Democrats and the media keep coming up with new ways to hate vice-presidential Republican nominee, Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio. Republican presidential nominee recently picked Vance as his running mate, foiling most common predictions.
Vance first came to public attention with the publication of his memoir about growing poor in an abusive and drug-addled family in Appalachia. The book Hillbilly Elegy was a bestseller and was made into a hit movie starring Glenn Close. In it, Vance describes the desolation and poverty that has beset Appalachia with the death of U.S. manufacturing and the availability of cheap, addictive drugs.
Now, Vance’s hometown newspaper is taking him to task for what he’s said about the area he hails from. The Columbus Dispatch has said the story Vance told in his 2016 book was nothing but “endless resentment.” This seems to be a running theme for the paper, which has recently published opinion pieces with titles such as:
“Does Vance think women should be caged up at home and constantly pregnant? Sounds like it.”
This kind of hysterical and melodramatic writing has followed Vance since America’s liberal women lost their tempers when Vance referred to a large portion of the progressive left voting block as “childless cat ladies.”
The latest opinion piece in the Dispatch was written by Douglas Dowland, a professor of English at Ohio Northern University. Dowland writes that Vance’s book just is not nice enough. Because Vance rose from poverty to graduate from Yale Law School, he should be more “charitable” in his assessment of “those in need.”
Dowland accuses Vance of using his “rags to riches” story to write a narrative that is “us vs them,” and he said Vance lives in a “world of endless resentment.”
Dowland seems to have difficulty accepting that criticism of the deficiencies in other people does not mean that the critic hates those people. He also does not seem very keen on the idea that poor people or “the marginalized” should be expected to take any responsibility for their circumstances. For example, Dowland seems shocked and offended that Vance described some of the people he grew up around as “immune to hard work.” Dowland may not believe that it is possible for poor people to be lazy.
Predictably, Dowland displays his sense of offense over Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark, and calls it an example of the Republican senator’s “gambits of gratuitous generalization.”
