My country does not belong to Joe Sixpack

[rachelmanija]

I am not a hugely patriotic person in the "My country can beat up your country" sense, but I am an American citizen, and I fucking hate the popular American media narrative in which the only real Americans are white, rural, Republican or independent, middle or working class, uneducated, parents, heterosexuals, Christians, and aggressively folksy-- the "Joe Sixpack" noted by Sarah "Doggone It" Palin.

Those people do exist, and they are real Americans, but they are a relatively small slice of the population. The majority of Americans are either urban or suburban. In some urban areas, the majority of Americans are not white.

Jews, Muslims, Baha'i, people of color, college professors, white collar workers, union organizers, childless people, leftists, urban yuppies, street hustlers, queer activists, recent immigrants who don't speak English, subway riders, taco truck drivers -- even Wall Street millionaires -- are Americans too. Whether or not we look like a whitebread Norman Rockwell painting of some right-wing regressive fantasy of an America that only ever existed in little pockets of the country fifty years ago makes no difference. We are all citizens, we have the vote, and our country belongs to all of us.

Adrian asked me if Japan has an equivalent of "Joe Sixpack." "Maybe 'Sazae-san?'" I hazarded.

People from countries other than the US, do you also have an obnoxious stereotype of the "ideal" citizen? Who is he or she, and does she have a name?

Comments

[madam-silvertip.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to hear "Joe Sixpack" used as a term of approbation. I always thought it was something elitist (white, middle-to-upper-class, educated) people called white people who didn't make their standards of class and education.

I find it very disturbing to hear Sarah Palin use it as a badge of honor on MANY levels, among them all those you have mentioned. What really disturbs me is to hear a term, like "Archie Bunker" (who I think of when I hear "Joe Sixpack"), that's meant to place certain widely spread attitudes among the perceived underclasses, used without any change in racist, sexist, or otherwise chauvinistic nuance--the views Archie/Joe are supposed to hold, the bad behavior, ignorance, etc., that are supposed to be his--and yet as a badge of pride of trueblue Americanism, without any irony at all. Not only has Palin typed herself as a chauvinist, not only has she excused inexcusable attitudes, but she's shown herself to be ignorant of what "Joe Sixpack" really means AND also of the slur on the very populations she's claiming to defend.

I'm a white American, first generation, but since I'm German it becomes awkward. But I will say that there is at least one obnoxious stereotype of the Bostonian that is put forward as an ideal type. The Irish Catholic boob from Southie confused, perhaps via the Kennedys and Tip O'Neill, with an ivy league type--that's a very weird stereotype but one that kicks around a lot.

Married into Armenian culture, I think the Armenians from the former Soviet Union have several obnoxious-ideal stereotypes--the up and comer in America, the former-Communist corruption magnate; those from Persia and the Middle East don't seem to have as many obnoxious-ideal stereotypes, for some reason, at least not among men. There is an obnoxious-ideal stereotype of the gossipy Armenian female that is very much like the Jewish "yente."

[madam-silvertip.livejournal.com]

Let me say here that one of my best friends is an Irish-Ukrainian Catholic from Southie, who is no boob; I am referring to a strange conflation of different Bostonian stereotypes that you get. I suppose "the cultural boob whose family is rich enough to go Ivy League." Does exist, but is often as obnoxious as portrayed; and very seldom exists in the form portrayed, which seems to derive directly from the Kennedys. It's not so often that you have a combination of oldish money and Southie rough edges and when you do the families are quite well known, not a type you just find walking down the street.