Comment:

His birth-name is Bowman, but his mother divorced his father soon afterward.  So he did not “grow up” under that name.

His mother remarried and her new husband, named Hamel, adopted the boy and changed his name to Hamel.  Didn’t ask the kid what he wanted.  

“Jimmy” is a common form of “James.” 

He grew up in Middletown (not Middleton), Ohio, which is dominated by a steel mill that had to shed a lot of workers. IDK what kind of suburb you live in, but I bet there isn’t a rolling mill as the main employer.

Upon graduation from high school, he enlisted in the Marines. Assigned to be a military correspondent, he deployed to Iraq in 2005 and was assigned as a PIO for a Marine air unit. He has said that the Marines “taught me how to live as an adult.” If you read a bunch of memoirs-disguised-as-war-novels (like Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny; Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea; Leon Uris, Battle Cry), you’ll see that this is a common recognition.  Also, Vance says that he never saw any real combat.  So, no stolen valor here. 

Went to Ohio State on the G.I. Bill.  Went to Yale law school on a near-full ride scholarship. So much for the “‘not poor at all” lie.

His mom’s maiden name is Vance. Yes, when he got married, he took her last name, rather than that of one of the men passing through her troubled life in one of the places that urban, hi-tech and high finance America forgot for so many years.   

What’s a “hillbilly”?  According to Merriam-Webster, it’s a “person from a backwoods area.”  Vance’s mother grew up in Jackson, Kentucky.  Population 1,852 in 1960.  After she moved to Ohio, J.D. Vance spent some summers in Jackson.  We have Saint Patrick’s Day for all who claim Irish ancestry, no matter how remote, but Vance’s claim to cracker roots is a “literary fiction”? 

This was created by a site with a long record of producing distorted material in support of the Democratic party. Fine; it’s a free country. Or so they say.

However, it isn’t hard to check the supposed “facts.”  Anymore than it is for Trump supporters to check the facts on the equivalent garbage churned out by equivalent sites on the right. If facts are what you want to know.