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NASCAR Nation: One journalist's journey of discovery
National Review, Nov 10, 2003 by John Derbyshire
Forget about the Soccer Mom, object of obsessive interest to political strategists in the last two presidential elections. Two election cycles is as much concentrated attention as a voter bloc can expect to get in these fast-changing times. The candidates of 2004 have fixed their sights on a new quarry: the NASCAR Dad. So, at any rate, we are told by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who coined the term. A NASCAR Dad is a rural or small-town voter, most likely white and living in the South. Once upon a time he was a reliable Democrat, but he has been voting steadily Republican in recent elections for "cultural" reasons -- reasons having to do with guns, religion, patriotism, and lifestyle. What, exactly, is his connection with NASCAR -- the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing? In the hope of finding out, I recently attended a major NASCAR event at the Talladega track in Alabama. Before I report on what I found, here is some background on the sport NASCAR represents.
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The term "stock car" refers to a street automobile from a dealer's stock, the kind you and I drive, as opposed to the custom-built pod- and-strut mutants you see in Formula One racing. When ordinary citizens began to purchase automobiles in large numbers in the 1930s and 1940s, some of them were taken with the urge to race against other drivers on unpaved local dirt tracks. Spectators assembled to watch. Drivers tinkered with their engines to give them more speed. This was happening all over the country by the late 1940s, when NASCAR was founded, but it was happening much more in the South than elsewhere. Wherever it happened, though, it was from the beginning mainly a working-class interest, taken up by young men who liked fiddling with automobiles and exhibiting physical courage among their peers.
A notable early attempt to bring stock-car racing to wider attention was Tom Wolfe's long article "The Last American Hero" in the March 1965 issue of Esquire. Wolfe's subject was Junior Johnson, who raced from 1953 to 1966, and was thereafter involved in the sport as an owner until 1995. One of stock-car racing's early superstars, Johnson had perfected his skills by working as a driver for his father's moonshine business in the Appalachian foothills, racing along remote country roads by night to outwit the "revenuers" -- agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Johnson Senior was one of the biggest operators of illegal whiskey stills in the South.
Tom Wolfe had no difficulty getting some color out of Junior Johnson and his neighbors in Wilkes County, N.C. While insisting that "very few grits, Iron Boy overalls, clodhoppers or hats with ventilation holes up near the crown enter into this story," Wolfe nonetheless managed to leave his readers with the impression that stock-car racing was a sport favored pretty exclusively by white Southern rustics -- the kind of people who keep coon dogs and, in common with the late Hank Williams, believe that "hill" rhymes with "real." Junior Johnson's own take on the episode was of course from the other side of the cultural divide: "That Wolfe guy was something else. He showed up down here in Wilkes County talkin' funny with a New York accent [Wolfe is from Virginia], and wearin' fancy clothes."
Officials of NASCAR nowadays wince at this Southern-rustic image. Stock-car racing is, they insist, a sport for everyone, an inclusive sport, a family sport. For 30 years they have been trying to shake off those connotations of liquor-running good ol' boys and big-haired women. They have had some success in spreading interest around the country, but they have not yet persuaded America's cognitive elites to take stock-car racing seriously. This was apparent in February 2001, when NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt was killed in a crash at the Daytona 500. Earnhardt was mourned extravagantly by millions of racing fans. Meanwhile, from executive suites and faculty common rooms, from the wood-paneled corridors of prestigious law firms, from the bustling, "diversity"-obsessed editorial offices of broadsheet newspapers and network-TV newsrooms, rose the plaintive cry: "Dale who?"
Yet if you look at the numbers, this is not a minor sport. NASCAR's Winston Cup, the biggest of the three "major league" series in the stock-car-racing calendar, drew 6.7 million ticketed spectators for 36 events last year, an average of 186,000 per event. By way of comparison, paid attendance for the NFL in 2002 averaged 66,000 per event, for major league baseball 28,000, for NBA basketball 17,000. TV viewership for a NASCAR race runs around 15 to 20 million, the same as for many major-league baseball playoff games.
What is it that all these people are watching? What's the appeal? There must be some deep desire in the human psyche to watch human beings race vehicles round a circuit. Chariot races were, after all, an obsession of both the Romans and the Byzantines. I went to Alabama seeking enlightenment.
