What Today’s America Could Learn From Patsy Cline

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John A Arkansawyer
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Joined: Sat May 15, 2010 9:51 am
Location: Little Rock, Arkansaw
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What Today’s America Could Learn From Patsy Cline

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

I'm curious about this guy's book now.

What Today’s America Could Learn From Patsy Cline
The story of the country music trailblazer and her hometown defies the simplistic narratives we tell about rural Southern whites.


Aside from "What you mean 'we', kemosabe?", my reaction to this short little piece is positive. You gotta love a story with really bad villains, and this one's got 'em:
For 10 years, she sang at an endless succession of low-lit highway social halls in dark corners of Maryland and the Virginias, often outfitted in a red-and-white fringed cowgirl suit that her mom sewed at home. Her hometown was not supportive. In 1957 she performed a new single, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” to win the nationally broadcast TV show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. Winchester’s ruling class—the doctors, landowners, and lawyers who had held sway over the town since its colonial origins—couldn’t have cared less. They gave Patsy’s national breakthrough scant notice in the daily paper, even spelling her name wrong. They were similarly dismissive when she performed at Carnegie Hall, and when she died tragically at age 30, they mocked her heavily attended Winchester funeral as resembling “a mob scene … like ‘dollar day’ at the department store.”
The sooner we put those assholes in the grave&piss on the dirt above it, the better off we'll be

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