Bette Midler Apologizes To 'Poor, Illiterate & Strung Out' People Of WV After Joe Manchin Outburst

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15. The people of WV have been disparaged and stereotyped

Last edited Wed Dec 22, 2021, 10:14 AM - Edit history (1)

for more than a hundred years, long before Manchin and it will continue long after he's gone. Count on it. I've seen it all my life.

Much of the demeaning dates to the infamous 'Hatfield-McCoy' feud of the late 19th century which was popularized by major newspapers, esp. in the North.

Reporters had a field day characterizing the state as filled with people who were 'ignorant, violent backwoods hillbillies' who 'resisted change and progress.' Progress meaning the pursuit of coal by of out of state industrialists and local businesses who saw profit in the many rich coal deposits in WV back then.

To faciliate expansion of the coal industry and haul coal out of the state, railroads were built rapidly at the turn of the century and at the cost of worker lives. Men labored under extreme and brutal conditions in the rush to break through rugged terrain, wilderness and mountains in order to lay track and install bridges. 'John Henry.'

As a boy, an ancestor used a horse and buggy to drive around a prominent, wealthy industrialist from Boston and Detroit who came to southwestern WV to speculate for coal, c. 1900. The old man greatly appreciated the boy's efforts and told him to contact him if he ever needed something. The boy followed up and benefitted. (Not a dumb hillbilly, and also a relation to the Hatfield clan).

The negative characterizations continued even with WV's support for FDR and New Deal programs in the 1930s and 1940s, and after the election of JFK who campaigned heavily in the state in 1960. West Virginia was targeted to gain protestant support for the Catholic Democratic candidate from Massachusetts. West Virginians delivered in the primary which put the senator over the top and Kennedy became the first Catholic president of the US.

Pearl Buck, John Forbes Nash of Bluefield, the Nobel- awarded economist whose life was portrayed in the film, 'A Beautiful Mind' by actor Russell Crowe and many others hail from the 'backward' mountain state. Sometime Bette should have a chat with Billy Crystal who attended Marshall University in Huntington like many other kids from New York and New Jersey who were educated there in the 1960s and 1970s.

~ The poverty and corruption will continue unless somehow there's major improvement in the political, economic and social spheres. And the trashing remains a stale but steady amusement for many who don't want to learn or understand the history. 68% of West Virginians support BBB, Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties in the Mountain State.