When Carter Was a Cracker

Or So People Said

Mar 02, 2023

As we await the imminent passing of former President Jimmy Carter, somebody suggested I dig up my book Crackers, which came out in 1980, right before Carter failed to be re-elected. (An old actor named Ronald Reagan blew him away.) Now we appreciate that Carter was a fine man, and indeed a great one based on his post-presidency work, but in 1980 he was a President from Georgia, whom Americans across the board made fun of. Which I, being from Georgia myself, resented.

I haven't looked at Crackers in years, and am frankly astonished by how incorrect it is by today's standards, but hey, it was published by Knopf, edited (lightly) by Gordon Lish and highly praised in both the daily and the Sunday New York Times. And it struck me as called-for at the time. Now it's an e-book. Let's skip over a couple of chapters that would get me flogged today, and start with one titled "South of the Border":

YOU SAY JIMMY'S ADMINISTRATION has been just too tacky and awful.

I am tempted to say it hasn't been tacky and awful enough. Well, that's not right, either. What it hasn't been is profoundly and tellingly awful enough.

For instance, you probably agree with me that Jimmy should not have gone down to Mexico and stood up before that country's President and leading citizens and reminisced about getting "Montezuma's Revenge." That was just dumb. And yet not simple-minded enough to be graceful. I'm surprised somebody didn't jump up and yell, in Spanish, "You want to see some revenge, motherfucker . . . ?"

But you probably think Jimmy should have come up with a quote from Unamuno or somebody, something classy in Spanish:

Curate do la affecion de preocuparte como aparezcas a los demais. Cuidate solo ... de la idea que de ti Dios tenga. [Cure yourself of the inclination to bother about how you look to other people. Be concerned only ... with the idea God has of you.]

You're maybe thinking, "That ought to go over pretty well with some Mexicans." In other words, America is saying, "Hey, don't worry about how we think of you. Go ahead and just be Mexicans in the sight of the Lord. Or Dios, you call him."

No -- see, you're not considering something, because you think you've covered yourself by quoting Unamuno. But, in fact, that would be a condescending thing to say to a crowd of Mexicans, and that's just what we want to avoid. The thing is, we're very strong in the field of condescension-avoidance when we've got a Georgia president, because a Georgian hasn't got any real business condescending to anybody. As Jimmy showed, sort of, by making a more vulgar remark than any Mexican ever has, even in the movies.

But if he'd been more vigorously vulgar, he might have gone further toward making a point that America ought to make internationally: that nobody's got any business condescending to anybody. Here's what I wish Jimmy had done. I wish he had shown no hint of Anglo oblige. I wish he had spoken more deeply from his roots and said, "Hey! Y'all think America has some kind of simply overbearing attitude toward people, but the truth is that a lot of Americans have been scared shitless by Mexicans. If you have never found yourself sitting on the ground outside a Mexican entertainment facility in the middle of the night terrible drunk and missing your wallet and all your friends and one of your shoes and here come five grimacing federales, you haven't had the full American or Mexican experience. Of course, I have never been in that situation myself but some friends of my brother Billy's have." Then Jimmy might have swung into a couple of snatches from Billy Joe Shaver's country song, "Ain't No God in Mexico."