The Athens of the South
UPDATED BELOW:
It’s fitting that the Teabaggers chose Nashville for their hoedown; it’s safely within the Bible Belt, but full of enough crass, ersatz show business to offset its provincial dreariness and add to the absurd fakery of the whole event. It’s been twenty years since I last visited that fair city, but I doubt it has changed much, and thus it is the perfect venue for a command performance of Caribou Barbie and the Bluegrass Morans. The Opryland Hotel, like everything else in Nashville, is a cheesy box in the suburbs, surrounded by parking. It’s a little like Wasilla, really. Sarah will love it there.
The actual “city” itself is a lifeless, tatty, and hollowed out backwater; its majestic Richardson Romanesque train station has been turned into a hotel; what few historic buildings remain huddle in disconnected clusters around the state capitol building and the river, and a downtown “revitalization” project did the exact opposite. It consists of an utterly charmless convention center, bland hotel, and a lame shopping mall covering several blocks, connected by pedestrian overpasses and sitting atop forbidding, windowless parking garages. A stroll through this boring panopticon bubble came up snake eyes as far as finding a decent cup of coffee, but was nonetheless revealing. No one except the lowliest help was anything but white, and everyone seemed oddly glum. A pretty young (white) clerk in the shabby and dreadful department store, Castner-Knott’s, when asked about her hometown, drawled, “Ah hate it here; ah cain’t wait t’leave,” an observation that due to the glacial slowness of Southern locution, took a shockingly long time for her to utter. She dreamed of moving to California with her boyfriend after a recent visit there, her first outside the South. Indeed, looking at it from Castner-Knott’s in downtown Nashville even the crappy Robinson’s store at the hideous Beverly Center couldn’t help but have looked good to her, but I wondered whether that accent would go over with the 90210 crowd. She urged me to go see the replica of the Parthenon in Centennial Park, “It’s jus’ lak th’ one in Greece, only fixed up.”
Dinner out was another baffling experience; we were encouraged to go to a district of restored cast-iron and brick buildings that somehow survived Nashville’s “urban renewal” and found a short but lively street of places that were actually open with people coming in and out, again nearly all of them white. (I wracked my brain to figure out whether there were ever any real black people in the city to spark so much obvious white flight, but I never found out.) There was a brief wait at the door, and we asked some exiting patrons if the restaurant was any good. ”S’all raht if y’lak French fude.” Hmm. Not a very ringing endorsement, but our table was ready, so we went in, not wanting to spend thirty bucks on a cab out to the suburbs where all the supposedly good restaurants were. The menu consisted of standard American steaks and seafood; the only vaguely French thing I could find was French fries. They didn’t even have bearnaise, let alone escargot or some of those spooky French things that turn out to be brains or something. I was kind of disappointed, but by that time, not too surprised. I had “Le New York,” medium rare.
Back in the 60’s, Jessica Mitford was writing for Esquire Magazine about the civil rights struggle and when she traveled to Nashville was as mystified as I was that such a place would call itself the “Athens of the South.” She mused, “Do Athenians call their city ’The Nashville of Greece?’” I rather doubt it. But nonetheless, all these thousands of years later, Nashville is probably the perfect choice for the teabaggers, never mind that its agora is paved, striped, and regularly patrolled to keep out darkies. Democracy was born in Athens, but Nashville has the fake version, which is even better because thanks to Dick Armey and Sarah Palin, it’s been “fixed up.” The teabaggers will be right at home.
UPDATE: I just watched snippets of Palin’s speech, if you want to call it that. It was the expected mixture of resentment, paranoia, and lies, but somehow it was still worse than I imagined, especially the audience reactions. I need to dig up a transcript and a barf bag before I can translate it, much less dissect it. Perhaps in a nod to Nashville, her hair was considerably larger than usual. More later on this CHNN station, and on CHNN News Overnight.
That’ll open their aayes…. I am just in a sill mood, sorry.
I tried to work “Thet’ll open yore ass” into the piece but I couldn’t, partly because some Heel keeps walking off with my copies of “Poison Penmanship,” and I couldn’t get the quote right.
“Thunderstruck, I then realized hey meant “eyes.” Or something like that. It would be sacrilege to misquote Jessica, so I left it out.
I am guilty and I apologize. Look at it positively, though. You are enlightening a Nazi with American literature of the finest kind. But then again that chicks family was in kahuz with the Nazis…
I tried to look it up between packing teh car but couldn’t find it fast enough. It is somewhere in trip notes….
“You should tra meetin’ Kissin’ Jim Folsom. That’d open yo’ ass.” For a moment, I was frozen with astonishment – until I realized he was saying “eyes”
- you are welcome.
For none are so blind as those who refuse to open their ass.
You’re right about Nashville. I too was last there about 20-25 years ago. As you said, the city is (was) lifeless.
One night, though, we asked a taxi driver to take us to a good jazz club, thinking there wouldn’t be such a thing. I was surprised to find one of the best clubs I’d been to in a long time. They had two groups playing that night, one local and the other from Detroit. They were both very good.
Whoda thunk.
I imagine that Nashville does have a real life, but they do so successfully hide it. I also notice that you, like me, let quite a few years go by before returning. Coincidence?
The only redeeming quality in Nashville (and Memphis, for that matter) is that it is a sort of Mecca for musicians – mostly Country, but also some decent jazz, rock, folk and other genres. I have a few musician friends who went to Nashville to play studio but nobody stayed.
I knew a lot of Yankee transplants in North Carolina when I lived in Asheville, which is a lot nicer than Memphis and has a tad more culture and is in the mountains, of course. Yee haw. There were Bluegrass festivals every other week, it seemed.
I always wanted to learn to play one of those knee puppet things. heh.
The accents are nicer in North Carolina, too. (It helps that people who live there actually seem to like it….)
About Asheville. My 31-yr-old son visited there some four months ago cuz his best friend relocated to Asheville from here (Hillbilly, Michigan). Philip, my son, loved it, and claims the food and culture are terrific. He swears the restaurants are on par with Manhattan.
Ah Naish-vul. Your description, Hag, brought back so many not-fond memories.
I’ve only been there twice, both for music-related affairs and events, and I loathed the place. Not that I have any fonder memories of any other place in the South (except for New Orleans). I don’t. The South shoulda been seceeded, if you ask me.
The first time I was in Naish-vul, I had a car and so was able to explore a little bit, out to Belle Meade and whatnot, all those thoroughbred ranches, or pseudo-ranches, and that was… interesting. The whole Plantation fantasy seems to animate (if you want to call it that) the outer burbs, and at least it’s something.
As for town, well. A tornado had ripped through a couple of weeks before I got there, so there was much wreckage still to be cleaned up. The problem was, it was impossible to tell what was tornado wreckage and what was “renewal.” The whole downtown was grim from end to end, and ugly and ruinous, and everybody I encountered, almost all of them white as a sheet (heh), was sour and glum. What a shithole.
So the event was at the Ryman, and that was actually a really nice venue, and the show was great, the after-party was better, and everybody there was from somewhere else. Oh yes, that was the key; I don’t think there was even one Naish-vullian in the entire assembly. Good. Met some terrific people who are still friends, and have followed some careers that pretty much started that night with interest.
If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have gone back two years later, this time to an event at the Gaylord (CMA’s for anyone who’s interested.) No car this time. Was staying at the Hermitage (hotel, not the Andrew Jackson Plantation) with a swell view of the Capitol, and I decided to do a Civil Rights Tour, since nothing else in that awful burg was worth my time. Decided to scout out the Woolworth’s Lunch Counter, the Walgreens, Grant’s, Kress… just occurred to me, the only name most folks know today is Walgreens. And in Naish-vul, the only site that was still identifyable was McClellans, which nobody’s heard of. The rest of the sites were still there, but the stores were long gone, and that whole dismal stretch of 5th Avenue was, like most of the rest of Downtown Naish-vul, almost abandoned and very dreary. There was some talk of making a memorial of some sort, and there was a small sign at one of the sites that commemorated the sit-ins in 1960. So there was that.
Music Row was almost as sad as Downtown. I enjoyed some of my time in Naish-vul, but the awful, heavy dreariness of most of it has overwhelmed the pleasant experiences I may have had.
Couldn’t wait to leave, and I have never, ever wanted to go back, and I have refused several offers to return.
How eerily similar our experiences were; I had fun, too, when I stuck with the people who were part of our convention. (Theatrical lighting; it’s quite a big business, and distinctly non-provincial.) I too, harbor a certain prejudice against the South; it’s such a hotbed of reactionary politics and bad times, frozen in amber.
Well, I never been to Nashville, but I once spent a week posing nude for a life class at the Memphis Art Academy in Crump Park, and dropped some original Owsley acid with players and crew from the Front Street Theater. (It was a long, looong time ago.)
Never been to Graceland — not that Graceland anyway.
My trip involved some nudity, too, but I left it out since it didn’t advance the story line.
Plot isn’t everything. Sometimes ambience is all. (Now there’s a title for a memoir Naked (or Nude, if you’re going for a G rating) in Nashville.
Almost as good as Stuck in Sight of Mobile….
I couldn’t find a transcript yet, but for those who can stomach it, here are two videos:
Sarah Palin 2-6-10 Tea Party Keynote Speech (40 minutes YouTube video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7gVp3diPbI&feature=player_embedded
Full speech and 15 minute Q&A C-Span video where the questions were pre-selected by the Convention Host
http://c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/02/06/HP/A/29348/Palin+Gives+Keynote+Address+at+Tea+Party+Convention.aspx
I’ve seen almost all of it; I’m not sure I want to write about it. GG did a pretty good job this morning of summing it up, and it just wasn’t interesting. The whole teabagger thing is just a Republican rebranding effort.
There’s a lot of real populist anger out there, undirected or poorly aimed and undermined by the Palins and Becks of the world glomming onto it. The realty too few perceive is that both parties, R and D, are rotten with corporatism, and it’s the marriage of business and government that’s the biggest threat to democracy and our Constitutional republic.
And you’ll notice that the tea partier’s “manifesto” has morphed into the standard Republican Wall Street/Exxon BS. Good luck with that “populism,” righties.
She wears hair extensions, he has a permanent lip liner tattoo, and, from my conclusions, has had some good work done since the 2008 election (mainly Botox) and dropped about 10-15 lbs. Not that there’s anything wrong with her getting cosmetic surgery or starving herself into a size 6.
But, it just goes to show you that she’s still just a beauty contestant.
I think she also had those individual false eyelashes on, too. I liked the way they had the comfy chairs so she could show off (and massage) her legs. But then, she opens that mouth and wow, what a lying, amoral bitch she is. I hope she keeps doing these; everyone will be sick of her, and the hollowness of her warmed-over Bush policies will become clearer.
I must say that recent developments in politics make a beauty contestant look rather attractive on all levels. At least she looks cute. That is the best we can now hope for.
Do you seriously believe that she could open the doors for special interest groups any further? (what doors? are there any left?)
Seriously, the changeling has sufficiently demonstrated that it doesn’t matter who is in office, after all.
And a people that is capable of electing Reagan and Dubbya (twice no less) is perfectly suitable to be led by a beauty contestant. Can you imagine Benito Berlusconi’s eyes at the next summit?
Hag, you are in fine form here, as is the comment section. And now, we have the comedy of the ‘palmepromter’, with which Palin masterfully answered the three-point question that she was given in advance but still needed crib notes to get through.
I again marvel at how reality is truly more amazing than fiction.
…And the stuff that was written there: just the usual buzzwords, but she was afraid she might forget them. What a moran.
The “handwriting” shows that:
1. She knew at least some questions beforehand, but even with forewarning;
2. She still couldn’t trust herself to answer, and;
3. Her answer still sucked.
She’s counting on people feeling sorry for her. That’s my new theory, in the next post.
I’m cuter than her. Nannny nanny boo boo. (See my side x side comparison from the early 80s, we are the same age in this picture.)
http://retzilian.com/
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this is what she really looks like – tending toward fat, wild-eyed, stale, flat.
meow
Yes, you are cuter, you tart. To be sure I’d have to see the bathing suit/high heels picture. She does have a little of that Monica Lewinsky dinner plate face going on; she’s actually gotten more acttractive with age, as some people do. (but you never know until it’s too late…)
I have to say that when I hear Sarah Palin talk, I’m reminded of those little bits of text which used to accompany Playmates of the Month. You know the ones — about the pleasure of helping Mom bake cookies, or the insights gained in her community college philosophy class, and how she didn’t have a current full-time boyfriend.
God shed his grace on thee, Amurrica, and don’t you forget it.