TeeVee shows (I will look them up on YouTube) but I am curious what was the one “a TV show about a Virginia mountain family during the Depression”. Kind of sounds interesting. Wasn’t there a whole bunch of important photography projects of rural people in the Depression time? Communistic artists out in force …
“The Waltons.” Here is a wikipedia link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waltons
jvb
I loved the show until Richard Thomas left. None of the remaining kids could act much, and they all got progressively less cute and attractive as they aged. I did applaud them keeping Ellen Corby on as Grandma after her stroke that left her almost mute. I also enjoyed how the show made monkeys out of the TV “experts;” I remember how TIME’s TV critic mocked the show before its first season as the most guaranteed flop of the year. Good call there, buddy! It was supposedly a goner because it was competing against two big hits, The Flip Wilson Show and The Mod Squad, and outlasted both of them, climbing to #2 in the ratings by Season #2 and running 9 years.
It was a weekly staple in our house…Thursday nights maybe?
There’s so much to unpack with this. First off, the stereotype of some idyllic rural American town from 50 years ago… wow he really said that. Unfortunately, I don’t doubt that most “city folk” have this same sentiment or the opposite: poor, dumb, racist and addicted. Like they can’t manage their own affairs and need someone to step in and do it for them. Here’s the rub I hear it all the time “how can you live out there, so far away?” You do realize we wonder the same. I can’t understand why so many choose to live like ants on top of each other in the concrete jungle. I live in rural America, but I wouldn’t presume to think I “know” what rural West Virginia needs. That’s like saying Miami and Chicago are just the same because they are cities. Some issues are universal, but the nuance isn’t. You visit one rural area thinking it’s the same as another, and there’s some truth to that, but their hierarchy of needs are likely numbered differently.
I’m surprised that they didn’t mention Yellowstone or Clarksons farm or Corner Gas as references for understanding rural areas.
“There’s this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys are simple folk from the countryside ..while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes.” https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
If I talked directly to this guy I couldn’t explain rural life. They think they know based on tv shows and movies, but they don’t. While we go to the cities, they don’t come to rural areas. Not often, if ever. You can fly over them to city to city. Pass them driving 80mph. See them occasionally flooded or on fire on the news one time while they mention how close it came to the nearest city. You can’t grasp it. That businesses close because they can’t find help at any price. That the hospitals don’t deliver babies because they have no qualified staff. Fundraisers for the volunteer ambulance service. The school play that has no budget. The pharmacy that’s 60 miles away, not 5. The small businesses that are the only ones. The industry leases that are blanketing the farms and ranches. The water wars that are just beginning in the west.
Demeter, you are spot on with your observations.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote that “space they say is the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement.”* The Good and Aware Representative misses the entire point of his own stupid comment. The shows he references are fantasy. They are fiction. They are not documentaries about the life and times of rural people farming the back 40. If that is his concept of rural America, then he is completely clueless and should not be making laws affecting anybody, let alone rural communities.
jvb
*Ed. Note: See? I know songs by other artists than Rush. Just a few, but the Canadian Triumvirate . . .