"Yessir, the South's gonna change..."
- Ulysses Everett McGill, O Brother Where Art Thou
...and so will the demographics of stock-car racing. They already have. Something I was thinking about the other day: there hasn't been a Cup champion from the South since Bobby Labonte in 2000. That's a long time ago. Consider: the World Trade Center still stood then, and Dale Earnhardt was still alive (in fact, finishing second in points to Labonte that year); the U.S. had yet to acquire any real estate in the Islamic world, and Labonte himself was still more than five long years away from taking the track in those horrible, emasculating light blue and yellow Cheerios/Betty Crocker/Whatever colors so as to helm Petty Enterprises' slow, painful slide into obscurity. Not only that, but when you look at the three years of the Chase so far, the whole thing has been overwhelmingly Northern:
2004: Union - Kurt Busch (NV), Jimmie Johnson (CA), Jeff Gordon (IN/CA), Tony Stewart (IN), Ryan Newman (IN), Matt Kenseth (WI), and representing border slave-holding Kentucky, Jeremy Mayfield.
Confederate - Mark Martin (AR), Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (NC) and Elliott Sadler (VA).
2005 was more Yankee still: Union - Busch, Johnson, Stewart, Newman, Kenseth, Mayfield, and Greg Biffle (WA - not a state in 1865, but a Union territory nonetheless). '05 was also the year that the Missouri Compromise was in full effect with both Carl Edwards and Rusty Wallace in the Chase. Mark Martin was the only Southerner.
2006 is more balanced, but still leans Northern. Union - Kenseth, Johnson, Gordon, Kahne (WA), Harvick (CA), Kyle Busch (NV). Confederates - Martin, Junior, Jeff Burton (VA), Denny Hamlin (VA).
(Though, actually, I'd also make the case that Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn't really Southern anymore, in the sense that he's transcended regionalism. Kind of going back to what Baudrillard said about America being like a hologram in that every distinct piece also contains an image of the whole, Junior is America, and America is Junior.)
Humpy Wheeler (the real one) once said that a large part of Dale Earnhardt's popularity stemmed from the fact that he was, in many ways, the Last Confederate Soldier. Can we say this also about the Yankee stockers of today? Maybe. I mean, if you slap one of these mustaches on Biffle, he'd probably look right at home in some regiment or other on Little Round Top. Stewart of Indiana vs. Stuart of Virginia? Kenseth at Kennesaw?
And more importantly, what does this all mean? I don't know. Maybe nothing. Hell, next year, Juan Pablo Montoya's coming to Cup from somewhere far more south than any of the boys in the Show right now. Or maybe I'm saying that maybe some time in the not too distant future, the mythical NASCAR Dad will start caring about more than God, Gays, and Guns - after all, that all this is happening simultaneously with what seems to be the collapse of Southern religious conservatism can't be a coincidence.
More germane to the sport of stock car racing, though, maybe it's a sign that the sport is changing too; everyone knows that the corporate side of NASCAR wants it to, and let's face it, what NASCAR corporate wants, they get. Always have. I don't know, it might even mean maybe this Drive for Diversity deal, however craven it might be - and it is that - might yet work, and that there may yet come a day when we can do more than dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together - and watch Travis Kvapil hit the wall coming out of turn 4 at AMS.
- Ulysses Everett McGill, O Brother Where Art Thou
...and so will the demographics of stock-car racing. They already have. Something I was thinking about the other day: there hasn't been a Cup champion from the South since Bobby Labonte in 2000. That's a long time ago. Consider: the World Trade Center still stood then, and Dale Earnhardt was still alive (in fact, finishing second in points to Labonte that year); the U.S. had yet to acquire any real estate in the Islamic world, and Labonte himself was still more than five long years away from taking the track in those horrible, emasculating light blue and yellow Cheerios/Betty Crocker/Whatever colors so as to helm Petty Enterprises' slow, painful slide into obscurity. Not only that, but when you look at the three years of the Chase so far, the whole thing has been overwhelmingly Northern:
2004: Union - Kurt Busch (NV), Jimmie Johnson (CA), Jeff Gordon (IN/CA), Tony Stewart (IN), Ryan Newman (IN), Matt Kenseth (WI), and representing border slave-holding Kentucky, Jeremy Mayfield.
Confederate - Mark Martin (AR), Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (NC) and Elliott Sadler (VA).
2005 was more Yankee still: Union - Busch, Johnson, Stewart, Newman, Kenseth, Mayfield, and Greg Biffle (WA - not a state in 1865, but a Union territory nonetheless). '05 was also the year that the Missouri Compromise was in full effect with both Carl Edwards and Rusty Wallace in the Chase. Mark Martin was the only Southerner.
2006 is more balanced, but still leans Northern. Union - Kenseth, Johnson, Gordon, Kahne (WA), Harvick (CA), Kyle Busch (NV). Confederates - Martin, Junior, Jeff Burton (VA), Denny Hamlin (VA).
(Though, actually, I'd also make the case that Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn't really Southern anymore, in the sense that he's transcended regionalism. Kind of going back to what Baudrillard said about America being like a hologram in that every distinct piece also contains an image of the whole, Junior is America, and America is Junior.)
Humpy Wheeler (the real one) once said that a large part of Dale Earnhardt's popularity stemmed from the fact that he was, in many ways, the Last Confederate Soldier. Can we say this also about the Yankee stockers of today? Maybe. I mean, if you slap one of these mustaches on Biffle, he'd probably look right at home in some regiment or other on Little Round Top. Stewart of Indiana vs. Stuart of Virginia? Kenseth at Kennesaw?
And more importantly, what does this all mean? I don't know. Maybe nothing. Hell, next year, Juan Pablo Montoya's coming to Cup from somewhere far more south than any of the boys in the Show right now. Or maybe I'm saying that maybe some time in the not too distant future, the mythical NASCAR Dad will start caring about more than God, Gays, and Guns - after all, that all this is happening simultaneously with what seems to be the collapse of Southern religious conservatism can't be a coincidence.
More germane to the sport of stock car racing, though, maybe it's a sign that the sport is changing too; everyone knows that the corporate side of NASCAR wants it to, and let's face it, what NASCAR corporate wants, they get. Always have. I don't know, it might even mean maybe this Drive for Diversity deal, however craven it might be - and it is that - might yet work, and that there may yet come a day when we can do more than dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together - and watch Travis Kvapil hit the wall coming out of turn 4 at AMS.
posted by SPT at 11:03 PM
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