Wait a Minute… Nascar?!

when my old man told me he was going to see a nascar race this weekend, that’s what i said.  really, how often to southern males see their first nascar race at age 46?  my guess is not that often. 

nascar is a pretty polarizing force down here in the dirty south.  when it comes to white people, in general you either love it or you hate it.  when it comes to black people, you just hate it… or so i’ve heard.  you know, for decades, it was a struggle to get all the country club golf courses to open their doors to black people.  there was some lingering intolerance among the rich crackers, and it’s taken quite a while, but now black people can get dressed up and gloriously swing their mallets at the tiny balls to their hearts’ content.  however, the situation is much different with regard to nascar.  most black people i’ve talked to about the subject (and before you make any assumption, i’ll admit, it hasn’t been a whole hell of a lot of black people) say that they aren’t interested in going to a race track with a bunch of drunk red-necks.  to be honest, i can’t say i blame them… i mean, think about it.  all the competition and those fuel fumes combined with lots of beers could make this a down-right unpleasant experience if you look any different.  as an alternate example, think about the Borat scene where he’s singing the kazakstan (sp?) national anthem at the white bread rodeo.   it went over like a lead balloon, and Borat was white!  my point is, black people and nascar typically don’t mix, (no matter how many o-g’s dale earnhardt junior puts in his commercials). 

white people know this, too.  in fact, for many red-necks, this seems to be a major element of the allure.  lots of this kind of folks go to the race in order to be in a homogenously white environment.  they get off on the old-timiness of it i guess.  my father isn’t that kind of guy.  while he is from the south and has a moderately red neck, he works with almost exclusively black people and (aside from a few good-natured jokes) has never said anything that would indicate to me that he even notices skin color of anyone.  that’s why i was so perplexed when he told me he was going to the nascar race in bristol, tennessee.  i tried to be rational — maybe he’s just going in order to humor a pal who invited him.  maybe he wants to get away from the town for a few days.  maybe he’s not going to the race and is just using it for an alibi.  but all the time i was lying to myself.  deep in my heart, i knew the ugly truth.  my father, at age 46, was becoming a fully-fledged red-neck.  all the tv commercials combined with the peer pressure were finally taking their toll. 

tonight, as i type this blog, i can only imagine what’s become of my poor old man.  i can see it all now… john deere cap adjusted two sizes too small for his dome, a flannel (larry the cable guy) cut-off shirt, a nasty beer gut and flags with his new favorite driver’s number on them dangling from his truck’s windows.  i know that my disappointment must be more profound than that which he felt when he walked up on me smoking a bowl on his back porch some 5 years ago.  what will his neighbors think?  will property value diminish?  in considering all these things, i started to think more deeply about nascar…

maybe some of you sportscenter junkies have heard that toyota cars are now racing in nascar.  that’s cool, except that the nascar fad is moving across the pacific ocean and is becoming all the rage in japan.  japanese kids with tony stewart lunchboxes and shit.  40-year-old japanese rednecks sporting jeff gordon t-shirts.  sounds harmless enough, right?  Wrong!  since american football is not popular overseas, nba is only popular in china and whatever the fuck country dirk nowitski’s from, and baseball is (excepting the new boston pitcher) played out, nascar is now our biggest sports-related export to asia.  these drunken red-neck fests are the only pictures of american sporting life that the japanese are seeing.  sad, sad, sad.  so that we’re all on the same page, let’s clarify.  right now, it is my belief that japanese people think of americans as some bad-grammar-having, arab-killing, beer-drinking, car-racing sons of bitches.  not a pretty picture. 

we all know that that there’s more to american life than these things.  true, we like a delicious beer every now and again, but there are plenty of other things about american society that aren’t so bad.  the rock and roll music, mcdonald’s, playboy magazine — all of them more savage than the nascar imagery flooding tokyo’s consciousness as we speak.

 the way i see it, we have two options.  one — we can try and sabotage nascar and drive their dog and pony show out of business or, two — we can change the image of nascar so that it shows the brighter side of american existence.  this latter option seems the less illegal of the two.  in short, we’ve got to savagify nascar.  i’m blogging this right now in the hopes that you all will agree with me and make additional suggestions for the savagification of nascar; after all, it’s in all of our best interest.

i am no great thinker, so i’ll keep my suggestions brief.  first, we gotta make nascar enjoyable to all colors of people.  maybe if we invite snoop d – o – double g to be the master of ceremonies…  i can hear it now, “gizzentlemen, stizzart your engizzles.”  that’ll give nascar the multicultural feel that is fitting of real american culture.  next, what about getting some hookers to get naked or something when the race is getting boring?  that will serve a manifold function with regard to the international viewers.  first, it’ll set a nice example.  see, guys, we let our women out in public.  also, the naked hookers will subliminally encourage the japanese to buy the american axe body spray, thus stimulating our waning economy. 

we all need to think outside the box if there’s any hope of salvaging our tarnished image, but i think that with your help, we can win the war against the red-neckization of the american image in the international community.  please pray for my father.  thank you, and good day.