"Deer Hunting With Jesus"

A staged reading of a new play by Indy editor David Fellerath, from the book by Joe Bageant, opens Thursday night at Manbites Dog.

UPDATE: I should also mention that Joe Bageant will be reading from Deer Hunting With Jesus tonight (Wednesday) at the Regulator on Ninth St., 7pm.

Joe will be my guest on a special edition of Shooting the Bull, Thursday night at 7:30, on WXDU, 88.7 FM, while Kevin Davis is on vacation. Joe explores the inner reaches of redneck America, and while i don't always agree with his "dispatches from America's class war," anyone who writes like this deserves to be read.

When it comes to excelling in certain endeavors, my own people, the Scots Irish, excel at killing dark skinned peoples on distant shores and being intractable lovers of the surliest forms of freedom, plus worshipping a fundamentalist God that means real business. We all have our talents and liabilities. In any case, we mean-spirited seed of John Calvin, who produced George W. Bush of Kennebunkport, Texas, not to mention nearly every stump jumping redneck demagogue preacher and politician in American history, should at least get credit for producing Mark Twain and Robert Mitchum. Bill Clinton and Jane Fonda too, though both are starting to smell a little too gamey to claim of late.

We're all Americans, some of whom attempt to think and some of whom refuse to, which in either case leads to its own prejudices, depending upon the socio-political pressures of the times. It appears now that among thinking Americans the last acceptable prejudice is anti-Christian fundamentalism -- along with anti-redneckism, (but we ‘necks could give a shit and have even become defiantly proud of the label. Question: How many NASCAR Jesus born again American flag stickers can fit on the bumper of classic "I don't have the money to restore it yet" Ford Galaxy? Answer: twenty one, if you overlap them at the edges. I'm not shitting you here. That's an actual count. The result of redneck exploration of spatial relationships.)

Tune in.