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The Youth Of America Is Rebelling!
Iowahawk: Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of
Dollywood Values
Iowahawk blog | 11/12/04 | David Burge
"I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously
fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte.
"It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the
Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the
other children and his care
facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern
Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of
family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now,
Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner
courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby
Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation
that claimed her son.
She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective
'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine
recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made
from a utility cable spool, bearing a the remains of a gutted catfish.
"This used to be all Ikea," she says, rocking on heels between heaved
sobs. "It's too late for us. Maybe it's not to late for me to warn
others."
Pandora's Moon Pie Box
While poignant, Ellen McCormack's painful battle to save her son is
far from isolated. Across coastal America, increasing numbers of
families are discovering that their children are have been lured into
"Cracker" culture -- a new, freewheeling underground youth movement
that celebrates the
hedonistic thrills of frog-gigging and outlaw modified sprint cars.
No one knows their exact number, but sociologists say that the
movement is exploding among young people in America's most
fashionable zip codes.
"We first detected it a few years ago, with the emergence of the
trucker hat phenomenon," says Gerard Levin, professor of abnormal
sociology at the University of California. "At first we thought it
was some sort of benign, ironic strain. By the time we realized the
early wearers really were interested in seed corn hybrids and
Peterbilts, it had already escaped containment."
Levin points to 'Patient Zero,' who in 1997 was a 23-year old
graduate student in Gender Studies at San Francisco State University.
"During a cross-country trip to New York, he stopped at the Iowa 80
Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa, and bought a John Deere gimme cap as a
gag souvenir," says Levin. "Within a year, he had dropped out of
graduate school, abandoned his SoMa apartment, and and was working at
a drive-thru
liquor store. Today he is a wealthy televangelist in Bossier City, Louisiana."
The contagion of 'Patient Zero' would prove devastating. Soon trucker
hats were appearing throughout trendy coastal neighborhoods like
Williamsburg and Park Slope and Portrero Hill, often accessorized
with chain wallets and 'wife beater' t-shirts. A new alternative
youth movement had
emerged, rejecting the staid norms of establishment NPR society and
embracing the 'tune-in, turn-on, chug-up' ethos of the Pabst Blue
Ribbon underground. Before long, it would broadcast its siren call to
an even younger generation -- one whose parents were woefully
unequipped to recognize
it.
Youthquake
"It was one day last spring," says Ellen McCormack. "My life partner
Carol and I were in the garage, working on a giant Donald Rumsfeld
papier mache head for the Bay Area March Against the War, when Rain
walked by. I thought he looked kind of strange, so I stopped him and
looked closely
into his eyes. Then I realized the truth -- he was wearing a mullet.
I was shocked, but he swore to me that it was only ironic."
"After a few months, it was clear Rain had lied to us -- that hideous
Kentucky waterfall was completely earnest," she adds, choking back
sobs.
Her 18-year old son would soon exhibit other signs of disturbing changes.
"I was driving past a McDonalds one day last summer, and I thought I
saw Rain's bike outside. He had told me earlier that he was going to
a friend's house to stuff envelopes for the Dennis Kucinich campaign.
I pulled a U-turn and headed back," she recalls. "When I confronted
him in the parking lot,
he started giving me a lame story about how he was only there to
protest globalization, but I could smell the french fries on his
breath."
McCormack says that Rain's erratic behavior would also come to
include excessive politeness and deference.
"Everytime I tried to talk to him it was 'yes Momma,' and 'no Momma,'
when he knows damn well my name is Ellen," she says, anger rising in
her voice. "It was like I didn't even know him anymore."
McCormack tried an intervention with friends from the Anti-war
community, but to no avail. In October, Billy Ray packed up his Monte
Carlo and left for basic training at Camp Pendleton.
"I have no son," she says in a barely audible whisper.
Across the country In toney Westchester County, New York, Jim and
Sandy Vandenberg describe a similar tale of family grief.
"We are people of faith who keep the sabbath," says Sandy, a curator
in the Dada collection of the Museum of Modern Art. "Even when she
was a toddler, we made sure Emily got up early every Sunday morning
to read the New York Times Book Review. Sunday morning was our time,
until..."
"Until those damned Jesus bastards stole my little girl," interrupts
her husband, barely containing his anger. Once a Freshman honors
student in Lacanian Deconstruction Theory at NYU, their daughter is
now better known as Lurleen McDaniel -- reigning Princess of the
Tulsa Livestock Show
and Rodeo.
In Bainbridge Island, Washington, single mom Jane Michelson says she
began suspecting that her son Brian was in trouble after he started
hanging with a new crowd at school.
"These weren't normal kids, neighborhood kids in Che t-shirts who
want to drop a couple of hits of X and chill on Radiohead," she says.
"They would talk in a sort of strange code language, like 'Roll
Tide!' and 'Gig 'em Ags!' and 'Piiiig Sooieeee!'"
Signs of trouble would soon multiply.
"One day I got into my Volvo and hit the stereo preset for Pacifica
Radio, and then I heard this obscene 'Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy'
song coming from the speakers," she recalls. "The very next week, the
maid found a tin of Skoal in his Wranglers. I told him him right then
-- it was either me, or
his tobacco-spitting friends."
Now known as Randy Dale Cash, her estranged son is a starting
linebacker for Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.
Peer Pressure
Jane Michelson is not alone in her story. Throughout coastal America,
school adminstrators and parents are reporting an alarming surge in
'Cracker' cliques on campus. Also known as 'Y'alls' or 'Neckies,'
officials say the groups thrive by attracting outcasts and misfits
from the student body.
"We try hard to engage all of our students in fun, healthy activities
like Progressive Eco-Action March and Rage Against Intolerance Week,"
says Lawrence DiBenedetto of Patrice Lumumba Magnet School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, there are going to be those
who fall through
the cracks, into a life of bass fishing and stockcar racing."
It appears those cracks are widening. In one recent three-week
period, fourteen high school students in Portland, Oregon were
suspended for distributing pork rinds; a Burlington, Vermont high
school was briefly closed for decontamination after janitors found a
bible hidden in a restroom; and
forty-six undergraduate coeds at Swarthmore were expelled for staging
clandestine Mary Kay cosmetics parties.
"We became suspicious after several heavily made-up students arrived
at Katha Pollitt lecture in a pink Cadillacs," says Swarthmore Dean
of Students Geraldine Marcus.
Some say the craze threatens even the nation's most exclusive prep
schools. At Exeter, Andover and St. Albans, rumors abound of secret
societies where initiates are steeped in the black arts of restrictor
plate cheating and satellite descramblers. Washington's elite Sidwell
Friends School was nearly forced to close after scandalized parents
learned that several students were openly touting Sams Club cards.
The Eclectic School Aid Hayseed Trip
To better understand what attracts young affluent students to the
subculture, I spent a recent evening interviewing a group of
self-described 'Neckies' from exclusive New Trier High School in
Winnetka, Illinois. Like countless other Friday nights, the
close-knit group had made the 80 mile ritual
journey to rural Belvidere, Illinois, to cruise Steak 'N' Shake and
hang out at the Mills Fleet Farm parking lot.
"Y'all, check out these new mudders," says 17-year old 'Dakota,'
proudly displaying the gigantic knobbed tires under his radically
lifted 4x4 Audi Allroad. "I'm fixin' to get me a winch and Tuffbox
fer it next week."
Not to be outdone, friend and fellow Neckie 'Duane' sounds 'Dixie' on
the novelty horn of his jacked-up BMW M3. An early graduation gift
from his parents, Duane has turned the expensive German coupe into an
homage to the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee, complete with orange
Stars-and-Bars paint job and spit cup on the console.
"Grandma gave me some money fer a summer study trip over ta Paris,
but I thought the paint job was cooler," laughs Duane. "Hell, she
thinks I'm over in the Sorbonne right now, studying Foucault and all
that ????."
"I'm a-fixin' to put in a nitrous system on the General Lee, so I'ma
call Grandma up and aks her for some book money," he adds.
Like most of their classmates, these North Shore Neckies were once
bound for some of the top universities in America -- Yale, Duke,
Stanford, Northwestern -- until they succumbed to the allure of the
Downhome slacker lifestyle. Now some openly talk of dropping out,
learning TIG welding,
waiting tables at Waffle House or draining oil at Jiffy Lube; some
even hint of enrolling at Iowa State. What drives privileged teens to
such seemingly self-destructive behavior?
"I guess you might could say we're rebels," says Rachel 'Tyffanie'
Stern, 17, lighting a Merit Menthol 100. Once destined for Vassar,
Stern is now living with friends after her parents kicked her out of
the house for spending her bat mitzvah money on a bass boat. Last
month she became the
youngest Jewish female to win an event on the Bassmasters Pro Tour.
Pausing for furtive glances, several of the teens share sniffs from a
bottle of Harmon Triple Heat deer scent.
"Wooo-eee, ???? howdy, that's gonna bring a mess of them whitetail
bucks," says 19-year old Wei-Li 'Lamar' Cheung. A former Westinghouse
Science Award winner, Cheung has devoted his chemistry and biology
skill to building a fledgling hunting supply business.
A first generation Asian-American, Cheung says he was drawn to the
group by their acceptance of minorities. "Hell, I kept tellin' all my
family and teachers I wanna play fiddle, not violin," he explains.
"The 'Necks accept me the way I am."
African-American Kwame 'Joe Don' Harris agrees. "Just because I'm
black, teachers were always pushing me to go to Spellman to study
Langston Hughes and Thelonius Monk," says the 17 year old. "These ol'
boys here never laugh at my dream to be a crew chief for the
Craftsman Truck Series."
If there is one aspiration that unites them all, it is the dream of
moving to Branson, Missouri. Long famed for its laid-back attitude
toward religion, country music and the military, Branson has become a
Mecca for radical young Neckies seeking an escape from the
stultifying conformity of their
coastal hometowns.
"????, y'all, I heard Branson's got like four Wal Marts, and more
$5.95 all-day breakfast buffets than Glencoe has Starbucks," enthuses
Dakota, adding quickly that "pardon my French."
"Plus it's only a short drive up to Fort Leonard Wood," adds Tyffanie.
Talk arises of Branson's 'Summer of Bubba,' the upcoming hedonistic
hillbilly festival of music, hog calling and nightcrawler gathering
expected to draw millions of Neckies from as far as Santa Monica and
Ithaca -- even Europe.
"Y'all, I heard them Swedish 'Necks are hardcore," says Joe Don.
"They digitally remastered all the original Jerry Clower albums." A
live-for-today attitude permeates the group's ethos, with little
concern about consequences. I ask Justin 'Jim Rob' Borowski, 18, what
motivates a
young to abandon a promising academic career in Gender Theory and
Critical History to take a wild ride in the dark world of roofing and
drywall contracting.
"My daddy was sorta mad when I tolt him I was gonna skip Columbia
Journalism School for a plumbing apprenticeship," he answer
philosophically, popping a plug of Red Man into his lip. "I tolt him
that journalism is important, but the world needs plumbers too."
"After the toilet backed up, I think he got my point."
Iowahawk: Blue State Blues as Coastal Parents Battle Invasion of
Dollywood Values
Iowahawk blog | 11/12/04 | David Burge
"I'm not sure where we went wrong," says Ellen McCormack, nervously
fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte.
"It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the
Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the
other children and his care
facilitators."
"But now..." she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern
Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of
family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. "But now,
Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray."
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner
courage -- a mother's courage -- and leads me down the hall to "Bobby
Ray's" bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation
that claimed her son.
She opens the door to a reveal a riot of George Jones CDs, reflective
'mudflap mama' stickers, empty foil packs of Red Man, and U.S. Marine
recruiting posters. In the middle of the room: a makeshift table made
from a utility cable spool, bearing a the remains of a gutted catfish.
"This used to be all Ikea," she says, rocking on heels between heaved
sobs. "It's too late for us. Maybe it's not to late for me to warn
others."
Pandora's Moon Pie Box
While poignant, Ellen McCormack's painful battle to save her son is
far from isolated. Across coastal America, increasing numbers of
families are discovering that their children are have been lured into
"Cracker" culture -- a new, freewheeling underground youth movement
that celebrates the
hedonistic thrills of frog-gigging and outlaw modified sprint cars.
No one knows their exact number, but sociologists say that the
movement is exploding among young people in America's most
fashionable zip codes.
"We first detected it a few years ago, with the emergence of the
trucker hat phenomenon," says Gerard Levin, professor of abnormal
sociology at the University of California. "At first we thought it
was some sort of benign, ironic strain. By the time we realized the
early wearers really were interested in seed corn hybrids and
Peterbilts, it had already escaped containment."
Levin points to 'Patient Zero,' who in 1997 was a 23-year old
graduate student in Gender Studies at San Francisco State University.
"During a cross-country trip to New York, he stopped at the Iowa 80
Truck Stop in Walcott, Iowa, and bought a John Deere gimme cap as a
gag souvenir," says Levin. "Within a year, he had dropped out of
graduate school, abandoned his SoMa apartment, and and was working at
a drive-thru
liquor store. Today he is a wealthy televangelist in Bossier City, Louisiana."
The contagion of 'Patient Zero' would prove devastating. Soon trucker
hats were appearing throughout trendy coastal neighborhoods like
Williamsburg and Park Slope and Portrero Hill, often accessorized
with chain wallets and 'wife beater' t-shirts. A new alternative
youth movement had
emerged, rejecting the staid norms of establishment NPR society and
embracing the 'tune-in, turn-on, chug-up' ethos of the Pabst Blue
Ribbon underground. Before long, it would broadcast its siren call to
an even younger generation -- one whose parents were woefully
unequipped to recognize
it.
Youthquake
"It was one day last spring," says Ellen McCormack. "My life partner
Carol and I were in the garage, working on a giant Donald Rumsfeld
papier mache head for the Bay Area March Against the War, when Rain
walked by. I thought he looked kind of strange, so I stopped him and
looked closely
into his eyes. Then I realized the truth -- he was wearing a mullet.
I was shocked, but he swore to me that it was only ironic."
"After a few months, it was clear Rain had lied to us -- that hideous
Kentucky waterfall was completely earnest," she adds, choking back
sobs.
Her 18-year old son would soon exhibit other signs of disturbing changes.
"I was driving past a McDonalds one day last summer, and I thought I
saw Rain's bike outside. He had told me earlier that he was going to
a friend's house to stuff envelopes for the Dennis Kucinich campaign.
I pulled a U-turn and headed back," she recalls. "When I confronted
him in the parking lot,
he started giving me a lame story about how he was only there to
protest globalization, but I could smell the french fries on his
breath."
McCormack says that Rain's erratic behavior would also come to
include excessive politeness and deference.
"Everytime I tried to talk to him it was 'yes Momma,' and 'no Momma,'
when he knows damn well my name is Ellen," she says, anger rising in
her voice. "It was like I didn't even know him anymore."
McCormack tried an intervention with friends from the Anti-war
community, but to no avail. In October, Billy Ray packed up his Monte
Carlo and left for basic training at Camp Pendleton.
"I have no son," she says in a barely audible whisper.
Across the country In toney Westchester County, New York, Jim and
Sandy Vandenberg describe a similar tale of family grief.
"We are people of faith who keep the sabbath," says Sandy, a curator
in the Dada collection of the Museum of Modern Art. "Even when she
was a toddler, we made sure Emily got up early every Sunday morning
to read the New York Times Book Review. Sunday morning was our time,
until..."
"Until those damned Jesus bastards stole my little girl," interrupts
her husband, barely containing his anger. Once a Freshman honors
student in Lacanian Deconstruction Theory at NYU, their daughter is
now better known as Lurleen McDaniel -- reigning Princess of the
Tulsa Livestock Show
and Rodeo.
In Bainbridge Island, Washington, single mom Jane Michelson says she
began suspecting that her son Brian was in trouble after he started
hanging with a new crowd at school.
"These weren't normal kids, neighborhood kids in Che t-shirts who
want to drop a couple of hits of X and chill on Radiohead," she says.
"They would talk in a sort of strange code language, like 'Roll
Tide!' and 'Gig 'em Ags!' and 'Piiiig Sooieeee!'"
Signs of trouble would soon multiply.
"One day I got into my Volvo and hit the stereo preset for Pacifica
Radio, and then I heard this obscene 'Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy'
song coming from the speakers," she recalls. "The very next week, the
maid found a tin of Skoal in his Wranglers. I told him him right then
-- it was either me, or
his tobacco-spitting friends."
Now known as Randy Dale Cash, her estranged son is a starting
linebacker for Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.
Peer Pressure
Jane Michelson is not alone in her story. Throughout coastal America,
school adminstrators and parents are reporting an alarming surge in
'Cracker' cliques on campus. Also known as 'Y'alls' or 'Neckies,'
officials say the groups thrive by attracting outcasts and misfits
from the student body.
"We try hard to engage all of our students in fun, healthy activities
like Progressive Eco-Action March and Rage Against Intolerance Week,"
says Lawrence DiBenedetto of Patrice Lumumba Magnet School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, there are going to be those
who fall through
the cracks, into a life of bass fishing and stockcar racing."
It appears those cracks are widening. In one recent three-week
period, fourteen high school students in Portland, Oregon were
suspended for distributing pork rinds; a Burlington, Vermont high
school was briefly closed for decontamination after janitors found a
bible hidden in a restroom; and
forty-six undergraduate coeds at Swarthmore were expelled for staging
clandestine Mary Kay cosmetics parties.
"We became suspicious after several heavily made-up students arrived
at Katha Pollitt lecture in a pink Cadillacs," says Swarthmore Dean
of Students Geraldine Marcus.
Some say the craze threatens even the nation's most exclusive prep
schools. At Exeter, Andover and St. Albans, rumors abound of secret
societies where initiates are steeped in the black arts of restrictor
plate cheating and satellite descramblers. Washington's elite Sidwell
Friends School was nearly forced to close after scandalized parents
learned that several students were openly touting Sams Club cards.
The Eclectic School Aid Hayseed Trip
To better understand what attracts young affluent students to the
subculture, I spent a recent evening interviewing a group of
self-described 'Neckies' from exclusive New Trier High School in
Winnetka, Illinois. Like countless other Friday nights, the
close-knit group had made the 80 mile ritual
journey to rural Belvidere, Illinois, to cruise Steak 'N' Shake and
hang out at the Mills Fleet Farm parking lot.
"Y'all, check out these new mudders," says 17-year old 'Dakota,'
proudly displaying the gigantic knobbed tires under his radically
lifted 4x4 Audi Allroad. "I'm fixin' to get me a winch and Tuffbox
fer it next week."
Not to be outdone, friend and fellow Neckie 'Duane' sounds 'Dixie' on
the novelty horn of his jacked-up BMW M3. An early graduation gift
from his parents, Duane has turned the expensive German coupe into an
homage to the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee, complete with orange
Stars-and-Bars paint job and spit cup on the console.
"Grandma gave me some money fer a summer study trip over ta Paris,
but I thought the paint job was cooler," laughs Duane. "Hell, she
thinks I'm over in the Sorbonne right now, studying Foucault and all
that ????."
"I'm a-fixin' to put in a nitrous system on the General Lee, so I'ma
call Grandma up and aks her for some book money," he adds.
Like most of their classmates, these North Shore Neckies were once
bound for some of the top universities in America -- Yale, Duke,
Stanford, Northwestern -- until they succumbed to the allure of the
Downhome slacker lifestyle. Now some openly talk of dropping out,
learning TIG welding,
waiting tables at Waffle House or draining oil at Jiffy Lube; some
even hint of enrolling at Iowa State. What drives privileged teens to
such seemingly self-destructive behavior?
"I guess you might could say we're rebels," says Rachel 'Tyffanie'
Stern, 17, lighting a Merit Menthol 100. Once destined for Vassar,
Stern is now living with friends after her parents kicked her out of
the house for spending her bat mitzvah money on a bass boat. Last
month she became the
youngest Jewish female to win an event on the Bassmasters Pro Tour.
Pausing for furtive glances, several of the teens share sniffs from a
bottle of Harmon Triple Heat deer scent.
"Wooo-eee, ???? howdy, that's gonna bring a mess of them whitetail
bucks," says 19-year old Wei-Li 'Lamar' Cheung. A former Westinghouse
Science Award winner, Cheung has devoted his chemistry and biology
skill to building a fledgling hunting supply business.
A first generation Asian-American, Cheung says he was drawn to the
group by their acceptance of minorities. "Hell, I kept tellin' all my
family and teachers I wanna play fiddle, not violin," he explains.
"The 'Necks accept me the way I am."
African-American Kwame 'Joe Don' Harris agrees. "Just because I'm
black, teachers were always pushing me to go to Spellman to study
Langston Hughes and Thelonius Monk," says the 17 year old. "These ol'
boys here never laugh at my dream to be a crew chief for the
Craftsman Truck Series."
If there is one aspiration that unites them all, it is the dream of
moving to Branson, Missouri. Long famed for its laid-back attitude
toward religion, country music and the military, Branson has become a
Mecca for radical young Neckies seeking an escape from the
stultifying conformity of their
coastal hometowns.
"????, y'all, I heard Branson's got like four Wal Marts, and more
$5.95 all-day breakfast buffets than Glencoe has Starbucks," enthuses
Dakota, adding quickly that "pardon my French."
"Plus it's only a short drive up to Fort Leonard Wood," adds Tyffanie.
Talk arises of Branson's 'Summer of Bubba,' the upcoming hedonistic
hillbilly festival of music, hog calling and nightcrawler gathering
expected to draw millions of Neckies from as far as Santa Monica and
Ithaca -- even Europe.
"Y'all, I heard them Swedish 'Necks are hardcore," says Joe Don.
"They digitally remastered all the original Jerry Clower albums." A
live-for-today attitude permeates the group's ethos, with little
concern about consequences. I ask Justin 'Jim Rob' Borowski, 18, what
motivates a
young to abandon a promising academic career in Gender Theory and
Critical History to take a wild ride in the dark world of roofing and
drywall contracting.
"My daddy was sorta mad when I tolt him I was gonna skip Columbia
Journalism School for a plumbing apprenticeship," he answer
philosophically, popping a plug of Red Man into his lip. "I tolt him
that journalism is important, but the world needs plumbers too."
"After the toilet backed up, I think he got my point."
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