JD Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, is strange.
Credits
“Circus of Freaks” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:00
Bennett Tomlin
I have read JD Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, twice. Which is at least two times more you should read this book. I’ve been really struggling for the last couple of months to figure out how to talk about this book. Even JD Vance himself states in the very opening part of the book that. My name is JD Vance, and I think I should start with a confession.
00:00:24:04 - 00:00:53:17
Bennett Tomlin
I find the existence of the book you hold in your hands somewhat absurd. It says right there on the cover that it’s a memoir, but I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve accomplished nothing great in my life, certainly nothing that would justify a complete stranger paying money to read about it. The coolest thing I’ve done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law School, something thirteen-year-old J.D. Vance would have considered ludicrous.
00:00:53:22 - 00:01:23:15
Bennett Tomlin
But about two hundred people do the same thing every year, and trust me, you don’t want to read about most of their lives. I am not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary. I haven’t started a billion-dollar company or a world-changing nonprofit. I have a nice job, a happy marriage, a comfortable home, and two lively dogs. We now need to grabble with the fact that this man could be one bullet from being the most powerful man in the world.
00:01:23:18 - 00:02:03:02
Bennett Tomlin
And yet I still feel like this book is absurd. It’s not well written. It is not a serious sociological analysis. And at many points it feels like it's revealing details about JD Vance that JD Vance has not grappled with. Mostly this is a book about how JD Vance suffered from instability and abuse. And was surrounded by violence and even more abuse. But against this backdrop of regular abuse he occasionally dots in political statement. Each of which seem somewhat disconnected from the story as a whole.
00:02:03:10 - 00:02:10:19
Bennett Tomlin
Let’s begin by talking briefly, and trigger warning about JD Vance’s history of abuse.
00:02:13:20 - 00:02:17:18
Bennett Tomlin
Abuse is horrible, and JD Vance is a survivor of abuse.
00:02:17:20 - 00:02:43:11
Bennett Tomlin
Both directed at him and as part of the general backdrop to his life. There are going to be substantial descriptions of abuse in this section of the video. If that is something you do not want to hear it all thing you want to jump ahead to the next section. Timestamps in the description. Let’s talk about JD Vance’s experience of abuse, to try to understand how that made him who he is. If it did?
00:02:43:13 - 00:03:10:22
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance was regularly abused by his family. His great-uncle chased him with a knife, threatening to cut his ear off and feed it to the dog. His mother threatened to kill him in a car crash. He was also surrounded by a variety of other abuses directed at people he cared about. His Grandmotherwas a survivor of statutory rape at the hands of what would eventually become her husband.
00:03:10:22 - 00:03:19:12
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance’s mother was regularly involved in toxic and unhealthy relationship which made things worse for JD.
00:03:19:12 - 00:03:26:09
Bennett Tomlin
This would eventually lead JD to see violence as a solution to his problems.
00:03:26:09 - 00:03:35:05
Bennett Tomlin
Even when things were perhaps not explicitly abuse, there was a regular and recurring throughline of violence and threats of violence
00:03:35:05 - 00:03:40:05
Bennett Tomlin
Besides this violence surrounding him JD was encouraged by
00:03:40:07 - 00:03:42:22
Bennett Tomlin
his family to do violence.
00:03:42:22 - 00:03:50:06
Bennett Tomlin
He was also surrounded by people with deep substance abuse problems, including his mother.
00:03:50:08 - 00:03:58:00
Bennett Tomlin
JD would eventually develop bad habits around substances himself, perhaps as a byproduct of this environment.
00:03:58:02 - 00:04:05:15
Bennett Tomlin
There were also significant mental health issues in the family that surrounded him, including his mother's attempts to take her own life.
00:04:05:15 - 00:04:14:15
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance and his family have a long history of what are called adverse childhood events, something he eventually realized.
00:04:14:15 - 00:04:40:12
Bennett Tomlin
As you can tell, this book is about abuse, but I'm not sure if JD Vance realizes that that's what the book he wrote is about, but I feel I need to acknowledge that this makes up. I think, the bulk of this book, before we get into any of the strange political beliefs that JD Vance alludes to or other beliefs he has that come on this book.
00:04:40:14 - 00:05:00:22
Bennett Tomlin
We need to be clear, this book that JD Vance wrote when he was getting ready to kind of launch his political career is about the abuse he suffered. That's what was on his mind. With that out of the way. Let's talk a little bit about what can be called his political beliefs.
00:05:05:21 - 00:05:14:22
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance has opinions on race relations and not just lying about them, but I struggle to categorize them based on this book alone.
00:05:15:03 - 00:05:20:07
Bennett Tomlin
Not the many racist things he's said since. Let me read you a section.
00:05:20:07 - 00:05:40:07
Bennett Tomlin
There is an ethnic component lurking in the background of my story. In our race conscious society, our vocabulary often extends no further than the color of someone's skin. Black people, Asians, white privilege. Sometimes these broad categories are useful, but to understand my story, you have to delve into the details.
00:05:40:09 - 00:05:54:05
Bennett Tomlin
I may be white, but I do not identify with the wasps of the northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working class white Americans of Scots Irish descent who have no college degree.
00:05:54:05 - 00:06:03:06
Bennett Tomlin
Stepping out of the quote he identifies with this despite his college and law degree. Back into the quote. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition.
00:06:03:12 - 00:06:19:10
Bennett Tomlin
Their ancestors were day laborers in the southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and mill workers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family.
00:06:19:10 - 00:06:29:02
Bennett Tomlin
This is a bit weird, but JD seems to have wanted to write about what he knew and felt that this was a way to do that.
00:06:29:03 - 00:06:52:14
Bennett Tomlin
But you see how it's strange to include sharecroppers in the slave economy in their right. Like it very carefully does not say they were slaves, though occasionally they may have been. It says that they are day laborers, but references slavery. So it's in your head then it references sharecropping. And yes, sometimes they were, but not super often and not initially when the system was set up.
00:06:52:20 - 00:07:09:08
Bennett Tomlin
It was a later development for poor white farmers to really be included in that system. He's not wrong. At least not explicitly. Not in the type of lying he does now, but the frame in the way he chooses to say he identifies jumped out at me.
00:07:09:08 - 00:07:23:16
Bennett Tomlin
In this belief about some of these kind of race relations seems to have permeated JD Vance’s family, JD Vance’s father, apparently asked JD Vance after he got into Yale Law if he had pretended to be black or liberal to do it.
00:07:23:16 - 00:07:32:14
Bennett Tomlin
Let's move past race for now and take a close look at a job JD had in some of the strange things he shared with that experience.
00:07:32:16 - 00:07:56:01
Bennett Tomlin
During the summer, before I enrolled at Yale Law School, I was looking for full time work in order to finance my move to New Haven, Connecticut. A family friend suggested that I work for him in a medium size floor tile distribution business near my home town. Floor tile is extraordinarily heavy. Each piece weighs anywhere from 3 to 6 pounds, and it's usually packaged in cartons of 8 to 12 pieces.
00:07:56:03 - 00:08:17:23
Bennett Tomlin
My primary duty was to lift the floor tile onto a shipping pallet and prepare the pallet for departure. It wasn't easy, but it paid $13 an hour and I needed the money. So I took the job and collected as many overtime shifts and extra hours as I could. The tile business employed about a dozen people, and most employees had worked there for many years.
00:08:18:01 - 00:08:52:21
Bennett Tomlin
One guy worked two full time jobs, but not because he had to. His second job at the tile business allowed him to pursue his dream of piloting an airplane. $13 an hour was good money for a single guy in our hometown. A decent apartment cost about $500 a month, and the tile business offered steady raises. Every employee who worked there for a few years earned at least $16 an hour in a down economy, which provided an annual income of 32,000, well above the poverty line, even for a family.
00:08:52:23 - 00:09:16:19
Bennett Tomlin
Despite this relatively stable situation, the managers found it impossible to fill my warehouse position with a long term employee. By the time I left, three guys worked in the warehouse. At 26, I was by far the oldest one guy. I'll call him Bob joined the tile warehouse just a few months before I did. Bob was 19 with a pregnant girlfriend.
00:09:16:21 - 00:09:29:07
Bennett Tomlin
The manager kindly offered the girlfriend a clerical position, answering phones. Both of them were terrible workers. The girlfriend missed about every third day of work and never gave advance notice.
00:09:29:07 - 00:09:37:21
Bennett Tomlin
though warned to change her habits repeatedly. The girlfriend lasted no more than a few months. Bob missed work about once a week, and he was chronically late.
00:09:37:23 - 00:09:57:23
Bennett Tomlin
On top of that, he often took 3 or 4 daily bathroom breaks each over half an hour became so bad that by the end of my tenure, another employee and I made a game of it. We'd set a timer when he went to the bathroom and shout the major milestones to the warehouse. 35 minutes, 45 minutes, one hour.
00:09:58:01 - 00:10:06:23
Bennett Tomlin
Eventually, Bob, too was fired. When it happened, he lashed out at his manager. How could you do this to me? Don't you know I've got a pregnant girlfriend?
00:10:06:23 - 00:10:15:13
Bennett Tomlin
And he was not alone. At least two other people, including Bob's cousin, lost their jobs or quit. During my short time at the tire warehouse.
00:10:15:13 - 00:10:26:01
Bennett Tomlin
There's a tendency in this book, and I would argue in JD's rhetoric broadly, to use anecdotes to tell stories. And this example seemed really strange.
00:10:26:03 - 00:10:54:09
Bennett Tomlin
Maybe Bob really was a bad worker, but the telling of this story feels pointless. Bad workers are not unusual. Recruiting problems are not unusual. But did you notice who the sympathetic character was in this story? It was not the guy about to have a child. It was the business who was having trouble getting enough people to do this work for $13 an hour.
00:10:54:11 - 00:11:12:09
Bennett Tomlin
J.D. Vance feels bad for businesses. Let's talk about J.D. Vance and his family's relationship to political violence, because that feels important. With this election coming up in the memory of January 6th indelibly inscribed in our minds,
00:11:12:09 - 00:11:19:03
Bennett Tomlin
did you know J.D. Vance is related to folks involved in the Hatfield McCoy feud?
00:11:19:03 - 00:11:50:12
Bennett Tomlin
We don’t know much about Papaw’s early years, and I doubt that will ever change. We do know that he was something of hillbilly royalty. Papaw’s distant cousin—also Jim Vance—married into the Hatfield family and joined a group of former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers called the Wildcats. When Cousin Jim murdered former Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy, he kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history
00:11:50:15 - 00:12:09:02
Bennett Tomlin
You may argue that's not truly political violence, but it is. The Wildcats wanted the Confederacy to come back. And this story could be attributed to just a random piece of family lore that doesn't speak to a true belief of JD's. Until you hear the other story of political violence in the book,
00:12:09:02 - 00:12:31:17
Bennett Tomlin
Jim married into a rowdy crew. The Blanton's were a famous group in Breathitt, and they had a feuding history, nearly as illustrious as Papa's mama's great grandfather had been elected county judge at the beginning of the 20th century, but only after her grandfather, Tilden, the son of the judge, killed a member of a rival family on election day.
00:12:31:19 - 00:12:55:07
Bennett Tomlin
In a New York Times story about the violent feud. Two things leap out. The first is that Tilden never went to jail for the crime. The second is that, as the times reported, complications were expected. I would imagine so when I first read this gruesome story and one of the country's most circulated newspapers, I felt one emotion above all the rest.
00:12:55:09 - 00:13:17:04
Bennett Tomlin
Pride. It's unlikely that any other ancestor of mine has ever appeared in the New York Times, even if they had. I doubt any deed would make me as proud as a successful feud, and one that could have swung an election, no less. As Mamaw used to say, you can take the boy out of Kentucky, but you can't take Kentucky out of the boy.
00:13:17:12 - 00:13:36:10
Bennett Tomlin
J.D., the potential future vice president. If enough idiots vote for him, was excited to hear about political violence. He felt pride in this political violence. And with that in mind, let's talk about his relationship to religion, because he is very much allied with the religious right.
00:13:36:17 - 00:14:02:04
Bennett Tomlin
On balance, I loved my dad in his church. I'm not sure if I liked the structure, or if I just wanted to share in something that was important to him. Both, I suppose. But I became a devoted convert. I devoured books about young Earth creationism and joined online chat room to challenge scientists on the theory of evolution. I learned about millenialist prophecy and convinced myself that the world would end in 2007.
00:14:02:06 - 00:14:12:23
Bennett Tomlin
I even threw away my Black Sabbath CDs. Dad's church encouraged all of this because it doubted the wisdom of secular science and the morality of secular music.
00:14:12:23 - 00:14:28:15
Bennett Tomlin
I couldn't listen to Eric Clapton at Dad's house. Not because the lyrics were inappropriate, but because Eric Clapton was influenced by demonic forces. I'd heard people joke that if you played LED Zeppelin Stairway to Heaven backward, you'd hear some evil incantation.
00:14:28:17 - 00:14:56:22
Bennett Tomlin
But a member of dad's church spoke about the Zeppelin myth as if it were actually true. Yet I was a curious kid, and the deeper I immersed myself in evangelical theology, the more I felt compelled to mistrust many sectors of society. Evolution and the Big Bang became ideologies to confront, not theories to understand. Many of the sermons I heard spent as much time criticizing other Christians as anything else.
00:14:57:00 - 00:15:26:12
Bennett Tomlin
Theological battle lines were drawn, and those on the other side weren't just wrong about biblical interpretation. They were somehow unchristian. I admired my Uncle Dan above all other men, but when he spoke of his Catholic acceptance of evolutionary theory, my admiration became tinged with suspicion. My new faith had put me on the lookout for heretics. Good friends who interpreted parts of the Bible differently were bad influences.
00:15:26:12 - 00:15:33:10
Bennett Tomlin
Even mamaw fell from favor because her religious views didn't conflict with her affinity for Bill Clinton.
00:15:33:10 - 00:15:53:09
Bennett Tomlin
As a young teenager, thinking seriously for the first time about what I believed and why I believe it, I had an acute sense that the walls were closing in on real Christians. There was talk about the War on Christmas, which, as far as I could tell, consisted mainly of ACLU activists suing small towns for nativity displays.
00:15:53:11 - 00:16:11:16
Bennett Tomlin
I read a book called Persecution by David Limbaugh, about the various ways that Christians were discriminated against. The internet was abuzz with talk of New York art displays that featured images of Christ or the Virgin Mary covered in feces for the first time in my life. I felt like a persecuted minority.
00:16:11:16 - 00:16:22:15
Bennett Tomlin
Christians who weren't Christian enough, secularists indoctrinating our youth art exhibits, insulting our faith and persecution by the elites made the world a scary and foreign place.
00:16:22:17 - 00:16:48:03
Bennett Tomlin
Take gay rights, a particularly hot topic among conservative Protestants. I'll never forget the time I convinced myself that I was gay. I was 8 or 9, maybe younger, and I stumbled upon a broadcast by some fire and brimstone preacher. The man spoke about the evils of homosexuals, how they had infiltrated our society, how they were all destined for hell, absent some serious repenting.
00:16:48:05 - 00:17:01:22
Bennett Tomlin
At the time, the only thing I knew about gay men was that they preferred men to women. This described me perfectly. I dislike girls, and my best friend in the world was my buddy Bill. Oh, no. I'm going to hell.
00:17:01:22 - 00:17:05:19
Bennett Tomlin
My God, I hate this.
00:17:06:01 - 00:17:12:15
Bennett Tomlin
This takes us up to J.D. Vance, his views on homosexuality in this book, which include
00:17:12:15 - 00:17:25:15
Bennett Tomlin
I broached this issue, J.D. Vance being gay. That is, with my mom confessing that I was gay and worried that I would burn in hell. She said, don't be a fucking idiot. How would you know that you're gay? I explained my thought process.
00:17:25:17 - 00:17:46:05
Bennett Tomlin
Mama chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain to a boy my age. Finally she asked, J.D., do you want to suck dicks? I was flabbergasted. Why would someone want to do that? She repeated herself, and I said, of course not. Then she said, you're not gay. And even if you did want a sex some dicks, that would be okay.
00:17:46:07 - 00:18:03:22
Bennett Tomlin
God would still love you. That settled the matter. Apparently, I didn't have to worry about being gay anymore. Now that I'm older, I recognize the profundity of her sentiment. Gay people, though unfamiliar, threaten nothing about Mamaw's being. There were more important things for a Christian to worry about
00:18:03:22 - 00:18:13:21
Bennett Tomlin
in my new church. On the other hand, I heard more about the gay lobby and the war on Christmas than about any particular character trait that a Christian should aspire to have.
00:18:13:23 - 00:18:45:16
Bennett Tomlin
I recalled that moment with my mom as an instance of secularist thinking, rather than an act of Christian love. Morality was defined by not participating in this or that particular social malady, the gay agenda. Evolutionary theory. Clintonian liberalism or extramarital sex? Dad's church required so little of me. It was easy to be a Christian. The only affirmative teachings I remember drawing from church were that I shouldn't cheat on my wife, and I shouldn't be afraid to preach the gospel to others.
00:18:45:18 - 00:18:53:05
Bennett Tomlin
So I planned a life of monogamy and tried to convert other people. Even my seventh grade science teacher who was Muslim.
00:18:53:05 - 00:18:58:18
Bennett Tomlin
There's one other story about J.D. Vance his relationship with homosexuality. I feel I must share.
00:18:58:22 - 00:19:08:08
Bennett Tomlin
During one trip, we went to the Castro district of San Francisco. So then the words of my older cousin, Rachel, I could learn that gay people weren't out to molest me.
00:19:08:08 - 00:19:27:05
Bennett Tomlin
Yeah, that's more than a bit strange. And some of it could piss off his base. Hell, some of these views are mentioned in the Trump campaign dossier on J.D., but he also has weird views on personal responsibility, which touch on school welfare and more.
00:19:27:08 - 00:19:48:04
Bennett Tomlin
I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether you should push school vouchers, giving public money to schoolchildren so that they could escape failing public schools. What vouchers do or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools?
00:19:48:06 - 00:20:11:15
Bennett Tomlin
That debate is important, of course. Fixed schools for a long time. Much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers, but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, they want us to be shepherds to these kids, but no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.
00:20:11:17 - 00:20:15:22
Bennett Tomlin
In another story, we get to his views on welfare.
00:20:15:22 - 00:20:31:08
Bennett Tomlin
Most of us were struggling to get by, but we may do, worked hard and hoped for a better life. But a large minority was content to live off the dole. Every two weeks I'd get a small paycheck and notice the line were federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages.
00:20:31:10 - 00:20:52:04
Bennett Tomlin
At least as often, our drug addict neighbor would buy T-Bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself, but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else. This was my mindset when I was 17, and though I'm far less angry today than I was then. It was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw's Party of the Working Man, the Democrats, weren't all they were cracked up to be.
00:20:52:08 - 00:21:06:18
Bennett Tomlin
Again, he just assumes this person used welfare to buy these steaks and not like God. Who knows what else? Trading drugs, trading whatever. Who even knows, right? Like this person clearly was unwell. But in another story about section eight,
00:21:06:18 - 00:21:15:22
Bennett Tomlin
one of my Mamaw and Papa's oldest friends, registered their house next to theirs for section eight. Section eight is a government program that offers low income residents a voucher to rent housing.
00:21:16:00 - 00:21:30:00
Bennett Tomlin
mamaw's friends had little luck renting his property, but when he qualified his house for the section eight voucher, he virtually assured that would change. Mama saw it as a betrayal, ensuring that bad people would move into the neighborhood and drive down property values.
00:21:30:02 - 00:21:50:14
Bennett Tomlin
From that anger sprang Bonnie Vance, the social policy expert. She's a lazy whore. But she wouldn't be if she was forced to get a job. I hate these fuckers for giving these people the money to move into our neighborhood. She'd rant against the people we'd see in the grocery store. I can't understand why. People who've worked all their lives scraped by while these deadbeats buy liquor and cell phone coverage with our tax money.
00:21:50:16 - 00:21:53:02
Bennett Tomlin
Gotta watch out for those damn Obama phones.
00:21:53:02 - 00:22:10:08
Bennett Tomlin
And she blasted the government for doing too much. One day she'd blast it for doing too little the next. The government, after all, was just helping poor people find a place to live. And my grandma loved the idea of anyone helping the poor. She had no philosophical objection to section eight vouchers, so the Democrat in her would resurface.
00:22:10:14 - 00:22:35:22
Bennett Tomlin
She'd rant about the lack of jobs and wonder aloud whether that was why our neighbor couldn't find a good man in her more compassionate moments. Mamaw asked if it made any sense that our society could afford aircraft carriers, but not drug treatment facilities for everyone. Sometimes she'd criticize the faceless rich whom she saw as far too unwilling to carry their fair share of the social burden.
00:22:36:00 - 00:22:45:23
Bennett Tomlin
Mamaw saw every ballot failure of the local school improvement tax as an indictment of our society's failure to provide a quality education to kids like me.
00:22:45:23 - 00:22:53:03
Bennett Tomlin
In another case, when he's talking about social responsibility, he tells this story
00:22:53:03 - 00:23:04:01
Bennett Tomlin
during my junior year of high school. Our neighbor Patti called her landlord to report a leaky roof. The landlord arrived and found Patti topless, stoned and unconscious on her living room couch.
00:23:04:03 - 00:23:29:13
Bennett Tomlin
Upstairs, the bathtub was overflowing, hence the leaking roof. Patti had apparently drawn herself a bath, taking a few prescription painkillers, and passed out. The top floor of her home and many of her family's possessions were ruined. This is the reality of our community. It's about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life. It's about children who lose their toys and close to a mother's addiction
00:23:29:13 - 00:23:30:17
Bennett Tomlin
continues.
00:23:30:22 - 00:23:52:13
Bennett Tomlin
We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes. Thanks to high interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase and we'll get back to payday loans at cheap. Stepping out of the quote. Stepping back in. We purchase homes we don't need. Refinance them for more spending money and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake.
00:23:52:15 - 00:24:13:00
Bennett Tomlin
Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we're upper class. When the dust clears, when bankruptcy hits, or a family member bails us out of our stupidity. There's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids, college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth. No rainy day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend like this.
00:24:13:02 - 00:24:17:04
Bennett Tomlin
Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway.
00:24:17:04 - 00:24:30:20
Bennett Tomlin
I mean, I guess this is kind of what we would expect from J.D.. He has this fundamentally conservative belief that these deep systemic issues, these cycles of abuse and poverty can be broken by just a bit of effort.
00:24:30:20 - 00:24:44:00
Bennett Tomlin
Getting back to J.D. Vance, he also used to be pro payday loan. Despite the previous quote about how these people use payday loans in an irresponsible way, going back to his time working for an Ohio State senator.
00:24:44:00 - 00:24:50:12
Bennett Tomlin
Shortly before I left, the Ohio Senate debated a measure that would significantly curb payday lending practices.
00:24:50:14 - 00:25:15:00
Bennett Tomlin
My senator opposed the bill. One of the few senators to do so, though he never explained why. I like to think that maybe he and I had something in common. The senators and policy staff debating the bill have little appreciation for the role of payday lenders in the shadow economy that people like me occupied. To them, payday lenders were predatory sharks, charging high interest rates on loans and exorbitant fees for cashed checks.
00:25:15:02 - 00:25:35:02
Bennett Tomlin
The sooner they were snuffed out, the better. To me, payday lenders could solve important financial problems. My credit was awful thanks to a host of terrible financial decisions. So credit cards weren't a possibility. I wanted to take a girl out to dinner or needed to book for school, and didn't have money in the bank. I didn't have many options.
00:25:35:04 - 00:25:53:03
Bennett Tomlin
One Friday morning, I dropped off my rent check, knowing that if I waited another day, the $50 late fee would kick in. I didn't have enough money to cover the check, but I'd get paid that day and be able to deposit the money after work. However, after a long day at the Senate, I forgot to grab my paycheck before I left.
00:25:53:05 - 00:26:16:13
Bennett Tomlin
By the time I realized the mistake, it was already home and the statehouse staff had left for the weekend. On that day, a three day payday loan with a few dollars of interest enabled me to avoid a significant overdraft fee. The legislators debating the merits of payday lending didn't mention situations like that. The lesson powerful people sometimes do things to help people like me without really understanding people like me.
00:26:16:19 - 00:26:36:21
Bennett Tomlin
And part of why this is so jarringly stranged is because, as we just talked about, he has talked about payday loans as like a threat to communities like his. But how they exploit these communities and then immediately, as soon as he's working for a Republican state senator is like payday loans. We need to support this. Where does this leave us?
00:26:36:21 - 00:26:57:21
Bennett Tomlin
On his political beliefs? Unsettled. Mostly it's bootstrap stuff, but it's bootstrap. Bootstrap stuff that seems to ignore the very real problems that were surrounding him his entire life. Before we wrap this up, let's talk about other weird JD Vance things that are in the book.
00:27:02:20 - 00:27:07:08
Bennett Tomlin
J.D. Vance had a weird childhood where he terrorized nearby animals.
00:27:07:08 - 00:27:22:22
Bennett Tomlin
The surrounding mountains were Paradise to a child, and I spent much of my time terrorizing the Appalachian fauna. No turtle, snake, frog, fish, or squirrel was safe. I'd run around with my cousins, unaware of the ever present poverty for my mother. Blanton's deteriorating health.
00:27:22:22 - 00:27:30:02
Bennett Tomlin
J.D. Vance terrorized animals, and that was a fact he felt comfortable, including in his memoir,
00:27:30:02 - 00:27:31:12
Bennett Tomlin
which is interesting.
00:27:31:14 - 00:27:41:20
Bennett Tomlin
J.D. Vance, his mother, dated a variety of different men, and sometimes this meant he would pretend to be a kind brother, a strange thing to pretend
00:27:41:20 - 00:27:57:09
Bennett Tomlin
in Ohio. He'd grown especially skillful at navigating various father figures with Steve, a mid-life crisis suffer with an earring to prove it. I pretended earrings were cool, so much so that he thought it was appropriate to pierce my ear, too.
00:27:57:11 - 00:28:18:06
Bennett Tomlin
With Chip. An alcoholic police officer who saw my earrings. A sign, a girl's penis. I had thick skin and loved police cars with Ken, an odd man who proposed to mom three days into their relationship. I was a kind brother to his three children. But none of these things were really true. I hated earrings. I hated police cars.
00:28:18:06 - 00:28:27:06
Bennett Tomlin
And I knew that Ken's children would be out of my life by the next year in Kentucky. I didn't have to pretend to be someone I wasn't.
00:28:27:08 - 00:28:36:23
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance worked for a while as a grocery store cashier, and he was exactly as judgmental in that role as you would expect JD Vance to be.
00:28:36:23 - 00:28:48:15
Bennett Tomlin
Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist, a frenetic, stress animated. So many of our customers, one of our neighbors, would walk in and yell at me for the smallest transgressions.
00:28:48:17 - 00:29:12:07
Bennett Tomlin
Not smiling at her or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for particular items, but others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list. Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce.
00:29:12:08 - 00:29:31:14
Bennett Tomlin
The more harried a customer, the more they purchased pre-cooked or frozen food. The more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore, or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked mama why only poor people bought baby formula? Don't rich people have babies too?
00:29:31:16 - 00:29:58:01
Bennett Tomlin
Mama had no answers, as my job taught me a little bit about America's class divide. It also imbued me with a bit of resentment directed towards both the wealthy and my own kind. The owners of Dillmans were old fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed $1,000. I knew that if any of my relatives walked in and ran up a bill of over $1,000, they'd be asked to pay immediately.
00:29:58:03 - 00:30:18:14
Bennett Tomlin
I hated the feeling that my boss counted my people as less trustworthy than those who took their groceries home in a Cadillac. But I got over it. One day I told myself, I'll have my own damned tab. I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They'd buy two dozen packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash.
00:30:18:16 - 00:30:35:16
Bennett Tomlin
They'd ring up their order separately, buying food with food stamps and beer, wine and cigarets with cash. They'd regularly go through the checkout line, speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle. Well, those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
00:30:35:16 - 00:30:39:21
Bennett Tomlin
So, yeah, that's exactly what you would expect from JD Vance right?
00:30:39:22 - 00:30:49:08
Bennett Tomlin
Anti welfare, anti food stamps, Anti-poor pro bootstraps I think I said bootstraps twice. Who cares. JD Vance has bootstraps every third word.
00:30:49:08 - 00:30:55:21
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance was motivated to join the military so he could head to the Middle East to kill terrorists, unquote.
00:30:55:21 - 00:31:01:20
Bennett Tomlin
During his time in the Marines, JD Vance was also apparently a profitable online poker player.
00:31:02:00 - 00:31:09:22
Bennett Tomlin
JD Vance felt so uncomfortable with where he had ended up in life that he sometimes lies about having gone to Yale.
00:31:10:07 - 00:31:28:12
Bennett Tomlin
Not his most important lie, perhaps, but feels worth mentioning in context. Also, some of his law school dinners went badly. The most infamous of these that has been discussed to death in the context of this book. Well, let's get into it.
00:31:28:12 - 00:31:36:14
Bennett Tomlin
I was invited to their infamous dinner at one of New Haven's fanciest restaurants. The rumor mill informed me that the dinner was a kind of intermediate interview.
00:31:36:16 - 00:31:56:11
Bennett Tomlin
We needed to be funny, charming, and engaging, but we'd never be invited to the D.C. or New York offices for final interviews. When I arrived at the restaurant, I thought it a pity that the most expensive meal I'd ever eaten would take place in such a high stakes environment. Before dinner, we were all corralled into a private banquet room for wine and conversation.
00:31:56:13 - 00:32:05:15
Bennett Tomlin
Women a decade older than I was carried around wine bottles wrapped in beautiful linens. Asking every few minutes whether I wanted a new glass of wine or a refill of the old one.
00:32:05:15 - 00:32:07:11
Bennett Tomlin
At first I was too nervous to drink.
00:32:07:15 - 00:32:28:02
Bennett Tomlin
But I finally mustered the courage to answer yes when someone asked whether I'd like some wine and if so, what kind? I'll take what I said, which I thought would settle the matter. Would you like Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay? I thought she was screwing with me, but I used my powers of deduction to determine that those were two separate kinds of white wine.
00:32:28:04 - 00:32:38:06
Bennett Tomlin
So I ordered a Chardonnay. Not because I didn't know what Sauvignon Blanc was, though. I didn't, but because it was easier to pronounce. I dodged my first bullet. The night, however, was young,
00:32:38:06 - 00:32:48:08
Bennett Tomlin
The wine glasses looked Windex. The suits looked fancy. The linens looked softer than his bedsheets and he really wanted to touch them.
00:32:48:08 - 00:32:54:11
Bennett Tomlin
This dinner seemed overwhelming for him. After J.D. Vance sits down for the dinner,
00:32:54:11 - 00:33:03:15
Bennett Tomlin
the waitress asked if he'd like tap or sparkling. He rolled his eyes. As impressed as I was with the restaurant calling, the water sparkling was just too pretentious.
00:33:03:21 - 00:33:26:00
Bennett Tomlin
Like sparkling crystal or a sparkling diamond. But I ordered the sparkling water anyway. Probably better for me. Fewer contaminants. I took one sip and literally spit it out. It was the grossest thing I'd ever tasted. I remember once getting a Diet Coke in a subway, without realizing that the fountain machine didn't have enough Diet Coke syrup. That's exactly what this sparkling water tasted like.
00:33:26:00 - 00:33:47:11
Bennett Tomlin
Besides these mistakes at dinner, there's an interesting story from when he starts doing interviews. And I think it's important to remember at this point that J.D. Vance graduated high school, did his tour in the Marines, went to the Ohio State and graduated and then went to Yale Law. So by the time he's doing these interviews at the end of Yale Law, he's like almost 30.
00:33:47:15 - 00:33:51:17
Bennett Tomlin
He has substantial life experience. Remember that as I read this story,
00:33:51:17 - 00:33:56:17
Bennett Tomlin
So J.D. Vance is being interviewed and is asked why he wants to work at this firm. He responds,
00:33:56:17 - 00:34:02:19
Bennett Tomlin
I should have said anything other than what came from my mouth. I don't really know, but the pay isn't bad haha.
00:34:02:20 - 00:34:07:04
Bennett Tomlin
The interviewer looked at me like I had three eyes and the conversation never recovered.
00:34:07:04 - 00:34:33:19
Bennett Tomlin
In conclusion. J.D. Vance, this book is really weird. It's not good. It's only worth reading if you truly need a better understanding of this weirdo. I've struggled to figure out how to talk about this. The book is about abuse. It's about the abuse inflicted on J.D.. It's about the cycles of abuse that contributed to that abuse. It's about cycles of abuse that surround some of these communities he grew up in.
00:34:33:21 - 00:35:00:07
Bennett Tomlin
It's about the systemic issues that affected these communities. And it's about how these issues make the cycles of abuse and the cycles of poverty that much harder to break. But also, it's not about that. Because despite JD acknowledging the adverse childhood experiences, it's mostly about individual responsibility. He describes all these things. He walks right up to the line of some of these systemic issues.
00:35:00:09 - 00:35:30:17
Bennett Tomlin
But as soon as he starts to actually address them, he immediately comes back to individual responsibility. I think this is what makes it a bad book, more than the stilted prose or the lack of references or deep research. It's that it's a book about the trauma and systemic issues which shaped J.D., and it gets 90% of the way to actually looking at those issues, and then swerves straight into be responsible and do better.
00:35:30:18 - 00:35:40:18
Bennett Tomlin
And because of that, it just fundamentally fails as hopefully JD, his vice presidential campaign, will also fail.
00:35:45:17 - 00:35:58:00
Bennett Tomlin
Here's a non-exhaustive list of things I didn't know when I got to law school that you needed to wear a suit to a job interview, that wearing a suit large enough to fit a silverback gorilla was inappropriate, that a butter knife wasn't just decorative.
00:35:58:04 - 00:36:18:20
Bennett Tomlin
After all, anything that requires a butter knife can be done better with a spoon or an index finger. That pleather and leather were different substances that your shoes and belt should match, that certain cities and states had better job prospects, that going to a nicer college brought benefits outside of bragging rights, that finance was an industry that people worked in.
00:36:18:22 - 00:36:22:21
Bennett Tomlin
That's a lot of things not to know. I think.
