CHAPTER 8

Forgetting Who We Are

The problem isn’t just for women, whom progressivism has reduced to birth control panhandlers who protest with feces and feminine-hygiene products. Through feminism, men are being shamed for their masculinity. Society is trying desperately to eliminate it from the male sex altogether, while something curiously opposite is happening in pop culture.

Everyone swoons over Daryl Dixon on The Walking Dead, but where I come from there exist a million Daryl Dixons: greasy, dirty denim–wearing, bow-hunting, coon-skinning country boys—boys who could take care of them and theirs if the world as we know it ended in one fiery flash, leaving nothing behind but dead branches and ash. To echo Mugatu from Zoolander, hillbilly is so hot right now. Hillbilly is couture. Hillbilly comes to mind when you think of people doing things for themselves.

The characters that all the girls want to be with and all the boys want to be like are Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon, particularly Dixon. Dixon is a bowman. In season four of the series Dixon runs up on a group of thugs while looking for Beth. An altercation ensues and Dixon aims his crossbow at the leader of the pack.

“A bowman. I respect that,” the man says. “A man with a rifle, you could have been some kind of photographer or soccer coach back in the day, but a bowman’s a bowman through and through.” When women are given the choice between a skinny metrosexual who says words like “product” when describing hair gel, has his jeans tailored, and needs a mechanic to change his windshield wipers and an outdoorsman who can live off the land, protect his family, and service his own car with his own rough hands, the latter will win every single time. Gleaming, sweaty, strong masculinity is unmatched in the dating world. It’s a necessary counterweight to femininity. It’s also under attack. Daryl is a favorite because Daryl is the first person you’d pick for your dodgeball team. Daryl is who you’d choose for company if you were ever stranded on an island. He’s the guy you’d want to have by your side in a foxhole. Daryl is masculinity, vulnerability, sustainability, pure ability wrapped up in a leather jacket with angels’ wings embroidered on the back. Daryl is pure Flyover Nation. Daryl lives in the real world, not some societal construct of people who’ve for so long been inside concrete jungles that they’ve forgotten how the middle of the nation lives. The Daryls of the world don’t wear leathers for fashion; they wear them so as not to get road rash if they fall off their bikes. They wear flannels because they’re warm, they’re versatile, and the pattern hides grease stains well. When I was a kid I remember wondering how in the world my grandpa ever got clothes. The man had never set foot inside a mall, a Target, or a Walmart in his life. He wore Wranglers, work boots for the field, a brown belt, an undershirt, and a plaid (short-sleeved, spring and summer) or flannel (fall and winter) shirt with a hat every single day of his life. A pack of Marlboro Reds stuck out of his back left jeans pocket and a pair of work gloves stuck out of the right. He wore an old brown fedora for fancy occasions. The only known colors on Grandpa’s color wheel were white, black, and brown. Every item on his person served a purpose.

I once saw a guy in Manhattan dressed like my grandpa. I was in NYC for Fox and had ducked into a Yelped café not far from Radio City Music Hall for coffee and a snack after my radio program and before taping Red Eye. I stood behind him in line. He wore clean, unsecured work boots that squeaked when he stepped, Wranglers, a flannel, and a sock hat. A pair of leather driving gloves protruded from his back jeans pocket with the fingers artfully splayed. His sleeves were rolled back enough to reveal his bracelets and he had the beginnings of a beard. He wore a sock hat even though it was nearly eighty degrees. His clothes were perfectly tailored and ironed. A perfectly conditioned brown leather messenger bag hung low across his frame. For a moment I wondered if there was a small farm tucked away in the city somewhere, perhaps a logging area nearby. I had grabbed the last green juice to drink in makeup after my coffee. He suddenly changed his mind at the register, went back to the upright cooler, and realized that that final serving of green juice he had seen was in my hand. He glared at me for a second before sighing a dramatic Bette Midler–quality sigh, returning to the register, and saying in a strained, overenunciated fashion, “Never. Mind. I guess I’m not going to get juice now after all.”

That’s when I realized that he was a hipster.

Not just any hipster, mind you—the genus of New York hipster has evolved into several different species, different subsets. Where originally you had the hipster who listened only to vinyl, now you have a dozen or so varieties, each as annoying as the others. What I witnessed that afternoon at that NYC café is the most recent classification of hipster, known as the lumbersexual. The lumbersexual is the type of hipster who wants to look as though he just walked out of the forest fresh from a day of chopping wood to heat his log cabin that night. Lumbersexuals wear exclusively Columbia, North Face, and L.L.Bean. The image speaks to an unspoken acknowledgment and visceral craving.

The New York Times, a publication I don’t read if I can avoid it, published an op-ed by what I can only imagine is a skinny lumbersexual who carries a “murse.” It was called “27 Ways to Be a Modern Man,” and after I read it my ovaries needed emotional therapy.

Number 16:

The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away.

Because he’s a giant pansy and doesn’t own a gun?

Number 25:

The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will. 137

Oh, wow, I had no idea I was so prescient. Going back to number 16, can the “modern man” even throw a punch? This is what passes as modern masculinity on the coasts. Sometimes I think these guys are the true transgendered. The editorial should really bear the title “27 Ways to Be a Beta Man.”

Progressives have a longing for authenticity, for a deeper meaning to fill a hole in themselves that no number of wheatgrass smoothies can fill. You can see it in the holiday hillbillies making their occasional trips into the heartland to recapture something they lost. You can see it in the lumbersexuals, who think they can dress the part of a real man without having to make the sacrifices a real man finds himself making. You can see it in the Oprah-fication of the word “spiritual,” as the coastals try to get enlightened without the Light and try to build a Kingdom of Heaven with no King.

They don’t want to admit that there is a place they can find all the things they’re longing for, and it’s not a hot yoga studio.

 • • • 

When I was younger I’d attend morning service with my grandmother and aunts while my mother worked back in the city. Everyone was in a floral dress, some of the ladies wore hats, and panty hose were a requirement even in August and even with open-toed shoes. We’d all file in, and the satisfaction in Brother Jim’s eyes would grow as the pews filled. He’d launch into one of his fire-and-brimstone sermons, occasionally wiping the sweat from his brow with a folded white handkerchief he kept in his breast pocket. My cousins and I would cast a side-eye glance at one another to see who was paying attention. Grandma had one of those little accordion fans she’d use and would often say “amen” more for the benefit of others than for herself. Sometimes she would rest her voice on the n in “amennnnn” as a verbal underscore. My cousins and I learned how to pretend to be enthralled by the sermons even if we had no idea what was being preached. Afterward everyone would make the weekly Sunday postchurch pilgrimage to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, where she would hold court in the kitchen and the aunts would form a ring around the small dining room table with coffee, cigarettes, and gossip. It was their own sort of “church.” The stories these women shared at the table were far more interesting to me than what I’d heard from Brother Jim (no offense, I was a kid!).

“Did you hear so-and-so ran off with so-and-so’s husband the other day at the tavern?” one aunt would ask in a shocked tone.

“Noooo!” the other aunts would murmur.

“Oh, yes, she did,” the aunt would continue, tapping her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray at the center of the table. I think she did it for dramatic effect. “She done run off with him and told so-and-so that she was leavin’ with so-and-so.”

“Harlot,” Grandma would mutter. During church I learned about what sin does to the body and soul; from the stories around Grandma’s dining room table I learned how it wrecks families and marriages. Plus, the gossip was better than an episode of one of Grandma’s soap opera “stories.” (Her favorite was The Bold and the Beautiful. I mocked that name so much. As in “Not only are they bold, but also, they are beautiful.” It always began with people angrily yet slowly turning around and stating intently at the camera.) Sitting around my grandma’s dining room table was like sitting around a campfire telling stories. I sometimes wondered, at least as a kid, where I learned the most about God: at Grandma’s, hearing all the ways that the townsfolk violated His laws, or from Brother Jim’s sermons. People learn more through stories and entertainment, the domain of culture, than from basic lectures. It’s why movies, music, television, and art are all so successful as vessels for messaging. Flyover isn’t often represented in the best way. For a long time Hollywood only ever wanted to portray Flyover as a suffocating, small-town setting from which the protagonist is desperate to escape. Flyover folks were slow-talking, one-toothed hillbillies who gummed their corn on the cob and only ever shopped at Walmart—which, by the way, whatever is wrong with Walmart?

Oh, I know, there’s the big battle between union bosses and the Waltons over unionizing the place; I’m talking beyond that. Walmart has gotten a bad reputation with people who would prefer to pay more for the same item at a more “upscale” retailer. I love Walmart, particularly Super Walmarts. When my boys were teeny tiny it was the only place I could go and shop without someone having a meltdown. The one in my area had a McDonald’s inside, and I relished feeding my children salty, GMO-loaded nuggets and fries to keep them happy while I perused the aisles with my meticulously edited grocery list. Super Walmart is the only place you can go to get your car’s tires balanced, get your eyes checked, do some banking, get a family portrait at Olan Mills in front of a fall vignette, and purchase a gun and ammo, a six-foot-tall lawn Santa, a box of tampons, and a pound of hamburger meat all at once. God bless America. I could also do all of this while wearing my Paul Frank monkey pajama pants, if I so chose, because it’s America and I do what I want. The moms who have all the time in the world to apply photo shoot–ready makeup and make every second of their lives Instagrammable have full-time nannies, fake raising children, or are sleepless beings.

Whenever society targets and attempts to demonize Flyover Nation by making it the subject of ridicule in entertainment, we know we’re on the right track. Unfortunately for society, I think they’ve epically failed these past several years. For instance, Ron Swanson was my favorite character on Parks and Recreation before that sitcom ended, and it was my favorite sitcom because of Swanson. I don’t watch a lot of television but always made a point to DVR Parks and Recreation. Swanson was straight no chaser, hysterically concise, and all the best parts of Flyover. I don’t want to prejudge the show’s writers—though I feel almost compelled to, since statistically Flyover is so often mocked in entertainment—but I can’t imagine coastal Hollywood writers purposefully making a Flyover town so eccentrically lovable and the conservative character on the show the first you’d pick for your fantasy dodgeball team.

 • • • 

Christianity changed culture; it changed the world. It ushered in an understanding of grace and forgiveness. Jesus is the most magnificent storyteller and God’s Word is the best-selling book of all time, yet the industry of telling stories is dominated by those who oppose His teachings, His influence, and the work of His disciples. The response of most of Christendom has been to segregate ourselves away from the secular world and create an entirely separate sphere of art, music, film, publishing, and education. Instead of using our talents to infiltrate and serve an unsuspecting world, we’ve partitioned ourselves off to make music for the choir. I don’t say this to be cruel but rather to highlight how I once was lost. One of the verses that had the most impact on my viewpoint was Jesus’s instruction in Matthew 10:16: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

I noticed at some point in my youth that Christians stopped going out in popular culture. I’m not talking about missionary work in other countries; I’m not talking about serving on the streets of America; I’m talking about creating art, creating music, weaving together stories, and producing films, all of which arguably serve as the greatest tools of witness the modern age has ever beheld. When Christians did return to the battlefield, it was to take their tools and segregate themselves in the Christian music industry, in the Christian film industry, in the Christian publishing industry, in Christian education. Why? Because some viewed the fight as unwinnable. (What was the movie you saw with a man of the cloth in it who wasn’t the villain? The Exorcist? If they remade that movie now, they’d find a way to make it about demons’ rights.)

Some believed that you could fight the good fight not on the battlefield where the conflict is actually taking place but in the safety of your backyard. I say none of this to be cruel but rather to instruct on how I was lost. As a Flyover girl growing up and branching out of the Midwest, I found my influences growing more and more secular until there was no light left. If I wanted a positive message I had to seek it, and society makes even the simple act of seeking shameful. It’s amazing: A society that speaks out against “slut shaming” has no problem with “values shaming.” I knew there existed Christian bookstores, but as an older teen I felt so far removed from what I had known as a child that I couldn’t bring myself to walk through the doors of such a place. I feared instant judgment, an absence of grace, and it was clearly established as an entirely separate world. Christian artists didn’t even chart on Billboard. There were scant few who ever made it to the mainstream; they weren’t represented in the fashion magazines; they just disappeared from the prevalent culture. Think of this: Christianity, completely unrepresented in modern mainstream culture. It’s not about trying to be “of the world” but about fighting for those lambs in it.

I was grateful for the advent of iTunes and the explosion of social media. There exists evil on social media, just as there is evil in the world, and all manner of inappropriateness, but social media has also closed the gap between what were once the mainstream and Christian cultures. Case in point: I had never listened to explicitly “Christian” music. I knew none of the Christian artists, none of their songs, nothing about their industry. The way iTunes categorizes its music, the Christian genre receives representation on the home page of the app. Through that I saw a song from Casting Crowns called “Praise You in This Storm.” I previewed it and loved it so much I purchased it. Through that band I discovered more Christian artists, newly arranged praise and worship music, and more. Imagine how many others like me were able to explore and expand their faith through the vein of music because of an app. The explosion of social media sparked a revival in Christian culture. Long-form blogging is officially dead, having been killed off by the next evolution on social media, microblogging sites like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and so on, yet it helped launch a movement born of faith and showcasing simple, faithful living. The previous generation of Christians may have forsaken culture, arts, and entertainment to, as they believed, protect their families from an increasingly aggressive secularism, but the subsequent generation has not only embraced the culture of social media but is using it to evangelize, to connect, to organize. Christians, in fact, have been so aggressive with their use of social media that they are holding their own in the medium against the secular world.

 • • • 

I really don’t think that this would have been possible, or as possible, had it not been for The Passion of the Christ. Critics were doubtful Mel Gibson could pull it off, especially after learning that he had upped the ante and subtitled the film, which was in entirely in Aramaic. Gibson’s film was a possibly unintended Rorschach test: Slate’s David Edelstein said of it:

You’re thinking there must be something to The Passion of the Christ besides watching a man tortured to death, right? Actually, no: This is a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie—The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre—that thinks it’s an act of faith. 138

The critical Left, which champions infanticide, found Jesus’s death too violent. They focused on the violence rather than on the awe-inspiring fact that despite what we (all of us—if you’ve sinned, one of those lashes on Christ’s back is from you) did to Christ, He begged Father God from the cross to forgive us, for “they know not what they do,” and still (!) died for our sins. I will live all my life and hope only to come close to understanding a love as magnanimous as this.

The biblical epic opened on February 25, 2004, and is the highest-grossing R-rated (for violence) film in American history. Its opening-weekend earnings made it the fourth-highest earner in 2004. Mel Gibson, the troubled but brilliant director, famously eschewed traditional marketing to rely solely on Christian support. He did some smaller television ad buys but mainly relied on church groups and Christian organizations. Not since Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments had there been such a picture on the silver screen. This shook Hollywood to its core. People there couldn’t believe a Christian film—a subtitled Christian film, no less—could be a blockbuster. It was the appetite of Christendom that propelled it, and the Weinsteins of the film world took notice. Because of the success of this film more Christian films have been, and are being, made. Television saw what happened in film and began its quest to replicate the success.

As I mentioned earlier, the Robertson family is one such example.

Fifteen years ago, heck, ten years ago, no one would have imagined that a humble, faithful family from Flyover America would become one of the most powerful and successful entities in television. The focus of their program is always their faith, highlighted in their family and business practices. Their story is one that is uniquely American: a comeback story. America loves a comeback story and Christians love a redemption story. They are one and the same with the Robertsons. Patriarch Phil Robertson did his wife and sons wrong, repented, and transformed from a humble duck caller in a Louisiana shack to part of a family empire. Flyover Nation saw in the Robertsons what they see in their own families each and every day. The Robertsons never hid from their past mistakes; they humbly submitted themselves to God and allowed themselves to be used as a powerful example of God’s love and mercy. They didn’t act proud; they remained the same humble, bandanna-bedecked Louisiana folks they were before the show exploded on A&E. Faith is about grace and redemption. Flyover Nation understands this. Some people who watched the Robertsons had previously believed themselves not good enough to walk the path of a Christian. They then heard about Phil’s story, or the struggles of the other family members, and realized it’s about admitting you need help, admitting that you aren’t perfect and that you need God. The Robertsons showed that faith isn’t about excusing sin but that grace and justice exist, along with forgiveness. This message played out on prime-time television one night a week, and Phil won the war over ending each episode in prayer.

 • • • 

I attended the first Duck Commander NASCAR race in Texas a couple of years back and spent some time talking with the family for my show on the Blaze. Every person attending was not just a NASCAR fan but also a Robertson fan. One of our producers, a born and bred California boy, was startled at the number of long-haired, camo-clad attendees. It looked like one of my family reunions. Hank Williams Jr. blasted over loudspeakers and men smoked meat in huge portable pits; the only thing missing was a game of washers and a couple of my blue-haired, pursed-mouth great-aunts passing silent judgment on everyone drinking beer. There is a simple, unpretentious quality about the Flyover way of life, where people really are what they seem and the only things people brag about are how many grandkids they have and the size of the fish they caught. The East and West Coasts are currently obsessed with understatement and simplicity in home decorating, fashion, and lifestyle, but they got it from Flyover Nation. Flyover has recently brought back masculinity and femininity too.

 • • • 

American Christian culture has been under attack for longer than just the recent decades of our lives. Our faith-based freedom has been holding strong against a constant erosion of value and morality. The other day while watching The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, as Thranduil lost his steed—and instead of losing his head, outnumbered in a battle with the Orcs, fought against them fluidly, slaying two at a time—I happened to glance at my sons’ school portraits and wondered if I should have more children just to raise up a tiny army of little Christian conservatives to push back. The Left is so very clever. Whether it’s an intended effect or not, you can’t help but recognize how beautifully all of their efforts have dovetailed into one magnificent weapon. First a rot crept into the hearts of some men and they viewed women the opposite of how God commanded in Scripture. Instead of loving them as Christ loves His church, they took them for granted, and in our country a faction of these men withheld from women the equality that was granted to them by God. In Ephesians 5:25–27 men are told:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body.

Men are called to sacrifice for their wives and held to account otherwise. Make no mistake, that dragon of evil as described in Revelation is always creeping about, exploiting every transgression as a way to further drive a wedge between mankind and God. It’s for this reason that I have Ephesians 6:12–13 tattooed on my arm.

It was Democrats who tried to rob women139 of the dignity and equality given to us by God—not man—just as it was Democrats who sent Native Americans on the trail of genocide, disarmed the free men in the South, and filibustered against the Civil Rights Act; this same party, which so often carries that seed of division, has found itself on the wrong side of every issue in American history. At some point they attempted a rather brilliant about-face, so far as optics are concerned. Progressivism swept through their ranks when pro-life suffragettes such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were lost to history and less accomplished women with questionable agendas took their place. The grandmothers of the feminist movement would not recognize the movement for women’s rights today. Progressivism whispered into women’s ears that their nurturing hearts, capable bodies, and fierce family loyalty were remnants of a bygone era of patriarchal oppression. Women rightfully resented having to fight to vote, and yet progressivism persuaded them to side with the people who had fought for over forty years to deny them the right to vote. With the fracture in the male-female relationship achieved, progressivism worked its way through the American family (simply murder your babies as birth control until you’re ready to accept the responsibility that comes with engaging in the act of intercourse) and into the American economy. If it was beneath a woman to stay at home with her family, then the economy will surely make it so that she can’t afford to choose freely. I’m always amazed that the party of prochoice does all it can to limit women’s choice in every respect, from the economic freedom to choose to visiting a community health center to even obtaining birth control over the counter. Here Republicans have pushed for over-the-counter birth control and the Left opposes it. Now that the economy is in shambles, the American family is on the decline, and faith is openly ridiculed, it’s the perfect time to finish it off, finish off that shining city on a hill, finish off the American dream.

With the help of their new god, Mother Nature, the coastals now have a plan for how they can do it.