Ever wonder about NASCAR? And its cultural, political, religious, and social connections to the political right. Long, so some highlights:

[…]Republican attitudes toward evangelical Christianity, unashamed commercialism, guns, the environment (racing cars still use leaded gasoline), and diversity (the Nascar garage is overwhelmingly male and white) seemed a perfect fit with Nascar values. Nascar supported Bush financially and courted his attention through its ruling family, the Frances. They have owned and operated the sport since 1947 when promoter Big Bill France whipped a brawl of hot-headed former moonshiners into a confederacy called the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. His son, Bill, Jr., and now his grandson Brian, extended his vision brilliantly, signing record TV deals. They did it with racers that sort of looked like everyday street cars, but weren’t, and they held onto their southern hardcore while reaching out to markets in California and the Midwest.
[…]
I remember thinking — in the years I actively covered Nascar — that one of the most telling differences between my subjects and me was that they knew more people on active military duty than people in same-sex relationships.
That was still true this month, and that’s why the Democrats won.
[…]
Minutes later, a blue tarp was thrown over that famous black #3 Goodwrench Chevrolet. It was my first race and I didn’t understand the full meaning of the blue tarp until I heard the air whoosh out of 200,000 chests and people around me in the press box begin to cry.
The clash of reactions to Earnhardt’s death — Oh, God vs. So What? — was a signifier of America’s cultural divide. There were millions of Americans who barely knew what Nascar was, who thought of it as numbing Sunday afternoons of gas guzzlers mindlessly snarling around a track while rednecks got hammered. But there were also millions of Americans who built their family vacations around those races and their buying patterns around the products advertised on their favorite cars. Nascar claims some 75 million fans and, by some measures of regular season TV viewership, it is second only to pro football as a national sports pastime.
[…]
The beatification of Dale Earnhardt, Sr. as a man’s man who sacrificed himself to shepherd his flock to the finish line, a hero who in death evoked both John Wayne and Jesus, presented America with its biggest joint jolt of sports and evangelical Christianity since Billy Sunday left the Philadelphia Phillies outfield more than a century ago to become a superstar preacher. But as William J. Baker, author of the forthcoming book, Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport, told me, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
“In many ways, evangelical Christianity and big-time sport are similar,” said Professor Baker, who was a preacher and a quarterback in his time. “Both are win-loss mentalities. In evangelical Christianity you are either saved or lost. You’ve gone to heaven or you’ve gone to hell, you win or you lose and that’s what this sport is all about.”
[…]
Nascar fans shop against their best interests so they can remain loyal to the sponsor of a driver they root for. They understand, they’ll say, that the main sponsor’s annual infusion of $15 million or so is what makes their favorite car go.
One fan actually told me: “My husband buys Tide even when it’s more expensive than Wisk because he likes the driver Ricky Craven. We have friends who don’t like Bud but drink it because of Dale, Jr. When my Sprint contract is up, I’ll probably switch to Nextel.” (This was before the merger.)
[…]
Like any good autocracy, the France family has often subordinated the best interests of individuals to its own control and for the sake of “growing” the sport.
Take a fine Republican issue like safety regulations — or the lack of.
Driver safety didn’t become a discussable issue until after Earnhardt’s death. Drivers, long in denial, suddenly realized that if Old Ironhead could buy it, so could they. Until that time, few wore the head-and-neck supports that are now standard. And, believe it or not, wearing helmets was not mandatory then (although all did).
Take another Republican issue, the “right to work.” In the early days, Big Bill intimidated drivers (sometimes with his pistol, it was said) who tried to unionize. These days, the France family uses more sophisticated corporate tactics, including what seems like favoritism to certain manufacturers and race teams — and a rule book so fluid everyone is always off-balance.
The joke goes that the Nascar rule book is written in pencil and no one has ever seen it. There actually are some rules, but the codicil to all of them — “except in rare instances” — gives officials the latitude to change technical specifications and racing regulations, thus keeping races exciting and competitive. Last week’s rule about gas-tank size, say, or post-accident procedures can be modified this week for reasons only conspiracy theorists claim to understand. Enforcement has often seemed arbitrary, not to say political. (It’s all a plan to let Dale, Jr. win, they whisper.)
I’ve always thought that Nascar’s wink-wink attitude toward such bad behavior as unnecessary bumping during a race and fist-fights afterward, as well as outright cheating, was another form of Republican-esque control.
Cheating has never been considered immoral or unethical in the sport. In fact, trying to bend the rules is expected as long as no one offers a direct challenge to the supreme authority of the France family. Tiny changes in the size of a gas tank, a shock absorber, or a restrictor-plate hole can win a race. There are constant technical inspections. Seized tampered parts are displayed in the garage area, where it’s fun to watch crew chiefs checking out the contraband for new ideas. Nascar rarely imposes real punishment, almost never on its stars.
And then there’s the media.
By tightly controlling access, Nascar has kept a lively, questioning motor-sports media at bay, White House style.
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At the finish, I think, it comes back to the difference that struck me at the start — my subjects knowing more people on active military duty than in same-sex relationships.
In Nascar, the gay issue is abstract and religious because there is no gay presence at the track. Evangelical Christian preachers follow Nascar like old-time circuit riders. They have their own double-wide trailers parked in the garage area, conducting prayer meetings and operating with the full cooperation and encouragement of the tracks. They minister in cases of death and injury, counsel couples, and offer drivers and crewmembers a place to talk about stress, addiction, and depression. Like cops and soldiers, Nascarites would prefer talking to the chaplain than to a shrink.
They have ethical discussions.
Jeff Gordon, whose first wife plastered psalms inside his car, once told me: “There is a fine line in our sport between trying to do the right thing and trying to do the competitive thing that puts you over the top to win. We’ve had a lot of conversations in our Bible studies about that. God wants us to do all of what we know in our abilities to win the race, but we all know in the back of our minds what wins a race in a way that you’ll feel proud and what wins a race in a way that you’re not very proud of.”
There is a starchy pride in Nascar, at least in the garage. Drive hard, finish the race, stand up like a man. Once they bought the WMDs and the need to oust Saddam, they accepted deployment. Military service ran in Nascar families.
All those brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends on active duty were making satellite calls and sending e-mails back to the garage. It was the citizens of Nascar Nation who knew first that the war on the ground was losing its wheels. And they were the first ones who raised money to buy armor for their kids’ Humvees in Iraq.
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I wish I had been at Michigan Speedway two years ago when Greg Biffle won the GFS Marketplace 400 at Michigan Speedway in a car sponsored by the National Guard, which then decided to extend its Nascar enlistment for another season. Neither the Guard nor the Army, which also sponsors a car, would release figures. They say it comes out of an advertising budget of more than $500 million for all the services. The Marines and the Air Force have lesser Nascar deals. Painting your logo on just a lower rear quarter panel (behind the tire) goes for between $250,000 and one million.
How much armor would that buy?
When asked if Nascar advertising really drew recruits, Ike Shelton of Missouri, then the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said “You will not find them at golf tournaments.”
Truth is, Nascar Dad, if he exists, also plays golf, watches the news and takes his time thinking through a problem — how you fix an engine, craft a race strategy. He came to realize, as a citizen of Nascar Nation, that pragmatism trumps ideology, if indeed there is ideology to begin with. And then he made the connection. In the same way Nascar gave us the sentimental patina of good old boy tradition, Christian morality, and all-American products while it was expanding into Mexico, courting Toyota and Jack Daniels, and selling out old Southern tracks to make room for major metro markets, the Republicans diverted us with clanging alerts about gay marriages, partial-birth abortions, and terrorists, while pumping up their profits.
The supposed lesson of this dog-eat-dog business is don’t get eaten, get better, because if you don’t it’s your own fault. None of that stick-and-ball welfare where baseball and football try to keep weak franchises afloat.
If you lose, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.
You didn’t have enough faith.
Until this past race.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 20 2006 10:39 utc | 103