No sneering, elitist assumptions from me: I headed down to Wal-Mart to pick up a copy of Joe Dante's feminist horror film The Screwfly Solution, certain I could find it at a decent price.
Most lefties eschew Wal-Mart, both because of their primitive labor practices (true, but hardly unique among retailers) and their perceived blandness; this is the store that proudly claims it won't sell music with a parental notice sticker on it, yet I've bought such off-kilter DVDs as Larry Cohen's Perfect Strangers and Bertolucci's The Conformist there, to say nothing of Dante's strongly anti-Bush satire Homecoming, so it's not as though the chain routinely engages in censorious behavior.
I suspect the reason many people avoid Wal-Mart is simply because it conjures up visions of lower-middle class hell, a playground for Welfare Moms and Nascar Dads, and though liberals claim to support the working stiffs, they sure as hell don't want to hang out with them.
Ordinarily, I hate this attitude; after all, I'm a working stiff. Besides, my experiences in Wal-Mart suggest a broad range of people shop there, from skater dudes to Stepford Wives. I tune them all out and get what I'm there for.
Today, that wasn't an option. Just walking through the parking lot was an overdose of right-wing bumpr sticker wisdom (I lost count of how many THESE COLORS DON'T RUN stickers I saw on foreign-model cars; apparently the pro-Bush crowd lacks any sense of irony), and inside was even worse, Larry The Cable Guy posters and a special display full of copies of Bill Engvall's autobiography. The DVD section had shrunk considerably since my last visit, and though they had a copy of the Dante picture, the whole electronics section was soundtracked by Toby Keith's latest.
On my way out, I passed a young couple clad in blue jeans and t-shirts. The woman, with tacky big hair, pushed a baby carriage and the man, paunchy and slightly balding, pushed a shopping cart. Their conversation seemed slightly agitated as I approached them, and as I walked by I heard her say, and I swear I'm not making this up, "I just don't want that no-good brother of yours stoppin' by and drinkin' all the beer."
From the almost ostentatiously dropped final g's to the reference to beer drinking, it seemed like a parody of redneck patois. The only way it could have sounded more like a line from Mama's Family is if she'd said "no account" instead of "no good". My God, I thought, these people would find Joe Don Baker movies too challenging.
For a second I questioned whether I was indulging in the smug stereotyping I find so disagreeable among many so-called progressives. Then I realized no, these people were stereotying themselves. If you're dumb enough to say something like that in public, you deserve all the scorn you can get.
