Fraud: JD Vance isn't a 'hillbilly' (LA Times)

J.D. Vance, Ex-President Trump's new running mate, is a classic example of a convenenciero — someone who goes through life with no principles other than getting ahead and no loyalty to a community other than his own (LM Otero/AP).

Yale lawyer J.D. Vance once had money and poll woes (Darcy Cartoon/cleveland.com)

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Me and my brown wife Usha are true Americans.

From the moment I learned about hillbillies as a child, I was entranced. Good ol' boys and girls born high up in the mountains?

[The trailer trash of Appalachia?] That’s my parents. People who moved from rural towns to metro areas in search of a better life?

We is downhome folks from them thar hills

Story of both sides of my family. Working class? My upbringing. Lovers of things — food, fashion, music, diction, parties — that polite society ridiculed? Yee-haw! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and ways? ¡Ajúa!

I learned to love toxic bourbon, bluegrass music, Hee Haw reruns, and Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck If..." series.

LGBTQ flags in JD's Virginia neighborhood

As an adult, I drove through the small towns of central and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, feeling at home in areas even my white friends warned wouldn't take kindly to "my type."

I might not have outwardly resembled the 'billies I met — I'm a cholo [Mexican style gang member] nerd, after all — but we got along just fine, because they were my brothers and sisters from another madre.

Ask A Mexican! (Gus Arellano)

That’s why I was intrigued when J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, was released in 2016.

From what I heard about it, the familial dysfunction, generational poverty, and inherent fatalism that Vance overcame were similar to the pathologies of my own extended Latino clan.

The up-from-bootstraps message he preached in interviews was what my parents had always preached and what I still subscribe to. Vance's critique of conspicuous consumption among the poor is something everyone should consider.

• VIDEO: J.D. Vance: I might vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump (MeidasTouch News)
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Tacos USA (Westword)

But the parallels between the clean-cut Vance and me only went so far. He was a Yale graduate and venture capitalist, while I'm a community college kid who chose a dying profession [journalism].

He was far removed from his roots, while I experience mine nearly every other weekend at family parties. More importantly, Vance cast himself as an extraordinary exception to his fellow Appalachians, describing 'billies as encased in a toxic amber that kept them from improving their lot and left them embittered with a country that has moved on without them.

My Mexican hillbilly family never had time to whine and mope. My parents’ generation found blue-collar jobs, bought homes, and are now retired and enjoying the fruits of their blood, sweat, and tears.

Gustavo Arellano, Lalo Alcaraz: 'Hispandering'?

Most of my cousins got white-collar jobs or joined the public sector. Their children are going straight to four-year universities. More: Column: I know what a true hillbilly is, and it's not J.D. Vance (LA Times via MSN)

• Cleveland.com; Family Guy ("This Cowboy Hat Comes Right Off"); Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2024; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly