Has the Whole World Gone Trailer?

We certainly seem fascinated by trashiness in this culture, don't we? We have a strange love affair with an economic and social class that most normal people, if aware of their position, would try desperately to rise above. I mean, who really wants to be poor? Who really wants to be brutish and unrefined? Who really wants to step over seven hound dogs and a rusted out transmission to get into the double-wide?

Now just to avoid any racial conflicts, I personally use the term 'trailer' to mean what some call 'white trash'. There are rich, so-called refined people who are white trash, and I don't want to lump hard-working trailer folk in with those evil bastards. I actually lived in a trailer for a while, so I've seen the culture up close for an extended period of time, and I developed a "life experiences of a professional writer" sort of regard for them.

And it seems that 'trailer', is in these days.

It's everywhere.

A couple of years ago, the Fox Network presented the show, Celebrity Boxing, which featured, among other matches, a three round bout between erstwhile figure skater and sometime goon wrangler, Tanya Harding and southern "socialite" and gubernatorial femme fatale, Paula Jones. The combatants launched perfunctory "punches" at one another in a nap-inspiring contest that ended with Harding emerging as the victor. But the ratings were so high that Fox decided to air another installment of the program to accommodate the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, cretins that made the first program so successful.

Celebrity Boxing Part Deux featured a match between Nabokovian auto body man, Joey Buttafuoco and an ex female wrestler named China. John Wayne Bobbit --- of severed penis fame --- was schedule to fight China, but had to pull out because apparently he decided to train for the bout on his current love interest, and sadly was taken away for it. (A better fate than he has suffered in the past by the way.)

And just recently, Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher --- the girl who shot his wife, Mary Jo, in the face --- were on national television together, chumming it up all over again shortly after she and Mary Jo shared an embrace. Seems they're all pals now.

Not only that, but Britney Spears, just a few months removed from delivering baby number one, and just a few weeks removed from dropping baby number one on its head, is pregnant again. The Evel Knievel Days festival is still held every July in Butte, Montanna, and Howard Stern is making a billion damn dollars doing T&A and fart jokes on satellite radio.

Now, these types of spectacles are all well and good, if you're wearing a housecoat with a soft pack of Marlboro 100s in the pocket and making a nice batch of macaroni and cheese while your stories blare in the background. But I can't help but wonder if it speaks worse of the state of refined civilization that self-serving, inbred dolts, like Spears and Buttafuoco, are abusing Warhol's fifteen minute limit, or that we keep tuning in.

Why has the cult of celebrity become a clearinghouse for the mullet-sporting, wife beater-clad, chain-smoking sect that used to only thrive in the mobile home park where I once lived? And why have we embraced them so thoroughly? Do we see them as a curiosity? Or has the entire world gone trailer?

Several of our most visible information sources and entertainment venues seem to suggest that it has.

Stop and think about the prominent media in our current culture. American television is without a doubt the biggest purveyor of trailer fare on the planet, offering a litany of reality shows where apparently the higher the level of ones trashiness, the better chance one has of becoming a contestant. The boob tube also offers such morsels as Montel Williams, Maury, and their "talk show" bretheren, professional wrestling, a show where people eat worms and bugs called Fear Factor, Bass Masters, Monday Night Football, the Tough Man competition, tractor pulls, The Price is Right, anything spun from Jack Ass, Cops, People's Court, Judge Judy, and the list goes on and on.

And aside from the tube, you can find healthy doses of trailer in the music industry. Of course when you talk about trailer in music, one brand easily stands head and CAT cap above the rest. "Oh, we have both kinds, country and western."

In all fairness though, the country stars of today are trying real hard to shirk their trailer heritage, striving instead for homogenized pop star status, as is the case with acts like Keith Urban, Faith Hill, and Rascal Flats. But I'd rather live in a world where Merle Haggard goes to prison, and Hank Williams and Keith Whitley drink themselves to death, than watch Kenny Chesney priss around in a tight, sleeveless T-shirt and a pooka shell necklace. At least the true trailer country singers had real, hardass demons to contend with, and didn't use cutesy ambiguous sexual orientations to position themselves in the mainstream. This established, traditional faction of trailer is attempting to shed the double-wide mentality everyone else seems hot for. Hey guys and gals, stick with what you do best. After all, you are trailer and trailer is you. There is no shame in being the first at something.

But trailer has leaked over into other music genres as well. Remember when rock stars were rock stars and hip hop stars were hip hop stars, and we could easily tell them apart. Lately there's been an odd trend in the music industry where the two types of music are being melded together, usually by white trailer kids, like Eminem, Fred Durst, and Kid Rock that think they can fool us into thinking they're street or hardcore rock 'n roll. But your hybrid music is not rock and it's not hip hop, and a wife beater and baggy jeans is trailer, no matter how many gold chains and backward baseball caps you add to the ensemble.

It's bad enough that we can't seem to get our fill of the Budweiser lifestyle on television and in music, but things trailer are just as popular in other areas as well. A certain contingent of the current yuppy population has embraced NASCAR and stock car racing in general. Their goal it seems is to indoctrinate a movement that could be termed Trailer Chic. But I've got news for all you poseurs out there: it's not working.

Your fascination with Joe Dirt doesn't make you trailer. I mean, when you step onto the infield at Talladega, that dried brown stuff on your chin better be Copenhagen juice, your jeans better be showing a good portion of your ass crack, your eye better be lazy whether you've finished 43 beers or single Big Gulp, bleach better never have touched your underwear, let alone your teeth, your sunburn better be from the sun and present year round, that better be a bologna and white bread sandwich you're eating, and when you say, "You wanna cold one," it better come out of your mouth as one word. Otherwise, you're just playing a game. Hey, I lived in a trailer. I worked with trailer. And Senator, you're not trailer.

But the question is, why is anyone playing that game? Have we lost all inclination toward refinement? All desire to be classy? Do we feel we've taken art and culture as far as they can go? Are we simply saying what's the point of even trying anymore? Do we care what the rest of the world thinks of us? Should we care?

Big Brother, Fear Factor, and Monday Night Football will probably get high ratings as usual. And Montel and Maury seem to still be going strong. But why will their ratings be so high? What is our fascination with these types of things? How do these shows stay on the air?

Perhaps --- just perhaps --- there's a little trailer in all of us.


P.S. For further reading on things trailer, use your Internet search engine and enter the following: Federline, The Bachelor, tornadoes, child custody, El Camino, cheerleader moms, hockey dads, and Rinderpest.com.