Pantsuit Politics Book Club: Hillbilly Elegy

Pantsuit Politics

Lemonada Media

News, News Commentary, Politics, Society & Culture

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2017

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Sarah discusses the Pantsuit Politics Book Club March pick - J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy with Jean, a stay-at-home mom from Central New York who was unimpressed with the best seller. Leave us a review on iTunes by clicking here! Subscribe to Episodes: iTunes | Android Subscribe to our weekly email and get a free Pantsuit Primer audiobook! Follow Us: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook Show Notes Jean's beginning thoughts on J.D. Vance and Hillbilly Elegy "He is a bad source for what he is trying to get you to understand about these people. He is intrinsically different and always was because while the people he was talking about had the fuck it mentality, he didn't. he wanted out and knew it. he used the military as many often do to pull himself out. something that any of the others could do but dont because theyve already given up. like the bird that doesnt leave the cage when the doors open. He cant understand his own people and maybe thats why he comes off as judgy, because hes trying to tell a story from a mold he doesnt fit. My degree is in Psych, I have a deep rooted desire to understand why people think the way they do. I expected him to be a first hand source to aid in that understanding, but hes not. He is the outsider looking in at his own people because of that intrinsic difference between his drive and their lack of it, which means even he doesnt understand why they do and think the way they do. We also discussed: Arlie Russell Hochschild Strangers in their own Land S*town podcast Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days James Frey's A Million Little Pieces The Pantsuit Politics Book Club will be reading The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic by Ganesh Sitaraman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Sarah from the Left and I am here with Jean, a listener of Pintzoo Politics
0:26.6	and member of our Pintzoo Politics Book Club who lives in Central New York and is a
0:31.6	state-home mom and we are here to discuss Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, our
0:37.6	March Pintzoo Politics Book Club pick. Hi Jean, how are you?
0:41.0	Hi, good, how are you? Good. So I asked Jean to be on the show because she had
0:47.1	very passionate opinion and take on Hillbilly Elegy. What do you think of the
0:51.5	book, Jean? Why did you hate it? Other than finding some of it kind of offensive, I
0:59.9	didn't see where it did what it claims to do. It doesn't really make you
1:04.2	understand anything and if his point is to make you not believe a stereotype about
1:11.2	a person, it doesn't do a very good job of it. So I guess we should talk about
1:15.5	what the book claims to do. So it's a memoir and JD Vance grew up in part of
1:21.9	Eastern Kentucky and Southern Ohio and then went to into the military and on to
1:29.0	I believe you and take Yale and became an investment banker and so he's sort of
1:32.4	building himself as a sort of, I don't know if advocates the right word but
1:39.8	like I came from this place that nobody understands and I'm gonna try to help
1:44.5	you understand the sort of low-income, low socioeconomic status of
1:50.6	particularly sort of Appalachian, white Americans and so you, is that sort of
1:57.2	where you were coming from? Is that what you thought the book was kind of
1:59.4	offering up? Most of what I had heard about the book beforehand was people
2:05.5	saying it was a good way of understanding why people would vote for Trump
2:10.7	especially when it wasn't in their best interests. It's not even written around
2:15.2	the time with Trump so it doesn't really do. Yeah I mean I think that's definitely
	...

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