Cunningham takes on Jane Smiley's "trashing" of Americans of Scots-Irish ancestory.

One of the latest and ugliest examples of the mainstream media's endless trashing of Appalachian people is a blog by Jane Smiley -- a novelist whose books I used to enjoy -- on the Huffington Post for December 29, 2006. Smiley wants us all to read the "most informative book of 2006," one that, ostensibly, explains America for her.

After reading Smiley's post on Huffington Post, ePluribus Media's Aaron Barlow, himself of Scots-Irish descent, wrote several diaries in response, one of which Cunningham read.

Here's how Cunningham himself explains it:

Which is where I come in. I happen to be a scholar of Appalachia and the Scots-Irish. And I reviewed Albion's Seed for Appalachian Journal and then debated Fischer face-to-face, with three other Appalachian and Scottish scholars (Gordon McKinney, Edward J. Cowan, and Altina Waller) at the 1991 Appalachian Studies Conference. I'm also a seventh-generation Appalachian, whose family arrived in West Virginia in 1752 from Ireland. I was moved to write a letter to Barlow and to one of his Daily Kos commenters, and that letter has become this essay, which will appear both in Appalachian Heritage and here on ePluribus Media Journal. What I'm going to say here has largely been said in print before by others and by me, but since no one but Appalachian scholars reads Appalachian scholarship, I hope I'll be pardoned for repeating myself.

Read his entire essay here: Jane Smiley's Divell Theorie.

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