J.D. Vance, I'm calling you out -- again

Mr. "Get a Job, Meth Heads" is making hash out of a run for Senate

I’m with the Bitter Southerner and a host of others on this: 2016’s breakout memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” was a buncha conservative hooey packaged as a movie-ready exploration of one man’s trip through Appalachia poverty.

Whatevs, J.D. You do you, but that tome did little more than add to the already-nasty reputation of hillbillies being lazy, shiftlessness and amoral — characterizations that were without support other than Vance’s own say-so.

Now, Mr. Venture Capitalist is running for U.S. Senate, on the basis of his best-selling book which was roundly dismissed by real hillbillies, everywhere. So far, Vance is spending quite a bit of time hitting all his GQP marks while he cleaves to “values,” which include:

1. America first

2. That’s pretty much it

The press has been missing the story all along, and for that, I blame the lack of hillbillies in newsrooms who can bring their unique ability to call bullshit where there is bullshit on the part of a hillbilly writer. For example, this New York Post article is crap. Liberals haven’t “turned on” Vance. Liberals recognized him for what he was and is. I am a hillbilly (Ozark variety) and I loudly dismissed the book the moment I finished it.

Now, no less than the New York Times says Vance recently “converted” to Trumpism (mainly because he once called Trump “cultural heroin”), but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It didn’t take a deep reading of “Hillbilly Elegy” to see Vance was raising the flag for small government, personal responsibility, and that anathema to a healthy community, an I-got-mine mentality that would have gotten him drummed out of his local Pentecostal church. His stance has always been that:

1. His family is willing to commit welfare fraud because they’re lazy and

2. He’s special, Yale-educated and really good at making money, and

3. You’re no J.D. Vance.

The Atlantic called him a cringe-inducing clown. The New Republic characterized the first week of his campaign as “humiliating.” Here he is showing his ass in The Guardian. The Bulwark pointed out last month that, in a week’s time, Vance:

Tweeted about how he’s scared to go to New York because it might be dirty.

Defended a Nazi from being kicked off of twitter.

Shared a thread defending election fraud conspiracies.

Fantastically claimed Google was “hiding” his website.

Mocked reporters for saying they were traumatized by the Capitol riot.

These actions, of course, could qualify him to run for president in the current GQP, but let’s do what we can to make that this woe-begotten campaign remains nothing more than a gleam in a too-ambitious eye.