Uphold Comrade Earnhardt Thought. Reject Imperialist Jeff Gordon meddling.
Gordon was the only chase driver to not campaign for Dubya in 2004
http://p2004.org/bush/bushnascar.htmlBits aside, Gordon didn’t really deserve any of the hate he got. People were just being Gamers about some new guy beating all the old legends by being the same sort of good as they used to be.
Gordon was the first driver who truly popularized the sport outside of the south. He brought a lot of fans to NASCAR from the west coast and similar to Earnhardt, he had personality and charisma which made it easy for him to be marketable (something that every driver has lacked ever since, and why no one cares about Jimmy Johnson or Denny Hamlin or these other boring ass generic robotic guys).
The Earnhardt v Gordon rivalry was the last real rivalry in NASCAR and it worked cause they were so drastically different types of people and in how they raced and they were damn good. One was the up and coming hot shot kid in his prime, and the other was this legendary 7 time cup champion. Despite his age at the time, Earnhardt was still racing at a high level and competing for titles, all while Gordon was coming up and winning his.
And then you had Mark Martin, who consistently placed near the front of the pack in damn near every race in the 90s, yet never ended up with the kind of rabid fandom that you saw out of Gordon or Earnhardt.
And then there was Dick Trickle...
ok but was Dale Earnhardt based or is this just a meme, I couldn't find anything about throwing shot glasses at pigs
Dale’s daughter Kelley recalled an incident that occurred in her childhood, when her father placed a bumper sticker reading “American By Birth / Southern By The Grace Of God” on the rear of his truck. The family’s black housekeeper mentioned that the sticker, which featured the Confederate flag, made her uncomfortable. Dale immediately took a pen knife and slashed the flag off his truck, leaving the expression of Southern pride while divorcing it from the region’s sour history. He was also reportedly supportive of Willy T Ribbs in his failed NASCAR stint in the 1980s.
But he was never outspoken politicallyThe case can be made that Earnhardt was a working class hero. As the other poster pointed out that story, this video really gets into it and how he connected with the working people of the south who were his fans. Earnhardt came from a very small town in North Carolina and dropped out of school to start racing.
Earnhardt had other appeal with working class people, given his 1980 championship was one of the few in the sport done on a small market team and with no sponsors. He eventually picked up the Wrangler sponsor and that helped build the image around him with his fan base of being an everyman.
That man did not give a fuck about rules or norms. Watch videos of him driving and you'll see what I mean, and how that video points it out. He was known as a dirty driver most of his career and a bully on the track. For a while, he was NASCAR's greatest heel and most hated driver. He got the nickname "the intimidator" due to his aggressive style of driving and how it made drivers fearful to see him in their rear view. As the video I linked pointed out, it's similar metaphorically to someone cutting corners and just trying to make the best out of life.Dale didn't care what people thought of him or the "right way to race", you either got the fuck out of his way, or he was going to make you pay for it.
Since we do know very little of Dale's politics other than his (and his son's) opposition to the Confederate Flag, it's a meme for the most part. Nevertheless, as another user already pointed out, we can pretty confidently say that The Intimidator was a pretty good bloke off-track and with his standing in the South as basically 'Redneck Jesus' may as well cement him as a working class hero.
I loved this man when I was a kid. His death was the first real celebrity or athlete death that shook me. 20 years later, NASCAR is pretty much a dead sport.