It’s not that bad, guys.
As a liberal, I admit to taking perverse pleasure—the German word is “schadenfreude”—in watching the FOX News Network turn into Jonestown when President Obama was projected the winner of the presidential election. After Ohio and Virginia went blue, it seemed plausible that Karl Rove, whose super-PAC was on the hook for $300 million, might start throwing his own feces at the cameras.
However, while I was giggling into my sleeve and watching to see if Brit Hume’s hair would actually move, history was happening in my home state of New Hampshire.
On Tuesday, Nov. 6, with the Democratic governor-elect Maggie Hassan defeating the GOP candidate Ovid Lamontagne—no known relation to the singer—and the newly elected Congresswomen Anne Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter, both Democrats, beating the Republican incumbents Charlie Bass and Frank Guinta, respectively, New Hampshire became the first state in this country’s history to have a female governor and all female representatives in Congress—Democrat Jean Shaheen and Republican Kelly Ayotte are the senators.
It’s worth noting that for much of 20th century, New Hampshire was the only red state stronghold on the liberal east coast. It is a state that still has one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, the painfully written and egregiously edited Union Leader, and had someone written an editorial for that rag twenty years ago stating that in 2012 New Hampshire would enjoy all-female congressional representation, the gun-toting good ole’ boys with their pick-up trucks and obdurate white politics would have laughed that person all the way back to the Massachusetts border. It would have seemed the stuff that a campy 50s sci-fi movie was based on.
But sorry, boys, all barbecues must come to an end.
Elections in a democracy are typically good indicators of the public’s pulse, and they seldom occur in a vacuum. Much has already been remarked in the media about why the epic flip-flopper and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney fell significantly short of making Obama a one-term president. However, I’m not interested in punditry and analysis from the talking heads.
What became clear, not only in New Hampshire, but nationally—except in the South where they’re still fighting The Civil War—is that the heyday of the far-right conservative white guy is in a decline, and unless they’re willing to part with some of their archaic 50s social paradigms and stop exalting Reagan and trickle-down economic theories that cater to the rich conservative white guys they hope to become, this species will soon be extinct.
This will be a tough pill for the far-right conservative white guy to swallow. If there’s one demographic that embodies stubbornness and resistance to a changing dynamic, it’s the tone-deaf and paranoid far-right conservative white guy, who wants his wife to serve him, the gays to stay away, and the minorities to quit picking his pockets.
Unfortunate as it is for him—and we’re seeing this in New Hampshire, a one-time bastion for the far-right conservative white guy—most women no longer have time to bake cookies for his kids after school and give him a hand-job at night while he is smoking his pipe and watching the news in the den. The gay community is here to stay and, hopefully, soon will have the same right to be miserable in their marriages as the far-right conservative white guy, and no one is picking their pockets by making them pay taxes.
To the far-right conservative white guy: look ahead, and you will see that you have one of three options. You can get with the times and accept the fact that demographics in America are changing, and stop with the pouting and paranoia. Newsflash: the nostalgia you’re chasing never really existed.
You could also try rallying the South to secede from the Union for a second time and move there. It’ll be a far-right conservative white guy utopia—guns and no taxes or gays getting married. Perhaps you can even readopt the Confederate Constitution, and President Obama will be considered a mere three-fifths of person.
Or you can join Jonestown and drink the Kool-Aid with the rest of the FOX News crew. In the meantime, watch out for errant Karl Rove poop.
Read more:
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Interview With Ryan Holiday: Chuck Ross interviews a self-admitted media manipulator.
Images from White People Mourning Romney/Tumblr