The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, October 21, 1987- Page 9 The Ballad of Joe Bob Briggs By John Shea This is the story of Joe B o b Briggs and John Bloom and how they two men became one. Perhaps you have heard of the story. In January of 1982, the editors of; the Dallas Times Herald asked young hot shot film critic John Bloom to investigate why drive-in theatresj were still thriving in Texas but disappearing all across the rest of the; country. The assignment probably did not excite Bloom; he favored high-brow foreign films over American ones and it wasn't likely he was going to find anything high- brow at a drive-in. What he found was Joe B o b Briggs, a 19 year-old redneck from Grapevine, Texas who told Bloom he had seen 6800 drive-in movies in his lifetime, and still found the time to go through three marriages. Bloom liked the redneck so much he hired him to become the Times Herald drive-in movie critic. The column, "Joe Bob Briggs Goes to the Drive-In," first appeared in the newspaper's Weekend section on January 15, 1982. In reviewing Stryker, Joe Bob wrote, "We've got 93 corpses, which is the all-time drive-in record. (I would like to add that each one of the 93 on-camera killings i s absolutely necessary to the story.) Six breasts. Twenty midgets. Medium kung fu. Superb bimbo fu. A couple of quarts of blood... Three and a-half stars. Joe Bob says check it out." People seemed to like Joe Bob's style, and they called for more. As time went on, Joe Bob graduated from the mere shock value style of the breast count to more serious offenses. As Joe Bob might say, the three kinds of people he hated the most were "Blacks, honosexuals, and Blacks." Cheryl Cain, the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, called for Joe Bob to stop hurting people in print. "One cannot help wonder that if children were being stabbed with butcher knives repeatedly, or blown to pieces by a sawed-off shotgun, what kind of person would 'Joe Bob' be considered then." Joe Bob responded, "I hear you, babe. But what about a nekkid Black homosexual child that attacks ladies and squeezes their eye-balls clean out while they're cleaning the sink? Are you going to tell me that's not funny?" It would not be an incorrect assertion to say that some folks down in Texas were throughly pissed. If the feminists were not crying 'foul' for Joe Bob reducing them to a breast count, the Southern Bapists were threatening to break down the doors of the Times Herald and lynch Joe Bob for his glorifications of violence. Well, if the Baptists had bashed the doors of the Times Herald down, they would have found no such person by the name of Joe Bob Briggs. Joe Bob, as many of you might know, does not exist; he was the product of John Bloom's imagination. Bloom, described by his collegues as a quiet intellectual, had created his total opposite: a stupid, loud, obnoxious bore. You can see John Bloom and his writing of Joe Bob Briggs in one of two ways: as a brilliant commentary on the pomposity of movie reviewers in general, or as Bloom letting his darker side come to the surface. I am inclined to give Bloom credit, to a point. Movie reviewers in general, and I include myself in this group, take their jobs too seriously; we are too often inclined to exaggerate our own self- importance - a tendency which should be met with a good swift kick in the butt. Bloom sees this, but what he fails to realize is that there is a fine line between social commentary and flat-out racism, and he never bothers to look down at it. The feminists and the Bapists eventually got Joe Bob's hyde. Bloom, or Joe Bob (it becomes difficult to distinguish the two), wrote a parody of "We Are the World": "We are the weird/We are the starving/We are the scum of the filthy earth/So lets start scarfin..." This time, the doors of the Times Herald really were going to be bashed down. The Black community of Dallas felt there were strong racist overtones in the piece, and a group of people stormed into the Times Herald's offices, threatening to boycott the paper if they didn't fire Joe Bob. The editors gave in and put Joe Bob Briggs in drive-in Heaven. Bloom himself was not fired, but he quit because he felt Joe Bob was treated unfairly. Now Bloom is wondering across the country, trying to keep Joe Bob alive through lectures and a new book. I understand he appeared on Kelly & Company last week. How sad. Bloom, a talented journalist in his own right, has satisfied himself with being a redneck. - Let Them Know How You Feel!! DAILY PERSONALS 764-0557 tE, SPECIAL PURCHASE!! Sankai Sankai Juku, a of metaphorical time is 8 p.m. Juku five person Japanese ensemble, will present their style dance tonight at the Michigan Theatre. Performance . : Records I r 0' o C LEARAI U~