MILWAUKEE — I have to admit it. This was an unforgettable passage in J.D. Vance’s vice-presidential acceptance speech late Wednesday night. (Vance’s big moment was delayed because the former president*’s eldest spalpeen wouldn’t shut up.) It came amid yet another endless anecdote about Vance’s role in a summer-stock version of God’s Little Acre.

And speaking of grandparents, let me tell you another Mamaw story. Now, my Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq, in 2005. And when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns….Now, the thing is, they were stashed all over her house. Under her bed, in her closet. In the silverware drawer. And we wondered what was going on, and it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around very well. And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s American spirit.

I’m not so sure about that last part. I keep hearing in my head the social workers I met who work the rural precincts of North Carolina and who told me that the real problem they have with elderly patients is not getting the car keys away from them but rather confiscating the shotguns. So while pistol-packing Mamaw got a big hand on Tuesday night, I don’t agree that an elderly lady armed like a light cavalry platoon is the American spirit, unless we’re all living in Gettysburg.

Actually, a touch of the weird is what this bland and lifeless address needed. To the list of things Vance doesn’t bring to the ticket we can add rhetorical firepower. More interesting, however, was how he rewrote his New York Times best seller up there on the fly. One of the things that most disturbed me about Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was the way he sold out his relatives as lazy freeloaders sponging off government assistance and passing the time on various recreational pharmaceuticals. However, on Wednesday night, he presented his family saga as a salt-of-the-earth tale of the forgotten Americans. Drug addiction that, in the book, is presented as unforgivable moral failure came out Wednesday night as the inevitable result of crushing economic forces beyond anyone’s control. Addicts are not responsible for their situations. NAFTA is. All this might seem trivial if it didn’t demonstrate a certain willingness to use almost anyone as grist for his narrative. That’s pretty grim, but it’s not dull.

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Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. 

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