J. TODD FOSTER: Our Area Is Not A Freak Show For National Media

The national media have developed quite a fascination with Southwest Virginia of late. It’s akin to the curiosity inspired by the Bearded Woman, Sword Swallower or Fire Eater of the old circus freak shows.

Most of the outside media’s infatuation with the Mountain Empire comes vis-à-vis the road taken by Barack Obama on his path to the White House. Obama’s road passed through Bristol, Va., on June 5 and through Lebanon, Va., on Sept. 9.
Our president-elect got trounced here – as much as John Kerry and more than Al Gore – but sent a message that his would be a 50-state campaign and not a blue and purple state lovefest.

By my count, four national media organizations have deemed us worthy of coverage. Unfortunately, three of those stories were unkind or cast a pall over our fine region. In short, they made us look like rubes.

The fourth story was a fine Washington Post piece (see last Thursday’s front page) about a unique Abingdon retirement community called ElderSpirit, where the 42 seniors “wear their politics on their feet: Crocs rather than Dr. Scholl’s and sport bumper stickers such as “BARACK OBAMA is a LOT more ABEL than CAIN.”

Our first run-in with the national media came June 5 when MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell referred to us on-air as “real redneck ... sort of ... uhm ... bordering on Appalachia ... country.”

On Oct. 5, The Los Angeles Times ran a balanced story on a racist and insensitive column written by Bobby Lee May, then the Buchanan County chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign. Published in The Voice newspaper, May suggested a President Obama would mandate “a queer in every foxhole and a camouflage sex toy in every backpack’ requirement.” He also would raise taxes to send $845 billion to Africa “so the Obama family there can skim off enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.”

The McCain campaign severed its ties to May after this newspaper ran a story Oct. 8 by Daniel Gilbert on the Buchanan column. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC dubbed May his nightly “Worst Person in the World.”

Finally, the “backwater” that is Bristol, Va., was profiled in a Dec. 1 article in the über-liberal but well-respected magazine The Nation.
Written by writer/editor Bob Moser, also the editor of The Texas Observer, the article’s premise is that Obama won traditional red states Virginia and North Carolina because, unlike prior Democratic nominees, he campaigned here.

The article’s premise is largely accurate but for the Bristol part: Obama lost Southwest Virginia by virtually the same margin as Kerry and by even more than Gore.
Other parts of the piece, headlined “A New, Blue Dixie,” had some questionable references, including to Bristol being the reddest part of the commonwealth. (If Bristol’s political views were a steak, it would be cooked rare and still bloody. The upper Shenandoah Valley would still be mooing .)

The opening paragraph in The Nation article refers to Bristol as a “remote Southern backwater containing 17,000 souls.”  The word “backwater” has different dictionary definitions – at least one flattering and one not: We’re either “a place or state of stagnant backwardness: This area of the country is a backwater that continues to resist progress” or “an isolated, peaceful place.”

I’ll go with the latter.

My thanks to East Tennessee native Thomas C. McCloud, who now lives in Bowie, Md., and who alerted me to The Nation article.

I’ll let McCloud defend our region by quoting, with his permission, from a letter he wrote the magazine. Its article “needs some help,” he stated.

When combined with our Tennessee brethren, McCloud notes, Bristol has 42,000 souls and is the third leg of the Tri-Cities, with a combined population of about 150,000. We also have our own airport, which can actually land jets, and one of the nation’s most heavily traveled interstates, McCloud observes.

If author Moser wants backwater, then McCloud suggests Butler, Tenn., population 608 and McCloud’s home for his first 20 years.

McCloud, who still has relatives in the area, also notes that Bristol is not as tied to the Confederacy as some parts of Texas. He believes the Mountain Empire, which had few slaveowners, would have sided with the Union if not for being surrounded by the Confederacy. He opines that many of our residents began supporting the Party of Lincoln because they knew Abe was doing his best to help the nation. Why many of our residents remained Republican following Roosevelt’s New Deal is baffling, McCloud wrote the magazine.

“Nothing has been more important in the development of the region than that fostered by the Tennessee Valley Authority, that great socialistic enterprise created by FDR and George Norris, at a time when government worked for the poor as well as those of great wealth. And it did not surprise me that Barack Obama showed the ‘folks in Bristol’ the same respect that he showed to voters everywhere else in the country.”
National media will always be welcome to parachute into this area for stories. But they might want to heed this: There are no more racists and rednecks in this part of the country than in most other parts. And the term “backwater” is relative. Bristol is a backwater compared to New York. Butler, Tenn., is a backwater compared to Bristol.

J. TODD FOSTER is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at or (276) 645-2513.