A Left Turns reader from Georgia sent a link to the new Dale Earnhardt Jr. billboard that replaces the edgy billboard to which DEJ had objected.

We wrote about the flap over that billboard earlier this month. Earnhardt Jr. and his sister/agent Kelley Earnhardt Elledge didn’t appreciate Texas Motor Speedway’s attempt at humor in promoting the NASCAR Sprint Cup race there in April. 

In a series of billboards offering reasons to look forward to the race, Earnhardt Jr.’s read … “Reason #88: Step-Mom.”

Ouch.

On behalf of DEJ, Elledge approached TMS officials and got the billboard changed, and Left Turns thinks that’s pretty cool. Even though a rift between little DE and stepmother Teresa Earnhardt led to his departure from his daddy’s company, DEI, they’re still family, and Earnhardt Jr. has made that clear to his legion of fans … and people like me. I plead guilty to calling TE “stepmonster” a time or three.

Thought it was funny. Turned out it wasn’t. Maybe stepson and stepmom can’t work together, but that doesn’t mean they hate each other.

The new message: “Reason #88: New car smell.”

Methinks this better fits Earnhardt’s personality. Despite his fame and fortune, he’s a good-ol’ country boy at heart, and he seems to get along with everyone — even Jeff Gordon. And to go off on a tangent … I think Earnhardt joining Gordon and Jimmie Johnson at Hendrick Motor Sports is the best thing to happen within NASCAR in the last five-six years.

Initially, I thought the Gordon-Johnson haters among DEJ’s followers would not be able to deal with this union, that it would turn their belief system upside down … We love him. We hate them. But … he … likes … them. Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute.

And with an over-caffienated energy drink to Amp his fans instead of his old Bud to soothe them, I envisioned Earnhardt’s move to Hendrick causing heads to ’splode like the androids did in the original Star Trek. You know, when Kirk used his brilliant logic to befuddle the androids’ brains until smoke started to rise and the android blew up, and Kirk had saved the day again.

But my thinking has evolved since then, and I think that, like Kirk, Earnhardt Jr. has saved the day in NASCAR. By joining Gordon and Johnson, professing friendship with them and expressing the affinity Dale Earnhardt Sr. had for Gordon, Earnhardt Jr. has made it uncool for his fans to hate his friends and new teammates Gordon and Johnson.

Perhaps we’ve seen the last of hating families such as the one that infamously starred in the YouTube video a few years ago, with the adults cursing Johnson after he spun out their hero, Dale Jr., and the young child in the room screaming to join in diatribe.

But then again, maybe we haven’t. Maybe the hate once reserved for Gordon and Johnson will be turned to drivers of a certain foreign car company. I hope not. Why not just enjoy the racing? 

This tangent brings to mind a Hootie and the Blowfish song, “Drowning,” from the band’s breakthrough Cracked Rear View album. The lyrics tackle racial hatred, but really, they could apply to hatred of any kind.

Drowning

Trouble with the world is we’re too busy to think about it, all right
Why is there a rebel flag hanging from the state house walls?
Tired of hearin’ this s… about heritage not hate
Time to make the world a better place

Why must we hate one another?
Well no matter what we gotta live together
Just that you don’t look like me, tell me what do you see
When we pass on the street, what do you wanna see

P.E.’s coming is all I gotta say
Wanna turn and run away
They’re just telling you how they see it
Right or wrong they don’t care, you wish that they would quit
[chorus:]
Drowning in a sea of tears
Hatred trying to hide your fears
Living only for yourself
Hating everybody else
Cause they don’t look like you

Nanci singing it’s a hard life wherever you go
About some fat racist living in Chicago
Trying to teach his kids to hate everyone
Well tell me why is that something you wanna teach your son?

Why must we hate one another?
When the people in the church, they tell me you’re my brother
You don’t walk like me, … you don’t talk like me, saying
Go back to Africa, I just don’t understand
[chorus]
I’m trying to be someone that he could look up to, but
When I walk down the street, tell me what do you see
I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man
No I’m not like you
Why do you hate me so
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
Hating everybody else cause they don’t look like you

–30–