J.D.’s Hillbilly Smackdown (c/o Papaw-at-large)

Stop doin’ the Dew, J.D.

Stay away from the Mountain Dew, son. It’s affecting your brain — and as a self-professed hillbilly, y’all be needin’ all the brain-power y’all kin muster.

What you said years ago in a Fox News interview has come back to bite yer hind parts…but now you won’t even admit you wuz wrong. Instead of denyin’ or clarifyin’ you stepped even deeper into your own poo.

Let me put that another way.

Your hillbilly logic about young’uns and cat-friendly womenfolk who weren’t spoken fer done backfired and made you sound like one of them turtles who went to a possem party and forgot his shell.

I don’t have all the book learnin’ you have so D.G. Connelly is helping me put some thoughts together here. That’s why there’s some big words and good grammar mixed up with the way I sound when I’m talkin’. (At least D.G. understands more about our mountain ways than some folks who take off fer Yale and never wave goodbye.)

Back in 2021, when you wuz running for the U.S. Senate, you told Tucker Carlson that our country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

Whoa, Nelly! Talk about broad sweepin’ generalizations that should have bin swept under the rug ‘fore suppertime!

Listen up. In the first place, ladies — either the cat or dog kind — don’t have enough power to run a country as big as this one. There’s not enough of them on any board of directors on Wall Street, in Congress, or at any other city, county, or state office. Thanks to them crazies at the Supreme Court, they don’t even have control of their own bodies anymore. White men are calling all the shots here, J.D. So there’s no way possible these womenfolk — married or not married, child-blessed or child-cursed — could have enough power to make America miserable.

And what in tarnation ever gave you the idea that women who can’t — or won’t — bear children are “miserable?” Being childless ain’t always gonna make you unhappy. Sometimes the unhappiest people are the ones who do have children. Wake up and git outta bed, boy. It’s 2024. We’re in the 21st Century. There’s always an up side and a down side to everything. So women can be both childless AND childfree.

Another thing: you plumb forgot about the menfolk. You put all the blame on the womenfolk but left out the ones who are supposed to be plantin’ them womb-seeds. Women might have all the right parts needed to have babies, but that doesn’t mean men aren’t involved in the Good Lord’s plan.

Now you could have straightened that all out in the interview, J.D. … But you didn’t. You said, “It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Uh-huh. So now people with no children don’t “have a direct stake in it?” In what? Back when you wuz testafyin’ agin those Democrats, they wuz kid-friendly. Kamala Harris was being a step-mother to her husband Doug’s children, and Pete Buttigieg and his partner were trying to adopt a little one. As for AOC’s choice about having or not having children, that’s none of your concern, J.D. You don’t have any say in her personal life.

Besides, having and raising children ain’t going to give you any magical powers when it comes to politics. You think babies will give you superpowers like that feller in the comic books who came from Krypton? Well, I’m here to tell you, you’re dead wrong about that. Having children won’t make you a better parent or human being or God-fearin’ American.

Just birthing babies don’t automatically make any woman “maternal.” Just getting a woman pregnant don’t automatically make a man “paternal,” either. No-good parents can be real fertile, while the ones with hearts and souls from the angels can’t birth babies of their own or afford to adopt them.

But you defended yourself by blaming your wife! You said you were criticizin’ the Democratic Party for their anti-child and anti-family ways after talkin’ to your wife. She said she was feelin’ pressure to not have any more children because of how it could affect her career. But where’s this pressure comin’ from? If it’s from the boss man at her work, then someone there is breakin’ the law. (I might be dumb, but I’m not stupid, son.) Don’t matter if that someone be Democrat or Republican or Whig. That kind of pressure is still agin’ the law. So maybe she should see a lawyer ‘bout that.

Oh, I keep forgettin’! Your wife’s a lawyer. So are you, J.D. And you sayin’ how un-American childless Americans are sounds even more pitiful now.

All that college-learning (along with the Dew) must have erased ever last bit of horse sense you used to have. You kin love your country and love God but still not afford to have young’uns. Add up all the doctoring, clothing, schooling, eating, and halfway decent birthday and Christmas presents sometime. Not even Solomon in all his glory could afford to have any sons or daughters nowadays.

Or, maybe you think having kids is the All-American thing to do because you and your wife are makin’ real good money now. Good for you. But not everyone has your jobs — or your luck.

Now that you want to be Vice-President, start usin’ the non-Dew part of your brain to figure out a few things. Like, maybe not every American is gonna fit into your little political mold. So maybe start apologizin’ to them cat women you bin sayin’ those silly-ass things about.

Then start apoligizin’ to me fer what you said about my son.

Like you, he was a war veteran. But he din’ do no PR for the military like you. He was an Army medic who saved lives and helped both Americans and Vietnamese. For pre’near 30 years he’s been married to a good woman, and they are childless/childfree. They liked children, they still like children, they just don’t have any young’uns of their own.

Fer you to say him and his wife don’t love America as much as you and your wife because you have 3 children and they don’t just hurts. Fer you to believe you’re a better American than my son because you sired 3 children and he didn’t is just plain un-American.

Good luck come November, son. Y’all gonna need it.