I am generally pleased by the fact that the National Review prints columns by Geoffrey Norman on sports. I generally read every column that is posted of his, which is more than I can say for Stephen Moore, Bruce Bartlett, Randy Barnett, or Cathy Seipp. (You've ranted at length against most of those authors, haven't you? I vaguely seem to recall you swearing you'd read Meghan Cox Gurdon before you'd read those guys.--Ed.)

Full disclosure: I've been a NASCAR fan since I was able to comprehend fast-moving hunks of metal around a large oval. My father has been going to races since the early 1960s, and I've been going with him since the Reagan Administration. I go to at least two Winston Cup races per year, and you'll always find me clad in a driver's hat and Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses, both firmly clamped to my head by a pair of David Clark Model 10A hearing protectors. I've stood in line for drivers' autographs, I've cursed a variety of drivers---some of whom no longer live, alas---and I've sat through interminable delays, all for the chance to watch vehicles race. It's a fantastic feeling to stand with over a hundred thousand people for hours on end watching a race. If you don't understand it, I simply can't help you. That being said, Mr. Norman's latest column has a few points with which to comment upon:

1. Mr. Norman writes, "As they say in the south, "Son, we ain't trash no more.""

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never been and never will be "trash". Perhaps it's a cultural thing, one of those "Nobody ever told us we were poor, so I thought we were doing OK" Dwight Eisenhower sort of things, but I do figure that I don't count as trash. I've always had a hard time considering motorsports to be the purview of trash, considering that it takes a fair deal of non-physical attributes to be able to field a winning race vehicle. Anyone can play football once the pigskin is procured; not so the racer.

NB, editors: There's a capital 'S' in "South". I'm from the country and I like it that way.

2. Mr. Norman writes of Jeff Gordon thusly: "[A] certain kind of fundamentalist NASCAR fan is unlikely to ever accept Gordon as authentic."

Ooh, me! I think I've loathed Jeff Gordon for oh, ten years now. I vaguely remembering making a late-season decision to accept his first championship as opposed to supporting one of the competitors for the championship. Oh, what tangled webs geopolitics weave when applied to other things.

At any rate, I generally have considerable disdain for the current crop of new stars. Kasey Kahne looks like a Ken doll given life, and they're all a bunch of carefully manufactured advertising mannequins. Not that said role is inherently objectionable; I just miss the days when racers weren't perfectly coiffed movie stars who stepped from their cars as if they were stepping onto a yacht. (Obligatory Carly Simon reference.)

Of course, I still consider the Bodine and Wallace brothers to be outsiders, so take the foregoing as you will.

And now, to the nut of things, my big point of disagreement:

It is a celebration of cars by people who are crazy about cars. In the NASCAR view of the world, the automobile is the ultimate in liberating, empowering, seductive technology.

This puts it decisively on one side of the great cultural divide. While new NASCAR tracks in places like California (where they are racing this weekend) are taking action away from the legendary old venues like Darlington, South Carolina, the sport is still red-state to its roots. Stock-car racing comes from a world of mechanics and boys who grew up learning how to use a timing light and fine tune a carburetor by the sound. Cars were their passion.

On the other side of the divide people are hostile to cars. They may own cars ? even expensive ones ? but they sure don't love them. Their signature automobile is the Volvo, first choice of people who hate cars or consider them at best a necessarily evil. Mass transit is the mantra of these people. They want fewer cars, less powerful cars, safer cars, and cars with no trace of sex appeal.

This is the cold, Puritan side of the American character and it disdains its exuberant frontier opposite. One set of folks gets its kicks listening to Ralph Nader make humorless speeches; the other would rather watch Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart swap paint.

As Jack McKinney's Robotech novelizations put it, wai-wai-waitasecond.¹

This may be another one of my "protest too much" issues, but let me say this: As a 20-year-plus veteran of NASCAR fandom, I'd suggest that Mr. Norman divides with too much a meat axe. I never had the necessity of learning the intricacies of a timing light or a carburetor under the shade tree, because by the time I was capable of understanding such things, electronic fuel injection had surpassed the carburetor in the family's vehicles.

I did, however, wash cars in the front yard under a shade tree.

Nonetheless, cars aren't my passion. Sure I use one on an almost daily basis. It's a reliable and fuel-efficient four-door Chevrolet sedan that has performed with only one major hitch since I bought it, and that was a warranty-covered problem. At the same time, I still bemoan the loss of passenger rail service throughout America---oh, for several billion to invest in Amtrak---and it's kind of hard to love one of the major weapons against the vast passenger rail system that once existed. But, I digress.

The major rub is that I want a Volvo. Specifically, I want an XC70 AWD in "Ice White". It's a cool forty thousand dollars, so I'll probably never get it, but one can dream. The thing just screams cool in a way that I can't quantify, and it's got comparable fuel economy to what I now drive. In addition to that, Volvo's cars have a reputation for safety that is attractive. Given that I'll probably be involved in an accident sooner or later (due to idiots at the wheel of their SUV, probably) I'd like to have something geared to survive it with no risk to me and little damage to the vehicle.

Yes, I'd prefer fewer cars (and fewer trucks) because it might represent better business for the rail industry. Route of the Tennessean for life, yo. As a matter of fuel efficiency---the better to give the bird to OPEC---I'd prefer different designs. (We argued this in college philosophy on an off day; what's the point of the 120MPH-capable car if the speed limit's only 65? We never got an answer, either.) Although I wince at the amount of fuel being consumed at a Winston Cup race, better for it to be used in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo built by Richard Childress Racing as opposed to being poured into a damnable Hummer or other sport-utility driven by some latte-sipping imbecile who can't drive. Sport-utes, the bane of 21st century motorists. Can't see around 'em, their owners can't drive 'em, and they run up my fuel prices. Bah!

Having seen a fair number of Volvo wagons whilst in various metropolitan places, I strenuously disagree with Mr. Norman's assertion that the Volvo wagon doesn't have any sex appeal. 'course, my definition of that runs more towards Nicole Kidman's Grace Stewart from The Others as opposed to say certain former Mouseketeers proclaiming their slavery to me, or how "Dirrty" they are, so go figure. Demure lasses with classic curves are always more appealing than the vulgar thing of the moment, as far as I'm concerned.

Nevertheless, I plead guilty to an indictment of cold Puritanism. It's not the first time that someone's tried to tar me with that label, and it probably won't be the last time. Hooray for Calvin Coolidge and all that. It's part of being a conservative, darn it. We're not big into "frontier exuberance". We're supposed to be the men running the Northern Pacific Railway who urge others to go West and settle along the route.

At any rate, I'd rather see Tony Stewart eat the wall and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., kick his car in frustration. Hooray for Robby Gordon and the #7 Monte Carlo, even if he's not in every race. I've got no time for that no-talent hack Ralph Nader, and I'd feel perfectly comfortable taking my (theoretical) XC70 to the nearest NASCAR track. It's roomy, it's more or less efficient, and it's good-looking. What more could you ask for, other than Cate Blanchett on your arm?

Regardless of any of the faint criticisms I raise, I am very glad to see someone at the National Review looking upon motorsports in general, and NASCAR in particular, with something other than Northeastern disdain.

¹ I realize that the novelizations may have used different spellings of this, but I can't check it because I don't have the bloody things handy. They got stored somewhere in the late 1990s, and I haven't seen them since.

Originally created on 28 February 2005 at 234210 hours.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 02:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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