https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/jd-vance-never-was-and-never-will-be-the-voice-of-appalachia

and 

https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-appalachian-pretender-opinion-1927254

~~ recommended by Freezepeach ~~

Damn flat-lander suburbanite. Any idjit can google a map of Ohio and locate JD Vance's hometown, Middleton. Any idjit that cares about facts and doesn't just want to sneer at a stereotype.

I hope JD Vance as VP could cost Trump some of the rural vote.

...J.D. Vance Never Was and Never Will Be the Voice of Appalachia

The Trump-Vance ticket has pledged its allegiance to the working class, using Vance’s pseudo-hillbilly identity to peddle it. But Vance’s politics have already proven to be as protean as his backstory. He is not a hillbilly. He is a salesman. If he and Trump triumph, he’ll keep spit-shining himself into whatever kind of populist hero suits his needs. It’s exactly what he did in his memoir—pretend to be one of you, feign sympathy for your struggles, and then, after he’s got you, blame you for not bettering yourself. That leaves Appalachia where it’s always been: a political cudgel in yet another news cycle.

...

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...... Appalachia is a region always drawn in caricature to serve the interests of people like Vance, who want to take something from the place. We all know the images: shotgun-toting, moonshining, cousin-kissers. Mean, degrading insults that cast Appalachians as less than everyone else, therefore deserving of swindle and scorn. And that's just the kind of thinking that enables Vance's success. He sells worn-out distortions of Appalachia that people are predisposed to believe, all to gain credibility as a voice of the "white working class."

Let's also be clear that Vance sold a lot of books to liberal-leaning America, who read the exaggerations of Hillbilly Elegy, absorbed the thin analysis, and decided Vance sounded insightful. In reality, he gave readers the stereotypes they already know. I worry—actually I'm pretty sure—Vance believes the exaggerations himself. He probably even believes spending summers in Kentucky while growing up in non-Appalachian suburban Cincinnati actually gives him the right to call himself Appalachian.

That's why so many people from the region reacted negatively to his memoir, and why many of us are ticked off at his victory in the veep-stakes. We've all seen this story play out, again and again. We've seen what it does to our main streets, our schools, and our lives. It's an extra kick that Vance sells the story of being one of us, stealing authority by pretending to be something he is not, and he does it to be part of a political movement that will make things worse for us. Goodbye unions. Goodbye environmental protection. Goodbye Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Welcome back, poisoned streams and black lung and collapsing local economies.

.............