1,000 Greatest Drivers: Darrell Waltrip
Boogity, boogity, boogity! Let's go setting NASCAR back a decade culturally, boys!
I’ve always kind of had mixed emotions about Waltrip. As with Al Unser, Jr. in CART, I was never really watching NASCAR when Waltrip was good, so it was hard for me to come to terms with his greatness when the first race I watched was in 1994, and I wasn’t regularly following the sport until the tail end of 1996. I liked Waltrip back then as a late-career underdog. I still have two quotes from him in 1998( permanently lodged in my mind. One of them was when he took over the #35 Tabasco Tim Beverly car in mid-season when he said, “My car is red hot, and your car ain’t diddly squat”, which at the time, I found charming, but now I probably wouldn’t. Also, I’m not sure this quote was from that year (but I think so), but when somebody told him the “era was over”, he quipped, “At least I had one”. That one only grows more poignant with age, and it’s almost exactly how I feel about my decade of dominance in competitive typing now. On the other hand, I mocked Waltrip mercilessly when he bought out Carl Long’s previously-qualified car to make the Coca-Cola 600, and nearly got banned from the first message forum I posted on for it. I guess I didn’t have the context of his previous Charlotte dominance in mind at the time, but I still think it was rather ugly.
As an announcer, I admit I never liked him. I grew up watching the CBS and ESPN broadcasts, and the FOX broadcasts always paled to me. I know a lot of zoomers now see this as NASCAR’s peak, and it was in terms of popularity and competition, but it also felt like the CBS broadcasts (even though they were sometimes a little dull, as befitting the “old person’s network” at the time) and the ESPN broadcasts were for everyone. They wanted to have universal appeal across all demographics, and it worked. That was why NASCAR skyrocketed in popularity in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I will admit the late-period TNN broadcasts of Eli Gold, Dick Berggren, and Buddy Baker (probably the worst booth of all time) were not good.
But in the 2000s, NASCAR did become more popular, but in a more stifling way. While the CBS and ESPN broadcasts were broadcasts for everyone, the FOX broadcasts seemed to be for rednecks only. It worked for a little while, to be sure, when (and here I repeat myself again) George W. Bush had 90% approval ratings, but I am convinced NASCAR was collateral damage when the neocon movement collapsed, because NASCAR had hitched its wagon to neocon signifiers in the 2000s to a far greater extent than it had in the 1990s. I remember being on message boards then. Liberals were consistently bullied, and leftists were entirely unheard of in those circles, which is why I now find it so strange that all NASCAR social media discussion these days skews so liberal, even though I don’t think the politics of the drivers, teams, or the NASCAR industry itself have shifted at all. It felt like if you weren’t a cheerleader for the Iraq War, NASCAR didn’t want you as a fan.
Popularity is often effectively a referendum on the past quality of a thing. If something steadily improves for years, there will be a lag, and it will continue to grow more popular for a while, even when that thing is actually declining. That was NASCAR in the 2000s for me. The reason it had its peak ratings then was because a far higher percentage of races were on broadcast networks than ever before, when the broadcast/cable distinction really mattered. The reason it had the best competition ever was because of the high rate of sponsorship, which was again an effect of its previous quality. But I think all the post-9/11 jingoistic military pageantry and the “boogity boogity boogity” (which sounded vaguely racist but was apparently Waltrip just referencing a bad ‘70s novelty song) put off a lot of millennials, and NASCAR never won them back. When I was in grade school, even in upstate New York, a number of my grade school classmates (including even several of the other gifted kids) were NASCAR fans in the ‘90s, and I bet almost none of them would’ve admitted it by the end of the 2000s, because our generation went so hard against the war and neocon values, and we still tend to associate NASCAR with that. NASCAR went from being like Garth Brooks to being like Toby Keith in one fell swoop, and it felt like the FOX booth was the symbol and the embodiment of that. Think of how differently NASCAR was portrayed in its first big movie, Days of Thunder (1990), and its second big movie Talladega Nights (2006). I never bothered with the latter since I don’t particularly like Adam McKay’s sensibility (I don’t even like The Big Short because I don’t like his kinda dehumanizing comedic style, and I’m sure that’s all over Talladega Nights even if I never watched it). While both movies were mediocre, Days of Thunder made NASCAR look awesome, while Talladega Nights made it look like a joke. McKay obviously had an axe to grind because of his own personal politics as a dirtbag leftist, but it does make it clear how NASCAR was really ruined culturally in the intervening period by chasing a short-term gain (peak neocon popularity in the 2000s) in exchange for a long-term loss (losing most millennial fans). This is why NASCAR declined. Not the chase, not the top 35 rule, I don’t even think The Great Recession had as much of an effect. So this is why it kind of baffles me personally when people now view the 2000s as the glory years rather than when NASCAR was starting to suck, and why I really can’t get down with Chase 2.0, even though the playoff format has nothing to do with the culture around the sport at the same time, and I know that. It seems very weird to me that a lot of Gen Z NASCAR fans (who, based on their social media content seem to be WAY more left-wing than anybody on the NASCAR Internet was in the ‘90s and 2000s) are so nostalgic for this time where anybody who wasn’t a warhawk was practically bullied out of the sport (at the same time as all the Dixie Chicks stuff, etc…)
How much do I blame Waltrip for this personally? That’s hard to say. I think NASCAR was really controlling the broadcasts in the FOX/NBC era of the 2000s way more than they were controlling the broadcasts in the ‘90s. It seemed like the announcers had more directives and scripted responses from NASCAR management in that decade. I’m well aware how much NASCAR was trying to suppress its own criticism at its commercial peak and how my favorite columnist at the time, Matt McLaughlin, got fired from RacingOne (which used to be my main message board) for criticizing NASCAR too much in 2004. I also have to bear in mind that this was also the peak of FOX News’s relevance, and even though their Entertainment/Sports and News divisions are supposedly separate, they obviously had the same corporate parent, so they obviously could not resist this kind of brand consistency. This might’ve just been a me thing because this is precisely when I was coming of age, but I couldn’t see that the racing was actually good underneath its manure-encrusted presentation. I grant that the FOX booth was certainly better than TNN, and they probably had the best camera angles and a kick-ass theme song, but Waltrip’s tenure as announcer just symbolized everything I was growing to detest. Until all my Cornell classmates rejected me and I rebelled by getting back into it. But it seems like all the millennials were lost in this era, in part because FOX wanted to cater to one demographic and one demographic only. It’s hard for me to look through all this baggage and be fair to Waltrip (especially since I didn’t see Waltrip’s good years). And that’s not even getting into the fact that his brother rode his coattails and became truly loathsome… But I guess I ultimately conclude that NASCAR itself wanted its broadcasts to look a certain way (that was far less welcoming than the broadcasts of the ‘90s) and the FOX booth went with it. The issue is more NASCAR’s increasing control over its broadcasts than Waltrip’s announcing.
Short life bullet points:
My mom’s dentures were finally replaced after the nursing home lost them months ago. I never thought that would happen, and I’m glad about that.
Unfortunately, when I called her after I got home today, she seemed to think her roommate was trying to kill her. I do not think this.
I scheduled an appointment for the housing inspector to assess if a ramp can be built so Mom could hopefully come home. He was supposed to come on Thursday at 10 am… and then he stood me up, and I’ve heard nothing since.
While I was cleaning to prepare for that, I did find the title to Mom’s car, which hasn’t been running since 2020, so hopefully, I’ll be able to donate it at least. I probably shouldn’t try to sell it since Medicaid would just take it.
I received my first assignment and paycheck for my new job, so I just finally caught up on all the regular bills I was behind on. I’m going to try to get my other couple credit cards out of default soon. And I just bought a professional microphone to make better YouTube content.
I intend to go to my first session of the Neurotypical Support Group at Unique Peerspectives next week. I’ve been looking forward to this for months.
My trivia team at the Heritage Hill bar is currently second in the winter tournament, and the winning team gets to compete against the winners at all the other bars for a $2,500 first prize at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown. I still haven’t won any individual week yet so I don’t think we’ll win, but I’ve definitely helped make our team more consistent.
