Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson is a master at the art of rhetorical misdirection. He says one thing even while he does the opposite, and expects no one to notice because of the way he speaks with such apparent earnestness. So it was that Fred Thompson, even while he was a member of the United States Senate, referred to himself as a “real live country lawyer”.
A real live country lawyer? What the heck is a country lawyer? Stop and think about it for a second: Have you ever heard of such a thing as a country lawyer, other than when Fred Thompson is busy talking about himself?
What about these people who help promote this image of Fred Thompson as a country lawyer? Have these people ever actually lived in the country? I have, and let me tell you something – I never once met a country lawyer.
If you live in the country, you just don’t run into lawyers, driving their pickups around on back roads. No one in the country ever says, “Let’s go see the lawyer out in the barn.” There aren’t lawyers who see clients out in the hayfield after feeding the chickens.
Lawyers are people who do their work in town. That’s fine. I have nothing against lawyers, or people who live and work in town.
What does bother me is people who pose as country using nonsense terms to describe themselves like “country lawyer”. Fred Thompson would have as much credibility if he called himself a “country plastic surgeon”, a “country advertising executive”, or a “country human resources director”. Some professions just don’t exist out in the country. Lawyer is one of them.
Even if there were such a thing as a country lawyer, Fred Thompson wouldn’t be one of them. Fred Thompson has spent almost all his political career in movie and television studios or working as a Washington D.C. insider lobbyist and lawyer. Fred Thompson charges too much for his services for average Americans to afford. His clients aren’t people like your mother. They’re corporations and special interest groups.
Fred Thompson can put on that folksy drawl and waggle his jowls all he wants, but that doesn’t make him a country lawyer any more than putting a tiara on my head makes me the Queen of England.
Abraham Lincoln was a “country lawyer”. For six months out of the year he would travel to the circuit courts in the district:
My grandmother’s lawyer was a “country lawyer”. He was also one of her pallbearers. He was quite helpful in a few situations where big city shysters tried to prey on honest farmers. They don’t make lawyers like that anymore.
Oopsie, a quotation with no citation. Can’t leave it like that, especially if I’m going to harass everyone else for not documenting sources. Must be tidy.
Here’s where it came from:
http://www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org/narrative_overview.htm