Maureen Gill Ausbrook
Trae Crowder, the so-called “Liberal Redneck,” is a guy to watch and here’s why:
While there have been many clever redneck comedians, I've never seen one who uses the actual redneck persona to preach to his own folks, begging them in a muscular "in-your-face" way to quit being their own worst enemies. Whereas other comedians of the redneck genre either exaggerate the worst of redneck behavior or ridiculously glorify it to their sole comedic advantage, Crowder seeks a different result: he aims to serve his own people.
While there have been many clever redneck comedians, I've never seen one who uses the actual redneck persona to preach to his own folks, begging them in a muscular "in-your-face" way to quit being their own worst enemies. Whereas other comedians of the redneck genre either exaggerate the worst of redneck behavior or ridiculously glorify it to their sole comedic advantage, Crowder seeks a different result: he aims to serve his own people.
Through his biting satire, Trae Crowder becomes a cultural pathologist, a forensic social scientist if you will, who skillfully separates the malignant from the benign in those habits of thought and action most deeply woven throughout the fabric of what he calls “redneck” culture. Crowder understands that if these malignancies are not excised from the body politic of redneck society they will eventually prove deadly to the patient's own survival.
His cure, however, is tough love: Crowder demands rednecks cure themselves. He literally yells at them to stop being stupid.
Crowder is a master of the idiomatic verbal and physical body language of his own poor, rural, classic "redneck" roots and uses it to challenge and educate the people he so obviously loves. He is one of them and makes that very clear. He can say things no one else can and he clearly hopes it will elevate rather than denigrate. His biting satire and rib-splitting mockery call on those who identify as rednecks to get smart, to reject the absurd ideas that have somehow become the culturally iconic shackles of their own worst oppression.
But he also calls on all of us.
People like me, middle class white ladies, grandmotherly old gals, educated Northern women who live in places radically different from Crowder’s rural roots — and all the other non-rednecks throughout this country — need to appreciate how this young man is spiritually made from Georgia clay and Virginia coal, nursed on moonshine and raised like an old coon dog trusted to be able to fend for himself. This kid oozes toughness; he acts like the guy who might get himself killed in the wrong urban bar but his kin would be proud that he stood his ground no matter how stupid the cause. This child of the south calls all of us to realize he is much more than that, far more than a cheap redneck stereotype so callously accepted as truth and tossed out as humor over cocktail meatballs and white wine.
Crowder wants all of us to remember that his people cried and died for this country, shedding their blood from Bull Run to Iwo, and they still die disproportionately in modern wars both insanely fought very far away but also right here, in country, on the multiple, tragic battlefields of our horribly fractured national landscape.
Wittingly or not, Crowder reminds us that the rural poor labeled “redneck” are as much a national tragedy as the urban poor; they have been sold out, alienated, and dismissed as inferior by too many of us who would rather joke about them than address their fears and grievances and ask how it is possible that in this day and age we have such vast sections of country populated by people who have consistently been left in the dust for generations.
Crowder loves his people. He knows they are smart, resourceful, and desirous of success for themselves and their children. His cure for what he believes ails them is to stop talking trash and start thinking smart.
That’s a damn good prescription for everyone.
I think — I hope anyway — that I get this kid. I so want him to succeed. He has a powerful message that needs to be heard — by ALL of us.
Check out Trae on Facebook
Trae’s You Tube Videos — Check ‘em out!
His cure, however, is tough love: Crowder demands rednecks cure themselves. He literally yells at them to stop being stupid.
Crowder is a master of the idiomatic verbal and physical body language of his own poor, rural, classic "redneck" roots and uses it to challenge and educate the people he so obviously loves. He is one of them and makes that very clear. He can say things no one else can and he clearly hopes it will elevate rather than denigrate. His biting satire and rib-splitting mockery call on those who identify as rednecks to get smart, to reject the absurd ideas that have somehow become the culturally iconic shackles of their own worst oppression.
But he also calls on all of us.
People like me, middle class white ladies, grandmotherly old gals, educated Northern women who live in places radically different from Crowder’s rural roots — and all the other non-rednecks throughout this country — need to appreciate how this young man is spiritually made from Georgia clay and Virginia coal, nursed on moonshine and raised like an old coon dog trusted to be able to fend for himself. This kid oozes toughness; he acts like the guy who might get himself killed in the wrong urban bar but his kin would be proud that he stood his ground no matter how stupid the cause. This child of the south calls all of us to realize he is much more than that, far more than a cheap redneck stereotype so callously accepted as truth and tossed out as humor over cocktail meatballs and white wine.
Crowder wants all of us to remember that his people cried and died for this country, shedding their blood from Bull Run to Iwo, and they still die disproportionately in modern wars both insanely fought very far away but also right here, in country, on the multiple, tragic battlefields of our horribly fractured national landscape.
Wittingly or not, Crowder reminds us that the rural poor labeled “redneck” are as much a national tragedy as the urban poor; they have been sold out, alienated, and dismissed as inferior by too many of us who would rather joke about them than address their fears and grievances and ask how it is possible that in this day and age we have such vast sections of country populated by people who have consistently been left in the dust for generations.
Crowder loves his people. He knows they are smart, resourceful, and desirous of success for themselves and their children. His cure for what he believes ails them is to stop talking trash and start thinking smart.
That’s a damn good prescription for everyone.
I think — I hope anyway — that I get this kid. I so want him to succeed. He has a powerful message that needs to be heard — by ALL of us.
Check out Trae on Facebook
Trae’s You Tube Videos — Check ‘em out!
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