Much substance has been written, including here on Daily Kos, about the bigoted and hypocritical politics of red state/Bible Belt, religious right moral conservatives and their morally compromised ties to the Republican Party. Suffice it to say that watching them bring their theocratic energies against the candidacies of both Romney and Giuliani on behalf of their new poster boy, Mike Huckabee, is alternately satisfying and disturbing.
And yet, while I am often inclined to want to separate style from substance, when dealing with this faction, I can't help but see style and substance as conjoined. And in doing so, I can't help but be perpetually amused and occasionally disgusted by the tacky style that characterizes the religious right. What, for example, causes them to turn their televangelizing crusades and megachurches, their loud polyester outfits, and their helmeted hairdos into such exemplars of tackiness and bad taste?
As suggested, my sense is that with this crowd, style and substance are meant to blend together.
tack·y2 /ˈtæki/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tak-ee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective, tack·i·er, tack·i·est.
- not tasteful or fashionable; dowdy.
- shabby in appearance; shoddy: a tacky, jerry-built housing development.
- crass; cheaply vulgar; tasteless; crude.
- gaudy; flashy; showy.
[Origin: 1880–85, Americanism; appar. identical with earlier tack(e)y small horse, pony, poor farmer; of obscure orig.]
—Related forms
tack·i·ness, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Crass. Cheaply vulgar. Tasteless. Crude. Gaudy. Showy. Flashy. etc.
All these list of words from the Random House Dictionary seem to describe the Bible Belt based, religious right wing of this country, as well as the culture of this faction.
Personally, I try not to be a snob and to impose my taste on others. I tend to like art films, indie rock, free jazz, and spicy ethnic cuisine. I like reading good books. But I am a live and let live, `try not to pass judgement on others' kind of guy. I am well aware that not everyone shares my taste in various things. I don't generally pass judgement on those who do not, even though I might, secretly, feel that they are possibly missing out on something great. I also have little use for snobbery. And I am a proud owner of The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, not to mention several Ed Wood movies as well as the music of the Shaggs on CD. Perhaps, like many others, I am a bit of a walking contradiction.
However, the religious right is itself an entity which is highly judgemental, particularly toward others' standards of goodness and beauty. It wasn't very long ago that the religious right, through Jesse Helms, was denouncing the National Endowment for the Arts as "state subsidized porn." It seems to me then that fighting the religious right on both substantive and stylistic terms, including calling attention to their tacky nature, is fair game.
And in doing so, the evangelical/fundamentalist/Bible belt religious right, in all of its vulgar, tasteless, tacky glory, its overt displays of its Christofascistic symbolism, its neo-puritanical sexual repression, and its barely concealed racism and judgementalism, offers a loud, graphic demonstration of a fundamental ugliness of the soul.
Hence, its sheer and utter tastelessness.
It is an ugliness of the soul that is lead by those who worship power and money, and who exploit the weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and prejudices of its followers. It is the same sort of nuevo-riche ugliness on display in the palatial mansions of everyone from Donald Trump to corrupt 3rd world dictators (some of whom were in deep friendship with the likes of Pat Robertson and other crooked televangelists) to your average mafia or drug cartel head. It is the sort of ugliness documented by Joe Queenan in the amusing rant of a book, Red Lobster, White Trash, & the Blue Lagoon: Joe Queenan's America.
Though she eventually became a gay icon, the late Tammy Faye Baker was among the best known representations of fundie tack.
Her image, and that of Jimmy Swaggart tearfully apologizing for his whoring ways
are, for me, among the religio-political iconography of the swinging-to-the-right 1980s, the beginnings of the modern day heyday of the religious right.
Don't even get me started on the inanity of "Christian metal" hair band Stryper.
In fact, while religious based music - be it by Bach or by the Staple Singers - is often quite inspiring, the kinds of sounds that pass for "Contemporary Christian Music" are for the most part, quite frankly, a bunch of truly ugly shit. Here's a bit of proof.
Contrast this garbage with something as elegantly beautiful, not to mention Southern and spiritual as this and also this.
The religious right offers a big pile of truly ugly shit. It would, if it could, dump this big pile of shit on all of our heads.