Advertisement

Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Tuesday, December 30, 2025

For a certain class of book-reading American " the type with a taste for deeply reported stories about left-behind parts of the country " [Beth Macy], the woman running for [the Appalachia-based 6th Congressional District of Virginia], is something of a household name. An award-winning reporter for the Roanoke Times for 25 years, she's the author of five nonfiction books, including three of particular note: Factory Man, her critically acclaimed 2014 debut about globalization's ravaging of Virginia's furniture industry; Dopesick, a 2018 tome on America's opioid crisis that turned into a Hulu series; and the recently released Paper Girl, a memoir about her own hardscrabble childhood and the plight of her fading Ohio hometown.

More

Alternate links: Google News | Twitter

If she wins " a big if in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat since 1990 " Macy, 61, will be the second writer of at least one bestselling book about hard-hit Appalachia to get elected to federal office. The first, of course, is former Ohio senator and current vice president JD Vance. Macy and Vance both grew up in hollowed-out factory towns in families marked by trauma and drama and drinking or drug-doing. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy proved to be a political launching pad; Macy's books could be, too.

Comments

Admin's note: Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

FWIW: The Roanoke Times is a serious good paper. Not afraid at all to tackle local issues, and not just small-city boosterism.

#1 | Posted by Dbt2 at 2025-12-30 09:23 AM | Reply

Running an an anti-JD Vance candidate is probably a good idea.

The Hillbilly Hypocrite is about as popular as an inflamed gumboil.

#2 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-12-30 09:32 AM | Reply

The following HTML tags are allowed in comments: a href, b, i, p, br, ul, ol, li and blockquote. Others will be stripped out. Participants in this discussion must follow the site's moderation policy. Profanity will be filtered. Abusive conduct is not allowed.

Anyone can join this site and make comments. To post this comment, you must sign it with your Drudge Retort username. If you can't remember your username or password, use the lost password form to request it.
Username:
Password:

Home | Breaking News | Comments | User Blogs | Stats | Back Page | RSS Feed | RSS Spec | DMCA Compliance | Privacy

Drudge Retort