I Swear by the Blood Below My Feet

Jesse Walker | November 12, 2004

If you get a lot of e-mail from disappointed Democrats -- and it seems to be a part of my job description that I do -- then you may have seen a site called fuckthesouth.com. Neal Pollack saw it too, and he called bullshit:

I was born in Memphis, grew up in Phoenix, got married in Nashville, went on my honeymoon in North Carolina, and live in Austin. Many dear friends grew up in and still reside below the Mason-Dixon Line. The South is diverse. It's varied. And yes, it's ignorant in many ways. But I've never lived in a more segregated place than Chicago, the epitome of a great Northern city, and have never seen as much concentrated poverty and injustice in this country as when I lived in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. So spare me the superiority rap.

The south gave us Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Michael Jordan, Hank Williams, Tennessee Williams, fried chicken, Gone With The Wind, Truman Capote, pecan pie, barbecue, Mark Twain, and manned flight. The list goes on and on....If you say 'fuck the South," you're saying fuck Nashville and Charlotte and Charleston, and Atlanta, and Austin, and New Orleans, and Athens, Georgia, the city that gave us the B52s and R.E.M. and...OK, well, fuck R.E.M. But that has nothing to do with the South.

[Via Undernews.]

Comments

Warren|11.12.04 @ 4:59PM|#

word

|11.12.04 @ 5:01PM|#

The Northeast gave us both George Bush (b4 Tx) and John Kerry, not to mention Dukaka and the Yankees. Fuck the Northeast!

drf|11.12.04 @ 5:03PM|#

Lewis: you said it! damn straight.

|11.12.04 @ 5:11PM|#

The South gave us Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, Donna Brazile, Jame Carville, the SCLC (Southern, and Christian, and liberal as hell), Al Gore Sr. (and junior, sort of, if you're going to count W as being from the NE), John Edwards, and Elvis.

It's not a North/South thing. That's dumb.

|11.12.04 @ 5:15PM|#

manned flight

No, actually that's not true. North Carolina provided a hill and an ocean breeze. The Wright Brothers designed and built the plane in Dayton, Ohio.
http://www.nps.gov/daav/

|11.12.04 @ 5:22PM|#

No need to say "fuck Athens, Ga." The place has pre-fucked itself completely. Trust me, I both lived and went to school there.

|11.12.04 @ 5:28PM|#

Just out of curiosity, how has Athens pre-fucked itself? I've been there a couple times to visit, and it seemed nice enough.

|11.12.04 @ 5:32PM|#

The funniest thing about the Fuck the South site is that it's historically inaccurate.

"Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?"

Historically inaccurate.

|11.12.04 @ 5:38PM|#

Lets not forget: Willie Nelson, Faulkner, Hunter S. Thompson, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, Elvis, Beck, Polyphonic Spree, Nora Jones, Blues, Jazz, Rock & Roll, good burbon, BBQ, corn dogs, moonpies, Coke and Pepsi, Bill Hicks, Sam Kennison, Mike Judge, Wes Anderson, The Coen brothers, breast implants, artificial hearts, NASA.

And Skynard! Whooo! Skynard!
(ok, some stereotypes do fit)

drew|11.12.04 @ 5:47PM|#

How about fuck most of the south? I'll give a pass to Austin and maybe the 40 Watt in Athens, but apart from that, the best you can come up with is Michael Jordan? Please. And you can keep pecan pie and Gone with the Wind. And citing the B52s? How about an act from the last 30 years?

|11.12.04 @ 5:50PM|#

Yeah, speedwell I'm UGA class of '04 and I'm wondering the same thing as Joe M. What exactly is so terrible about Athens? It ain't all that glamorous but it's got all the bars one could ever ask for, great looking girls, and a great football team (Go Dawgs!). It sure beats Atlanta.....

|11.12.04 @ 5:53PM|#

The Yankees may be evil - but the Red Sox won the WORLD SERIES and both teams are from the Northeast

|11.12.04 @ 5:54PM|#

Oh, and please don't judge the South too harshly form joe's list above.:)

David Moynihan|11.12.04 @ 5:56PM|#

And Edgar Poe, Dash Hammett, HL Mencken, Billie Holiday, James Cain, Russell Baker, Babe Ruth, etc. (and that's just from Maryland...)

|11.12.04 @ 5:59PM|#

I could live without just about all of those things from the South, except rock'n'roll and Sam Kinison. And rock'n'roll has been vastly improved upon by non-Southerners.

|11.12.04 @ 6:01PM|#

Historically inaccurate.

Yeah, seriously. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were "blue-staters"? In what parallel universe?

By the way, Matt, the Coens are from Minnesota.

|11.12.04 @ 6:08PM|#

The South also gave us Jim Crow, Orval Faubus, Judge Roy Moore, Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, the Ku Klux Klan. . . I lived down there between the ages of seven and twenty-four and I say "fuck it," too. Anything good to come from that area came DESPITE the environment, not because of it.

|11.12.04 @ 6:17PM|#

I just remembered something: once, when I was little, our dog swallowed some rather valuable earrings belonging to my mother, who had to retrieve them by collecting the dog's next bowel movement and going through it. Granted, it did contain a few individual things which were valuable and beautiful, but this didn't change the fact that it was still basically a steaming pile of shit.

|11.12.04 @ 6:17PM|#

It seems a dispassionate observer would generally have a hard time determining whether good things come out of the South "despite" or "because of" its Southern-ness.

A few observations:

I too have lived in Chicago, and in Boston, and without question these two northern cities have much worse race relations than any Southern city I have experienced. I found race relations in Richmond, Virginia to be quite relaxed, for instance.

The whole "fuck the south" thing is pretty juvenile, though. Any good ole boy could give you an earful of "fuck the north" if he cared too. Can't much care, myself.

|11.12.04 @ 6:18PM|#

The single greatest contribution to fine cuisine in the history of this or any universe - Shuford's Smokehouse of Chattanooga, TN...

mmmmmm.... barbeque

|11.12.04 @ 6:24PM|#

fuckjennifer.com

the next big thing

|11.12.04 @ 6:27PM|#

yeah Jennifer, and of course nothing shitty has ever come from "the north." Jesus, what a juvenile rant.

|11.12.04 @ 6:35PM|#

Why don't you Yankees take Al Sharpton, the Men's Movement, Ted Kennedy, the entire state of New Jersey, and all of those other wonderful inventions of yours, and stick it all up your ass?

|11.12.04 @ 6:41PM|#

Fuck ABC and the pig he rode in on.

All right thinking people understand that barbeque from points west of Lexington, NC is BASTED IS THE SWEAT OF SATAN'S BALL SACK. Hell, I'd even eat that inbred South Carolina mustard-based offal before anything from Tennessee.

Oh, and John Coltrane mother fuckers.

|11.12.04 @ 6:43PM|#

I've always liked the South. The music is terrific, the food buttery, and the women are a bit over done for my tastes, but they're nice too. Then again I like New England. So obviously I'm bipolar or something.

The only place in the US I've been but didn't particularly "get" is Texas.

|11.12.04 @ 6:45PM|#

My bad Dan.

I guess I was confused because their first flick, "Blood Simple" nailed Texas so well.

Apologies from an ignorant southerner.

To replace them on my list I will add Terry Southern and Richard Linklater.

Jennifer. Allow me a return volley.

The 1863 New York Draft Riots, the 1919 Chicago Riots, the 1943 Detroit Riots, the 1965 Watts Riots, the 1967 Detroit Riots, the 1984 Bensonhurst Riots, the 1992 Rodney King Riots, NYPD plunger love, LAPD Rampart Division, New Jersey Highway Patrol profiling.

Unfortunately racism is not just a red state phenomenon.

|11.12.04 @ 6:59PM|#

Who cares! Maybe it's because I'm a Californian (and we're derided in every state, including our own, and we still don't care), but this is a load of crap. Last I checked a "Southerner" isn't an epithet the way "Yankee" is in the South. Yeah, racism is worse in some Northern cities than in Southern cities, but it gets a lot worse faster as you leave the cities (FWIW, the only time I got called the n-word was in Boston). I like the South and Southerners, but talk about an inferiority complex. I't like a whole region of pre-Oct 04 Bostonians.

|11.12.04 @ 7:10PM|#

Oh and mmmmmmmmm barbeque.

DaveInBigD|11.12.04 @ 7:17PM|#

Mo, Southerner isn't an epithet because Californians and northerners use the term 'redneck' in its place. And yeah, its still some cultural shame over losing a war to the Yankees. Yankees haven't out-and-out lost a war, ever. The South has. It effects your culture. Shit happens. But if you go out of the South with a southern accent, you're more likely to be dismissed as uneducated than you are if you come into the South with a Yankee accent. The meme that southerners are ignorant is much older than this election.

Jesse Walker|11.12.04 @ 7:20PM|#

Mo: I've lived in the South and I've lived in California. I like both.

Jeff: They might take away my Tarheel credentials for saying this, but Texas barbecue is better.

|11.12.04 @ 7:43PM|#

The South also gave us Randy Newman, who, among many other treasures, gave us "Rednecks":

Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he's our fool
If they think they're better than him they're wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that's where I made this song

We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down

CHORUS
We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down

Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down

CHORUS

|11.12.04 @ 7:46PM|#

Matt-
Of course, plenty of crap comes out of the North, too, along with the West and all other compass-points. But only the Southern part of these United States make a regular habit of codifying their racism and assholery into formal law.

Any Northern states trying to teach Creationism in the schools?

|11.12.04 @ 7:50PM|#

Henry,
I can see further evidence of the genius of Randy Newman!

Amy Alkon|11.12.04 @ 7:52PM|#

Sadly, moronism is not restricted to the states beneath the Mason-Dixon. A Wisconsin schoo district is going to teach creationism. (Cretinism?)

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/001067.html

|11.12.04 @ 7:56PM|#

I've got nothing against the South as a place to visit, and the comments about Northern cities being more segregated than many Southern locales have a grain of truth to them. But you've gotta admit that the political track record of Dixie leaves much to be desired. The South:

1. Opposed the American Revolution to a greater extent than any other region.
2. Supported the War of 1812 to a greater extent than any other region.
3. Waged a bitter struggle to retain slavery, culminating in the Civil War.
4. In the aftermath of the Civil War, gave us Jim Crow and the KKK, the former having to be forcibly ended by the rest of the country.
5. Led the way in political opposition to teaching evolution, as reflected in the Scopes trial.
6. Has infected the country with a variety of populist class warriors, from William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long to John Edwards.
7. Now acts as the largest base of support for the religious right.

Politically speaking, the South has been to America what Russia has been to Europe.

|11.12.04 @ 8:11PM|#

1. Opposed the American Revolution to a greater extent than any other region.

Well, with this one you prove it, no need to go further! Without those obstructionist Virginian bastards like Washington and Jefferson, the Revolution would have gone a lot smoother.

*cough*What the hell?*cough*

|11.12.04 @ 8:16PM|#

I was under the impression Randy Newman was born in LA (we love it!). But I'll third his genius nomination.

I've often been told that St. Louis, where I used to live, is the most racially segregated city in the country. I don't know about the _most_, but I can say from personal experience that it is very segregated, racially and economically, in a way that I haven't seen in other cities I've lived in or visited. It's extremely patchy, with very wealthy/white neighborhoods just a few blocks from very poor/black/dangerous neighborhoods. I used to live on the edge of a poor/black/dangerous neighborhood, where my friends and neighbors on a few occasions found bullet holes in their cars, where I couldn't get pizza delivered because they considered it too dangerous (not the most critical socioeconomic measure, but one that really pissed me off on a few occasions), but I could walk less than a two minutes from my apartment and be in one of the richest neighborhoods in the city.

And yet the Cardinals still manage to kick ass (a certain four games in late October notwithstanding).

Ohio has been having some fun recently with intelligent design, and Kansas for a couple years (1999-2001, I think) removed any mention of evolution from the official high school biology curriculum. They at least had the good sense to put it back when they realized what a laughingstock they were.

Oh, and the only good barbeque (and it can be soooo good) is SPICY barbeque - none of that sticky sweet shit. Snead's Barbeque (no longer in existence, sadly) just south of Kansas City had the best barbeque sauce I've ever tasted. Mmmm...pork....

|11.12.04 @ 8:19PM|#

But only the Southern part of these United States make a regular habit of codifying their racism and assholery into formal law.

Only people outside of the South pretend that only the Southerners did this, or do this now.

|11.12.04 @ 8:28PM|#

George Washington, Joe Gibbs, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, The Shenandoah Valley (There is no more beautiful place in the continental United States.), The Whisky Sour, The Mint Julip, The Chesapeke Bay Retreiver, The Hunt Cup, The Preakness, The House of Burgesses, William & Mary, The Smithsonian, Hell yes--Fried Chicken, The Naval Academy, Crab Cakes, Edgar Allen, Jamestown, Williamsburg, Matt Drudge, The Walter Reed Medical Museum (Is that still open?), Babe Ruth, Bad Brains, The Meatmen, Minor Threat (Straight Edge), Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, DMX, Booker T. Washington, Jousting, Frederick Douglas, Secretariat, Hush Puppies, Frank Zappa, HL Mencken, Harriet Tubman, Francis Scott Key, The Skipjacks, Appomattox Court House, The Chincoteague, tobacco, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" speech...

...and that's just from Maryland/Virginia.

|11.12.04 @ 8:33PM|#

Honor-bound am I to come in here for the South.
I'm ready for another Civil War to establish states have the right to secede.
I'm in Sinincincinnati because I wanted to escape that religious certitude crap, but I'm able here to look fondly across the Ohio River at Dixie, by gum.

Speaking of religious crap: Jennifer! For shame!

|11.12.04 @ 8:34PM|#

"Well, with this one you prove it, no need to go further! Without those obstructionist Virginian bastards like Washington and Jefferson, the Revolution would have gone a lot smoother."

Brush up on your reading comprehension skills, will you? Note the part that says "to a greater extent". It's pretty well-documented that the largest pockets of Loyalist support were in the South, particularly the Carolinas. Take a look into the reasons why the British decided to focus their attention on the South during the latter years of the war.

|11.12.04 @ 8:36PM|#

Teach? In northern states? No, not up here in MA. Too busy making sure the kids have proper self esteem.

I'm all for fucking the South and the North, just gotta call my broker and get some birth control stocks added to my portfolio.

Fuck on people.

|11.12.04 @ 8:37PM|#

Neal you took the easy way out. You reacted to "Fuck the South" without reading it. Nobody doubts the benefits of southern culture. Fuckthesouth.com says that, for example, when the red states complain that they pay too much in taxes, they ignore the fact that they use far more tax revenue than they pay, whereas blue states pay far more tax revenue than they use. Another example: when red states bemoan the lack of family values in blue states, they ignore the fact that the divorce rate in red states is far higher than the divorce rate in blue states. In other words, red state people shoot off their mouths without doing any intelligent research, just like you, Neal, and just like Dubya. That's why Dubya is still in power.

|11.12.04 @ 8:52PM|#

J-

Randy Newman was born in New Orleans.

http://snipurl.com/alum

IMDb, with its signature sloppiness, mistakenly says L.A. at the top of his bio, which may be why you are confused:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005271/

Later, however, in their biography of him, they correctly state New Orleans:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005271/bio

Hope this helps.

|11.12.04 @ 8:56PM|#

"Take a look into the reasons why the British decided to focus their attention on the South during the latter years of the war."

Yes, and what a brillian tactical decision that was! It lost them the war. Y'all come back any time, you limey bastards, if you ever want to experience the joy of a Grade A asskicking! In fact, they came back to the South in the War of 1812 and General Andy Jackson kicked their asses *again.*

Meanwhile, the New England states traded with the enemy in the War of 1812, when they weren't discussing plans for secession.

Now, I acknowledge that there were some Southern Anglophiles, like the abominable Walter Hines Page and President Woody Wilson (although Wilson was contaminated by an extended stay in New Joisey). But for real Anglophilia, you just can't beat the Nawth.

|11.12.04 @ 9:03PM|#

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot . . .

While we're discussing loyalists, don't forget William Franklin, son of the Yankee Benjamin Franklin, who became the loyalist governor of (where else?) New Jersey.

|11.12.04 @ 9:05PM|#

Add Jim Morrison of Florida to the list.

|11.12.04 @ 9:05PM|#

"I too have lived in Chicago, and in Boston, and without question these two northern cities have much worse race relations than any Southern city I have experienced. I found race relations in Richmond, Virginia to be quite relaxed, for instance."

Northern racism and Southern racism are quite different. It isn't a matter of one being more racist than the other, but of the intimacy between the races. In the South, people of different races were always in close contact, even in each others houses. For people throughout most of the history of the North, even in the towns, people could go months without seeing a black person.

As a result, the South developed all these codified manners, laws, and geographies to maintain the separation between the races. While in the north, very little effort had to be made. There were practically no opportunities for adult males of different races to come to know each other, and possibly come to see each other as friends. The distance black people had from the centers of power in the North just perpetuated themselves, because the black people themselves were physically and socially distant. In the South, white supremacy had to be actively maintained, because there was always the "danger" that people would act like human beings and relate to each other as individuals, which is normal when people get to know each other. In the north, only the lowest classes of white people came into contact with black people on a regular basis. Black people were treated more like outsiders in the north, while they were treated more like children or charges or posessions in the south - part of the us, but a subordinate part.

So there was lot less to overcome in the North in terms of legal equality, but in many ways, achieving actual integration of society has been a lot harder. Massachusetts has a proud history of advancing legal racial equality, from abolitionism to Reconstruction to the civil rights movement, but I could count on my fingers the times I've had a black person to my house for dinner. Not because of any hostility or prejudice, but because I've so rarely found myself in a situation where issuing the invitation would make sense.

Whether RC's impression that race relations in the South are "quite relaxed" stems from the greater familiarity, or the universal, automatic adherence to the norms developed to keep things "relaxed," I couldn't say.

|11.12.04 @ 9:07PM|#

As far as the red vs blue state myth goes please remember that even the blue states vote about 45% red. And yes, it's nearly the same in reverse but with non-votes outnumbering all I'd say the country is pretty much beige.

I'm sure you are aware that to compare divorce rates on solely a red vs blue basis is about as childish as it gets. I wouldn't call googling for five seconds and spewing forth a few numbers "intelligent research". Got data?

Mike|11.12.04 @ 9:08PM|#

As told by the living Dead Milkman, Rodney Anonymous:

I do, however, get angry when I see what's been done to southern culture. Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner were all
southerners. And yet, when we (even southerners) think of the south, do we think of them? No, we think of Travis Tritt on a tractor going around
a NASCAR track.

The south allowed its intellectual heritage to be hijacked and replaced with an episode of Hee Haw. So the south now has an image problem of its own making. And only southerners can correct that problem. I wish them the best of luck.

|11.12.04 @ 9:10PM|#

Those disappointed Dems also forget all the Bush votes that were cast only a few miles from them in suburbia. And all that red non-urban territory in their home States. (Massachusetts excepted)

Whatever questionable gifts the South, Northeast, or Upper Bumfuck have offered, we are the fools for having accepted them. I would love to return R.E.M. How late does Georgia Customer Service stay open?

Jesse Walker|11.12.04 @ 9:22PM|#

Neal you took the easy way out. You reacted to "Fuck the South" without reading it....Fuckthesouth.com says that, for example, when the red states complain that they pay too much in taxes, they ignore the fact that they use far more tax revenue than they pay, whereas blue states pay far more tax revenue than they use.

Actually, Pollack says this close to the beginning of his piece: "The writer makes some valid points about how the South seems to get a disproportionate amount of federal pork. That, I'll give him."

I agree that someone here is responding to something without reading it, but I don't think that person is Neal.

|11.12.04 @ 9:23PM|#

I wonder if the self-proclaimed enlightened classes who love to spew bigotry about Southerners would feel equally comfortable spewing bigotry about black people.

Well, guess what, people - when you attack Southerners, you're attacking a group that includes a lot of black people. Or were you going on the assumption that all Southerners are white? In which case, who's being racist?

|11.12.04 @ 9:28PM|#

"Yes, and what a brillian tactical decision that was! It lost them the war."

Barring an internal collapse of the Continental Army, the Brits were doomed one way or the other. They went South to a large extent because it was the one place where they could command a decent amount of local support. And for a little while, the strategy worked - Savannah, Charleston, and Camden come to mind. It wasn't until a Loyalist-dominated force was defeated at Kings Mountain that the tide began to turn.

"In fact, they came back to the South in the War of 1812 and General Andy Jackson kicked their asses *again.*"

...after the invasion of Canada had ended in the fall of Detroit and Washington had been put to the torch.

"Meanwhile, the New England states traded with the enemy in the War of 1812, when they weren't discussing plans for secession."

I think the country would've saved itself a lot of trouble if it took their advice and decided not to launch the war in the first place, don't you? Especially since the British were on their way to shelving their maritime search policies. But the Southerners were too filled with visions of Canadian conquest to be deterred.

|11.12.04 @ 9:39PM|#

People, people, people. This is a stupid and childish thread. Let's all agree that New Jersey is heaven on earth and be done with it.

- Josh

|11.12.04 @ 9:40PM|#

"I think the country would've saved itself a lot of trouble if it took their advice and decided not to launch the war in the first place, don't you? Especially since the British were on their way to shelving their maritime search policies. But the Southerners were too filled with visions of Canadian conquest to be deterred."

Hmm . . . you've got me there. What *were* we thinking, trying to take Canada? The Canadians are the people who regard Yankees the way Yankees regard Southerners.

|11.12.04 @ 9:41PM|#

Torquemada:

Bring it on, cracker. We'll kick your ass just like we did last time. The Yanks are comin, bay-bee!!!

|11.12.04 @ 9:43PM|#

the red states complain that they pay too much in taxes, they ignore the fact that they use far more tax revenue than they pay, whereas blue states pay far more tax revenue than they use.

But blue states don't pay taxes. People pay taxes. More specifically, high-income people pay taxes -- and high income people, whether they live in a blue states or red states, tend to vote Republican. If people's votes were weighed in proportion to how much they actually pay in taxes, virtually every state in the nation would be deeply red. So basically, the complaint that "blue states' money" gets sent to red states amounts to a complaint that the money the government swipes from Republicans gets sent to Republican-controlled states. Cry me a fuckin' river about that one.

Sure, I'd appreciate it if my money stayed in California and was spent on stuff I wanted. But what I'd really appreciate is if the tax-happy California Democrats who pushing for me to pay the damn taxes in the first place would fuck off and die.

|11.12.04 @ 9:45PM|#

"I do, however, get angry when I see what's been done to southern culture. Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner were all
southerners. And yet, when we (even southerners) think of the south, do we think of them? No, we think of Travis Tritt on a tractor going around
a NASCAR track."

Maybe not Poe or O'Connor, but anyone who's read any Faulkner knows what part of the country he comes from.

|11.12.04 @ 9:53PM|#

"Barring an internal collapse of the Continental Army, the Brits were doomed one way or the other."

This is how it looks with 20/20 hindsight, when we know the outcome. It's not how it looked to most people when GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON OF VIRGINIA was seeking to hold together his ill-fed army in the face of the mighty British Empire. If he'd lost, we would be discussing how "the American Revolution was doomed one way or the other." George Washington is called "the father of his country," not "the figurehead of the inevitable revolution." American victory didn't seem inevitable even as late as July 1780, *after* the British invasion of the South, when BENEDICT ARNOLD OF CONNECTICUT deserted the standard of his country and joined the British.

"People, people, people. This is a stupid and childish thread. Let's all agree that New Jersey is heaven on earth and be done with it."

I know you're childish, but what am I?

All the drugs in the world couldn't make New Jersey look like a paradise.

|11.12.04 @ 10:00PM|#

"Bring it on, cracker. We'll kick your ass just like we did last time. The Yanks are comin, bay-bee!!!"

Unlike your distinguished Yankee ancestors, you modern Yankees have gun control and we don't. So go ahead and invade. What will you use for weapons? Will you throw *tofu* at us? I almost feel sorry for you.

|11.12.04 @ 10:02PM|#

There are parts of New Jersey that don't look so bad, but I couldn't find anything to like about Boston or anything north of Boston. I've never seen so many slack-jawed yokels in all my life.

Remember those guys from the Bob Newhart show? "This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." It was like that. All the town people from that Christmas movie Chevy Chase did? ...people who wouldn't know a hush puppy from a freedom fry.

|11.12.04 @ 10:06PM|#

"This is a stupid and childish thread. Let's all agree that New Jersey is heaven on earth and be done with it."

Wild Pegasus,
Don't be trying to change the subject to the "Garden State." Have you ever seen Spanish moss?

We Southerners are out for blood... at least until sunrise tomorrow.
Then we can discuss dueling!

|11.12.04 @ 10:09PM|#

"Well, guess what, people - when you attack Southerners, you're attacking a group that includes a lot of black people. Or were you going on the assumption that all Southerners are white? In which case, who's being racist?"

The problem with this line of thinking is that those people who identify themselves as Capital S Southernors, if not actually racists themselves, fly the flag of a racist political movement, identify "Scotch-Irish" heritage as a defining characteristic of the South, link their political identity to, at the least, anti-anti-racism, and continually idealize a socio-economic system in which had the subjugation of black people as its central organizing principle.

"Southerners" themselves don't choose to include black people within their identity. I've got no problem with southerners. But Southerners make racial identify way too much of their self image for my taste. You'll have to forgive some of my fellow Yankess, Torq, for taking these people at their word.

|11.12.04 @ 10:12PM|#

"Any Northern states trying to teach Creationism in the schools?"

Some posters have already mentioned Ohio, Kansas and Wisconsin. There's also Pennsylvania. And I'd add that the center of the "intelligent design" movement is in Seattle.

The Fordham Foundation four years ago graded each state's biology curriculum on how well it covers evolution.

The Carolinas both got As. The only Southern states to do so. Most got Ds and Fs.

But then again, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wyoming all got Fs. And Alaska, Illinois, and Wisconsin got Ds.

New York got a C, same as Louisiana and Texas.

|11.12.04 @ 10:26PM|#

Actually, joe, I think my rejection of the racism I saw in my childhood is a central component of my Southern identity.

George Wallace was shot in my home town. I think our next national monument should be to MLK; I idealize a lot of things, but I don't fly any flags.

...and my last name isn't McShultz.

|11.12.04 @ 10:30PM|#

Hey, I composed a paper on human evolution for my high school sophomore biology class back in about 1958 or '59 in Tennessee, of all places.
No sweat. No arrests.
The teacher, cognizant of the Scopes trial, allowed anyone to excuse themselves when I gave my report, but nobody did.

|11.12.04 @ 10:39PM|#

North Carolina was the first colony to declare its independence from Great Britain.

As for that mad yankee...
"..a southern man don't need him around anyhow"

|11.12.04 @ 10:42PM|#

joe said:
"Southerners" themselves don't choose to include black people within their identity."

When I was hitchhiking back from Daytona Beach, Florida, many years ago, I happened to catch a ride with the daughter of the "official" Uncle Remus of Georgia. Spent the night in "Uncle's" home in Eatonton, GA. (I was in the guest room alone, sorry to confess.)
He was a white guy, but that's beside your point, isn't it?

|11.12.04 @ 10:45PM|#

The problem with this line of thinking is that those people who identify themselves as Capital S Southernors, if not actually racists themselves, [do a bunch of stereotypical crap Joe saw on "Hee Haw"]

Most of the people who call themselves "Southerners" call themselves that because they live in the South. The "Southerner" you describe is rarely seen outside of a television set. If you want to bitch about Scotch-Irish Confederate-flag-waving closet racists go right ahead. But thinking that that's an accurate description of southerners is every bit as stupid as thinking that "Italian" means "has mob connections" or "lives in Los Angeles" means "is either a movie star, a black gang member, or an illegal immigrant".

And what's "anti-anti-racism", anyway? Either you're pro-racism (Klan members, affirmative action supporters, et al) or you aren't.

|11.12.04 @ 10:51PM|#

"..a southern man don't need him around anyhow"

That song's about George Wallace, you know. Let's not give joe any more ammunition, okay?

|11.12.04 @ 11:00PM|#

And I'd add that the center of the "intelligent design" movement is in Seattle.

Also, the Institute for Creation Research is located here in southern California.

|11.12.04 @ 11:55PM|#

I cannot abide these slurs on the third state, New Jersey.

The glorious battles or the revolutionary war, the heroic regiments of the civil war and the famed "Jersey Blues" 44th Infantry Divison.

Joyce Kilmer and Vince Lombardi both have turnpike service areas named after them.

Name another governor with the nerve to name the Brendan Byrne Arena after himself?

As corrupt as California but not ashamed of it.

"Trenton makes, the world takes."

It's the most densely populated state - somebody must like it.

They know how to criticize the public school system; they shoot up the schools with the NJANG.

All those refineries means the gasoline is cheap.

And they're a hotbed of the justly famed such as Queen Latifah, Allen Ginsberg, Debbie Harry, Martha Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Ernie Kovacs, Thomas Paine, Patti Smith, William Carlos Williams, Joe Black, Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr, Hariet Tubman, etc., etc., etc.

In the words of a school song " ... it's the one and only university, situated in celebrated New Jersey."

The South is OK. If you really must live there or if you like it, knock yourself out. Me, I'm staying in the Garden State.

|11.13.04 @ 12:59AM|#

Jesus Christ, I had no idea Americans were so fucked up... 73 comments about 'my daddy can beat up your daddy'.

|11.13.04 @ 1:47AM|#

Sheeeeit! Y'all ain't got much to think about, do you. I been in the south my whole damn life, an I gotta tell you, I ain't NEVER thought about Travis Tritt on a tractor goin 'round a NASCAR track 'till jes now. Hell, that's about as stupid as all that ignorant politics y'all keep going on about, like somebody shit in your dinner plate. Fact is, if I think its good fer me, I vote fer it. Don't really care what it does fer you. But anyway,the south has got all that stuff y'all said .....

and, and, and ...... TWINS!

Bubba out.

|11.13.04 @ 3:12AM|#

I forget who it was who said that the South gave America its best music and worst politicians...

|11.13.04 @ 8:56AM|#

Grew up in the South, met my first love in the dark streets of New Orleans...

...However, the South is damned, mainly due to the insane humidity. Now that I live in the shadow of a red rock canyon in a red state, there's no way I'd go back to the hellish air which was often cut with a knife and sold as souveniers to the yankees. Don't know why y'all just don't up and leave and head to the west where a man don't have to sweat unless he wants to.

|11.13.04 @ 9:19AM|#

I can't believe the most famous "bubba" of modern US history hasn't been mentioned yet. Ya'll know I be talking bout our first black president, Bill Clinton. He sure liked them southern gals - taste sweet as BBQ sauce.

I've liked the south every since the Dukes of Hazard came out. I don't think you could possibly move far enough north to find an adolescent male who didn't love that show when it came out.

mmmmm...Daisy Duke

|11.13.04 @ 10:13AM|#

"They know how to criticize the public school system; they shoot up the schools with the NJANG"

Damn I though George had decided to go back and make up for missed flight time.

CS - In my red state with red canyons we like it that the rest of the world thinks were under 5 feet of snow from Oct to June. We try not to invite southernors because we fear the Texans will think we want them too.

|11.13.04 @ 11:17AM|#

Dan, if you were a little better with the reading comprehension thing, you'd notice that I made many of the same points you did in disitnguishing between southerners (people from a geographic area) and Capial S Southerners (people who identify with Confederate Culture.)

Of course, noticing that would have spoiled all the fun you have with your persecution complex.

|11.13.04 @ 11:42AM|#

"I do, however, get angry when I see what's been done to southern culture. Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner were all
southerners. And yet, when we (even southerners) think of the south, do we think of them? No, we think of Travis Tritt on a tractor going around
a NASCAR track."

I took a class in college called "Southern Literature, Language, and Culture." Lots of Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, Welty, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, and some others I can't remember. I moved to Memphis after graduating, and was expecting this magical, mystical place that literature had led me to believe existed. What a bunch of crap. What I found was a crappy big city just like any other, which has its local charms just like any other. But it's mostly crappy.
Race relations are on average terrible, many white and black people are pretty open about disliking each other.

|11.13.04 @ 11:45AM|#

You know, I'm sure there are a lot of intelligent, enlightened, innovative people living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but this doesn't change the fact that the kindgom as a whole is a back-asswards hellhole. Likewise, there are plenty of intelligent, non-racist, non-religious fanatics in the South, but not enough to change the flavor of the area as a whole.

I loved it a few years back, when South Carolina decided to keep the Confederate stars-and-bars on its state flag, and then, when the NAACP called upon people to boycott the state as a result, South Carolina whined that it was being 'victimized' by the NAACP's 'intolerance.'

clarityiniowa|11.13.04 @ 12:39PM|#

The only problem with the South, it seems to me, is that its worst characterisitics tend to drift northward. I grew up in southern Iowa, so close to Missouri you could hear the banjo music when the wind was right, and one of the nation's hotbeds for close inbreeding, birth defects and mental retardation. In my grandmother's scrapbook is a picture of a sign on the edge of town, Manning, Iowa circa 1939: "Nigger don't let the sun go down," meaning be out of town by dark. I've spent considerable time in the Raleigh-Durham area of N.C. and would comfortably live there again. Our nation's capital, on the other hand, is a hotbed of racism and pestilence once you leave the Mall.

Backwardness, ignorance and stupidity aren't geographic, they are, like most other human characteristics, 10% nature, 90% nurture.

|11.13.04 @ 1:06PM|#

"You know, I'm sure there are a lot of intelligent, enlightened, innovative people living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but this doesn't change the fact that the kindgom as a whole is a back-asswards hellhole. Likewise, there are plenty of intelligent, non-racist, non-religious fanatics in the South, but not enough to change the flavor of the area as a whole."

Here are a few differences between the South and Saudi Arabia:

-We let our women drive, and wear skimpy clothing in warm weather. Boy, do they ever exercise their rights, especially the last one!

-Members of minority religions are free to coexist in full freedom and equality, unlike in Saudi Arabia where only one religion (Sunni Islam) is legal. By the way, Virginia was adopting its Statute of Religious Freedom and supporting freedom of conscience while Saudi Arabia - not to mention backwaters like Massachusetts and Connecticut - were still groaning under the weight of established churches.

-Southerners, unlike Saudi Arabians, don't have so many hangups about pork products.

"I loved it a few years back, when South Carolina decided to keep the Confederate stars-and-bars on its state flag, and then, when the NAACP called upon people to boycott the state as a result, South Carolina whined that it was being 'victimized' by the NAACP's 'intolerance.'"

I don't exactly like the politics of victimization, but it's fun to use the slogans of the diversity-and-tolerance crowd against them.

The Lonewacko Blog|11.13.04 @ 1:09PM|#

Mmmmm... pecan pie.

Phoenix isn't "South", it's West.

Don't forget Asheville, NC. Mmmm.... lesbians.

|11.13.04 @ 1:27PM|#

Deron!

You're not insinuating that Texas isn't part of the South, are you?

Ha! It isn't, of course.

|11.13.04 @ 1:33PM|#

dead elvis,

If you ever find yourself in Yankachusetts, don't spend too much time lookin' for whaling boat captains or witch trials.

|11.13.04 @ 2:24PM|#

A few things:

1) I lived in South Carolina (suburb of Charleston) for a year as a teenager. Otherwise I grew up in Milwaukee. I moved to California at the age of 17 and have been here the past 10 years.

There is a certain amount of truth to RC Dean's observation that race relations in certain northern cities are worse than in many southern cities. To some extent I blame this on northerners, white and black alike. On the white side, I don't know whether prejudiced attitudes are more common among northern urban whites or southern urban whites (I'm not psychic) but northern urban whites seem more likely to manifest it as open hostility rather than quiet satisfaction with an advantaged position. (I won't comment on rural attitudes in either region since I've never lived in a rural area.) On the black side, northern black families and religious beliefs are definitely weaker than in the south, and so some northern blacks have adopted a "don't blame me, blame you!" attitude.

However, I hasten to add that most northern urban whites are NOT openly hostile to blacks, and most northern urban blacks are NOT lazy and irresponsible. Nonetheless, both attitudes seem more common in northern cities than in Charleston. I don't know why this is, although I would theorize that in the south the races have been around one another in a highly unequal relationship for several centuries, and so they've found a way to coexist peacefully but inequitably. Not a good arrangement, just a stable arrangement. Black neighborhoods in the midwest are a more recent phenomenon in the grand scheme of things, so maybe that's played a part in it.

2) Somebody pointed to the LAPD Rampart division as an example of racism. Actually, the Rampart cops were a rainbow coalition of thugs. When Rodney King asked "Can't we all just get along?" the Rampart cops answered "Yes!" and proved that skin color is no obstacle to terrorizing a community.

3) My Ph.D advisor said last week that Bush's victory was the worst event in US politics since the South lost the Civil War. His rationale was that if the South had seceded the left would have dominance in the north. I think he's overlooking two problems. First and foremost, in a system of representative government a second strong party will inevitably emerge. Even if it isn't a formal political party (e.g. a state like California where one party enjoys near hegemony), there will be divisions in the main party that will play out as contested primary elections. So one way or another there would still be debate in US politics. Second, if the South had won I doubt that would have been the end of warfare in North America; who knows how bloody things would be today in that case?

fyodor|11.13.04 @ 2:42PM|#

I thought the third & fourth sentences were kinda amusing. Maybe "we" should have let them go! Made me think of the old adage, be careful what you wish for (aside from the fact the Union did a lot more than wish!)!

So I thought this whole thing was gonna be a joke, and then it got.... Well, you can see for yourself. Beyond that, I can only echo Warren, word.

|11.13.04 @ 3:08PM|#

I think a shorter version of my Milwaukee vs. Charleston analysis would be this:

The absence of open conflict is not the same thing as peace. Milwaukee should be viewed as a cautionary tale rather than viewing Charleston as a model city.

|11.13.04 @ 3:58PM|#

The north vs South Dicotomy was STARTED BY THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS. They vicously and repeatedly attacked Kerry as a "New England Liberal", as if being from Massachusetts is a disqualification to run the country. They played up the southern disdain for the north, and used it to paint a characature as an effeminate elitist.

If the republicans hadnt started us down this road, there would not be such raw anger at the south as there is in the North right now. Its what you get for calling us a bunch of overeducated limp wristed snobs.
Personally I'm sick of southerners (or Northerners pretending to be southern) ruling this country, and then calling us the "elite". You want to point the finger fine, but you better have your own house in order before you start throwing mud; because all the shitty little statistics about life in the red are now fair game.

|11.13.04 @ 4:26PM|#

The north vs South Dicotomy was STARTED BY THE FUCKING REPUBLICANS.

No, it wasn't. This shiite goes back to pre-1776. That's part of what makes it so comical. Family spat.

|11.13.04 @ 4:31PM|#

Saying that the south "gave us manned flight" is like saying that the south "gave us the first American in space and first man on the moon" because their rockets took off from pads in Florida.

Kevin Carson|11.13.04 @ 4:46PM|#

The South has a lot of regional diversity.

Somebody above pointed out that Jefferson was a southerner. The Chesapeake states (Va. and Md.) were socially quite different from the cotton states of the deep South. Cereal grains were nearly as important as tobacco there, and as a result they had a large white yeomanry. So the social system was less polarized between slaves and a fire-eating aristocracy. There was an economy of distributive property ownership and self-employment--the same qualities that made New England so democratic, and qualities that distinguished Virginia from, say, S. Carolina. Jefferson wanted to duplicate the New England township system in Virginia, and it would have been more feasible there than further south.

The southern highland areas (including the Arkansas Ozarks, where I live) are also fundamentally different from and freer than the areas dominated by the planter aristocracy. If you've ever seen the original In the Heat of the Night, that's pretty much what southern Arkansas is like. Two or three old families own most of the land in the county, and poor whites and blacks alike defer to the guy with a mansion on the hill. Up here in NW Arkansas, on the other hand, people have traditionally resented being pushed around, and tended to respond to it with a loaded shotgun.

|11.13.04 @ 5:16PM|#

On a more serious note: If it's true that the best art comes from the worst life experience, then you could argue that the south has produced so much great music and literature precisely because it was such a godawful place to live for such a long time.

|11.13.04 @ 5:32PM|#

lindenin,

"No, it wasn't. This shiite goes back to pre-1776. That's part of what makes it so comical. Family spat."

I think the last few years make it pretty clear who's willing to let it go, and who wants to cling to this pointless feud.

Denunciations of "the northeast," "the blue states," or "the coasts" as vicious and prejudiced (and significantly less factual) are published weekly in such respected places as National Review. The only reason fuckthesouth.com is even worthy of notice is the man-bites-dog aspect of a northerner stooping to that level.

|11.13.04 @ 5:45PM|#

I would like to point out for bragging rights that the three things about flight (first manned flight, first in space (American) and first moon lander) were all brought about my Ohioans. (Wright Brothers, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong)

So you Northeast v South people can sit on it..the Midwest clearly rules.

|11.13.04 @ 6:03PM|#

Don`t you love the way those tolerent Yankees denergrate the finest people that ever walked the planet ( mias amigos).May Abraham fucking Lincoln (the railroad lawyer) from Yankee Land swell in his Unconstitional shit.

Hey lett`s send the black man (buffalo soldiers) to kill the Red Man sos we can run the Railroad through their land.All we gotta do is FREE them first.

TAKE THESE CHAINS OFF OF ME AND LET ME FREE!

ONLY THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

I know it and feel sooooo free!!!!!!

|11.13.04 @ 6:05PM|#

I made many of the same points you did in disitnguishing between southerners (people from a geographic area) and Capial S Southerners (people who identify with Confederate Culture.)


Joe, that sound you hear is the sound of the hundred million or so people who've actually lived in the south laughing at the idea that "we-miss-the-Confederacy" Southerners capitalize the "S" and other ones use a lower-case "s". Turn off your television, stop learning about reality from the movies, set foot outside that cold and rainy left-wing shithole you live in and see the rest of the country sometime.

The "Southerners" you rant about are a fraction of a percent of people who live in the south. They have no power in any political party and little effect on any election. I mean, seriously -- "Scotch-Irish heritage"? You'll have to look long and hard in any Southern city to find someone who gives a shit about that.

Of course, noticing that would have spoiled all the fun you have with your persecution complex

My persecution complex? I'm a Californian, dumbass. See above, re: learning something about the rest of the country.

|11.13.04 @ 6:22PM|#

As long as we're talking about regional pride, I might as well mention that a while back I reworked Adam Sandler's Hannukah (sp?) song to sing the praises of Wisconsin. Here's what I remember now:


Put on your cheese wedge, hey,
Come to Wisconsin, hey,
So much fun, yah, hey,
To live in Wisconsin, hey.

Wisconsin is a state with lots and lots of snow,
Instead of one winter season we have 8 crazy months,
So when you feel like the only kid in town who's rooting for Green Bay,
Here's a list of people from Wisconsin,
Just like you and me:

Chief Justice Rehnquist likes to do the polka,
So do Tom Snyder and the late Malcolm X, yah!
Guess who ate their chili at the George Webb's in Milwaukee:
Frank Lloyd Wright the architect and Senator McCarthy.

Golda Meir's from Wisconsin, the Violent Femmes are too,
Put them together,
Get a singing cheesehead Jew,
You don't need lots of sun or a beach to have a party,
Cuz you can ride a Harley with comedian Chris Farley! (both from Wisconsin!)

So put on your cheese wedge, hey,
Come to Wisconsin, hey,
So much fun, yah, hey,
To live in Wisconsin, hey.

OJ Simpson--Not from Wisconsin!
But guess who is, his houseguest Kato Kalin,
We've got Bob Uecker and Laverne and Shirley,
Harrison Ford went to college in Wisconsin--not too shabby!

Some people think that Wheezer's from Wisconsin,
Well they're not, but guess who is,
The Bodeans and Garbage!
So many cheeseheads are in showbiz,
Da Yoopers aren't cheeseheads but I heard their agent is.

So go and tell Chicago, hey,
FIBs* can beat Wisconsin, hey,
Hope I get a new bowling ball,
And the Packers win the Superbowl,
So drink your Old Milwaukee, hey,
As the Packers win in Green Bay,
And the Badgers beat UCLA,
Be a happy happy happy happy Cheesehead hey!


*Fucking Illinois Bastards

|11.13.04 @ 7:18PM|#

Wait. Jennifer asked if any northern states were teaching creationism and was presented with a list. Isn't she going to comment on it, or is she just going to change the subject?

Meanwhile, joe is correct that hardly any northerners have been slamming the South, as a search on google for "Jesusland" will surely show (87,000+ hits at the time of this posting).

|11.13.04 @ 7:34PM|#

Looking back over the comments, I can see that regionalism really is ugly. I'm ready to bury the hatchet so long as we can all agree that people from Texas shouldn't be allowed to vote.

|11.13.04 @ 8:02PM|#

Ah, the last group it's okay to defame as a group. My family has been in the South since before the Revolution, and everything in our history has shown a love of learning, liberty, and tolerance that apparently must be fiction, since we've always been in the South. One of my slave-owning ancestors had a journal where he worried about the morality of slavery. It's easy to mock thoughts like that from our exalted place in history (why didn't he rise up in rebellion, blah, blah, blah), but people rarely escape from the prevailing rationalizations of their day. Kind of like joe and his attitude about the South (hey, joe, I wouldn't be so smug about who needs to let what "go"; we've been enduring snide remarks with little basis in truth for decades). Strange how many of the intellectual heavyweights in U.S. history come from down here--must've been Northerners at heart, huh?

Incidentally, I'm originally from Alabama and managed to graduate cum laude from a Northern law school. My Tennessean father worked on Apollo as a programmer. With a degree and stuff. Etc., etc. In addition, virtually none of my family--including my relatives who live in the deepest parts of the South--have ever said anything the slightest bit racist to me. As much as everyone thinks we all run around with hoods around here, I've seen far more intolerance--especially the racial variety--in the Northern cities I lived in. There's an old truism about Northerners loving blacks as a group but hating the individuals, while the Southerners hate the group but love the individuals. I'm not sure what that means, but what the heck does another wild generalization cost us is this thread?

I note for the record that I thought of myself as an East Coast guy when I used to get stuck in California and Washington on business. Odd. I blame all of the states west of the Mississippi for the erosion of Constitutional limits. Yep, everything was fine before that.

|11.13.04 @ 8:31PM|#

Dan, how about living for a few years in DC and Maryland, and having a succession of roommates who nattered on about the Confederacy, and put out Confederate flags. Let me see, sharing living quarters with people from North Carolina, Virginia (twice), Tennessee, and hickville Florida. Maybe you should stop assuming so much about people.

"I mean, seriously -- "Scotch-Irish heritage"? You'll have to look long and hard in any Southern city to find someone who gives a shit about that."

Um, a couple of people, actually.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=southern+heritage+scotch+irish&btnG=Google+Search

"The problem with this line of thinking is that those people who identify themselves as Capital S Southernors, if not actually racists themselves, [do a bunch of stereotypical crap Joe saw on "Hee Haw"]"

I'm pretty sure that the footage of state capitol buildings in North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia - each and every one of which has the Confederate battle flag flying alone, or as part of the state flag, didn't run on Hee-Ha

Yeah, it's all in my head, there's no organized racism tied to "Southern Identity," no one in the south identifies with the Confederacy, and certainly, no one's politics consider the protection of Confederate symbols to be important enough to, say, win numerous state ballot initiatives.

Could you possibly be assuming unwarranted things about the political culture in places that vote the way you want them? Oh no, you wouldn't do that.

|11.13.04 @ 8:38PM|#

The Reasonoids put this post up in the hopes of starting a regional slap fight. There have been over 100 comments so far.

Take a look back at the number of comments insulting the South, the number of comments insulting the Northeast, and the number of comments from people outside the South who denounce attacks on the South.

|11.13.04 @ 8:53PM|#

"Kind of like joe and his attitude about the South"

joe on this thread, "It's not a North/South thing. That's dumb."

"Northern racism and Southern racism are quite different. It isn't a matter of one being more racist than the other"

"I've got no problem with southerners. But (people who fly the flag of a racist political movement, identify "Scotch-Irish" heritage as a defining characteristic of the South, link their political identity to, at the least, anti-anti-racism, and continually idealize a socio-economic system in which had the subjugation of black people as its central organizing principle) make racial identify way too much of their self image for my taste." (Distinguishes between ordinary people from the south, and a small class of activists).

"I made many of the same points you did in disitnguishing between southerners (people from a geographic area) and Capial S Southerners (people who identify with Confederate Culture.)"

So I've dumped on people who attacked the south, went out of my way to point out that those who fit the stereotype are not the norm, and defended the south against the charge that racism is worse there than in the northeast.

Yet I get to be cast as the wicked bigot, impugning the honor of half the country, because cetain people need to feel persecuted to justify their own hostility towards northerners.

Loot at Pro Libertade: "Strange how many of the intellectual heavyweights in U.S. history come from down here" No one has suggested this is strange at all.

" I'm originally from Alabama and managed to graduate cum laude from a Northern law school. My Tennessean father worked on Apollo as a programmer. With a degree and stuff." Again, no one has suggested this is at all remarkable.

"As much as everyone thinks we all run around with hoods around here..." Everyone who?

I guess you people just KNOW that we're all prejudiced against people from the former Confederacy. Because, I guess, that's how all of us are.

|11.13.04 @ 9:11PM|#

Okay, joe, so you and Jennifer are uniters, not dividers. Just like Dubya.
Marvin Olasky was beginning to wonder about Hit & Run.
He was probably on the verge of telling this one of 100 voting blocs to go fuck itself.
Lost sheep indeed!

snarky|11.13.04 @ 9:11PM|#

What I don't understand is how in the world Jennifer's dog was able to swallow her whole like that.....

|11.13.04 @ 9:35PM|#

joe said:
"I guess you people just KNOW that we're all prejudiced against people from the former Confederacy. Because, I guess, that's how all of us are."

The problem is public schools peddle progaganda that the Civil War was about slavery, when it was about states' rights and a pesky tariff.
All of us here should be fighting this resurfacing of it with wooden swords...
then having a beer afterwards.

|11.13.04 @ 9:37PM|#

Ruthless, the fact that you would lump together my comments with Jennifer's just proves my point - you don't need to actually pay any attention to what a northeastern liberal has to say, because we all think the same anyway.

Andrew|11.13.04 @ 9:41PM|#

Fuck you all I?m from Texas! We in Texas would be better off on our own! We?d be richer than Hong Kong was!

But seriously, I have been here 17 years. It is the most tolerant and vibrant place in world. It is a land of immigrants from around the world. It has more people speaking more languages and actively practicing more versions of more religions than anywhere in the world. Come and make the culture richer, and learn to love funny hats, Willie Nelson and real barbeque (as well as active democracy and one of the best economies on the world).

Please come to Texas! Just be sure to have as open mind.

Learn to love guns (or to at least appreciate how a person can truly LOVE a gun). Be independent (but ? unlike Willie Nelson ? pay your taxes ? and we don?t have a state income tax). Live in one of the three largest cities in the country. Cash in on the boom in Laredo. Or make a fortune in Houston. Like NY or SF, Houston has everything a city lover would want. Live in Austin if you like crazy people (or think that the rest of us are crazy). Enjoy the many awesome state parks, the forests, Big Bend National Park, the Hill Country, great rivers, scenery, and friendly people. Just don't be condescending. The first Europeans settled here before anybody dropped anchor in Plymouth. Visit ancient Spanish ruins ? the rebuilt missions are interesting. Don't tell us how much you wish it were more like New Jersey or some other Northern or Southern place (whatever redeeming elements they may have). Throw a fit about the scandals that horrify us, (e.g. Tulia; Jasper; the grandfathered refineries that spew so much mercury in the Gulf that I can?t eat the fish I catch; and those few, but vocal, nuts who want my children to pray to their God at school) but please be constructive about it. Do like most Texans and take a good look at your own home before you shame someone else. Reform, enjoy how integrated Texas has become, pay no respect to the bigotry that does exist, and have good manners. Be open minded about capital punishment, but protest it if you must. Allow prayer if it is not in your face. Get a gun. Don't complain about my gun. Put some spice in your grits. Learn Spanish. Enjoy the rich musical heritage. (Fuck Nashville.) Slap you neighbor on the back and eat some of our fajitas, crawfish, barbeque, or the great food you get in Houston?s Chinatown. Don?t use barbeque as a verb. And use beef with a sweet sauce.

And don't say "Fuck Texas" or we'll kick your ass.

You don?t have to make a pilgrimage to the Alamo, but at least watch the 1997 movie Lone Star if you won?t join us. It might surprise you. Or watch Dazed and Confused, or Office Space, or that great scene in that otherwise crappy movie Twins, when they go to Houston, steal the tacky car, but the owner doesn?t mind when they explain the situation to him, or better yet, that great scene from Pee Wee Herman?s Big Adventure when he goes to San Antonio.

Even if you must stay where you are, please, tolerate the tacky, discuss what is important without yelling, and laugh at Texas because we ask for it ? but this is not ALL of the time. (But did you hear about the state representative who staged a phony assassination attempt on his life, but got busted when his brother-in-law whom he promised to pay for shooting at him got drunk and bitched about having not been paid yet? It is a true story.)

Anyone who generalizes (whether seriously or as a rotten joke) about what little he or she thinks they know like the anonymous ?Fuck the South? poster did, is being foolish. God I?m so glad that whomever wrote that piece is not my neighbor. He wouldn?t last a week here.

|11.13.04 @ 9:44PM|#

Fine. Whatever. Just take those stupid horns of the hood of your car!

;-)

|11.13.04 @ 9:47PM|#

Come on, joe, I'm hardly misrepresenting some of your statements as insulting. I find it kind of funny that you take a shot, duck behind a remark that people are hypersensitive, then take another shot. I freely admit that there are some whackos down here, but you are making some pretty broad generalizations. I could fisk the heck out of you, by the way, but I find fisking to be rude. Must be my evil Southern vices at work again.

I'm not at all hostile to Northerners (incidentally, I thought regions were supposed to be capitalized--I wasn't aware that it was a political statement). I've lived all over the U.S. and have mostly good to say about every region. I prefer the South for various reasons--not least of which being that my roots are here--but that doesn't mean I'm scornful or resentful of other parts of the country.

Andrew|11.13.04 @ 9:48PM|#

I wish the computer would not fill my posting with question marks. Also the movie Lone Star, came out in 1996.

|11.13.04 @ 10:10PM|#

"I'm hardly misrepresenting some of your statements as insulting."

No, you're misinterpretting my statements as insulting. I trust you're representing your perception of those statements quite accurately.

Why don't you go back over my posts, and see how well what I actually wrote lines up with your impression.

I am not making broad generalizations; I was very careful to make it clear that my insulting comments were about a political fringe, not people from the south in general, and I have repeatedly stated that I don't consider most people from the southern states to fit into that category. If it appears that I am taking a shot, then backing away from it, then it is you, not me, who is confusing neo-Confederate kookery with mainstream southern society.

If you don't hold any hostilities towards my region, Libertade, that's great. There are too many people who do, and too many people making a name for themselves stoking the resentment.

|11.13.04 @ 10:19PM|#

tom wolfe!

|11.13.04 @ 10:43PM|#

There are at least three threads going on here. There's the regional rivalry that's mostly tongue in cheek. There's the serious one about Southern racism, nothin' funny about that. Then there's the Southern guy who for some reason keeps denouncing Texas. He's dead serious.

I'm tellin' y'all, what's wrong with America is the same thing that makes people fans of the Cowboys ( That was originally taught to me by a minister when I was a kid in Maryland.), and America would be a lot better off without Texas.

|11.13.04 @ 10:50PM|#

"Ruthless, the fact that you would lump together my comments with Jennifer's just proves my point - you don't need to actually pay any attention to what a northeastern liberal has to say, because we all think the same anyway."

I think it's fair to "lump" you, joe, seeing as how the two of you are probably living in sin over Klick and Klack's garage.

|11.13.04 @ 10:55PM|#

"and America would be a lot better off without Texas."

Ken Shultz,
Careful!
Can you spell O-I-L?

Andrew|11.13.04 @ 11:10PM|#

Perhaps the South-basher who wrote that pathetic rant should also read Jimmy Carter's new book about the Revolutionary War. Most of the battles were in the South, and the war was won in the South. Other than the battle of Yorktown, most of the famous battles and martial events (e.g. Valley Forge, Battle of Trenton) were Northern failures, small gains, or merely symbolic acts like the Boston Tea Party. History only tells the Northern half of the Revolution. Perhaps we need more Southern revisionism.

I am not dumbfounded by condescension towards the South. I am used to that. What strikes me is the complete lack of knowledge about or experience with the South, the stereotypes that they would consider grossly unfair if applied elsewhere, and the lack of interest in learning anything or in challenging their positions. region they distain.

Texas is the South, but it is different. Besides its Spanish history, its foreign border, its historical frontier with the West, its oil, and its incredible geographic diversity and centuries of cultural and religious diversity, Texas is a unique economic engine. Joining the Confederate States of America was the worst mistake Texas ever made. We should have reasserted our own independence. Finaly, when Texas threw off all of its Antebellum illusions during the first half of the twentieth century, it opened up to economic growth that the rest of the South didn't start for several more decades.

By the way, I've never been a Cowboy fan. America's team was a mob of criminals and sleazes (except Tony Dorsett). Dallas and Houston have a rivalry like Chicago and New York. Dallas is the second city. I liked the Oilers. But the Saints are best. That new team in Houston...does anybody want to talk about football?

|11.13.04 @ 11:25PM|#

i wanna see the guidos and the rednecks fight!!!

that would be excellent.

|11.13.04 @ 11:25PM|#

I guess my point is that there are perfectly wonderful, nonbigoted folks down here who aren't willing to entirely repudiate their ancestors and their cultural heritage. I'm not suggesting that that's entirely rational, but it's not much different than we Americans being proud of the genius of the people who founded this country while struggling with the meaning of their sins.

Labels are funny things, joe, and they usually fail to catch the complexity of what they're pinned to. I'm a true blue libertarian, which means that I couldn't despise the idea of slavery more. Yet I have a picture of a slaveowner on my wall (my great, great, great grandfather) and a silhouette of another slaveowner displayed in a bookcase (some guy named George Washington). Frankly, stereotypes are as bad in cultural matters as they are in issues of race or politics. If someone is a racist, then condemn him for being a racist. But don't point to symbols or beliefs outside of that kind of behavior and lump in the racism. I knew some blacks who had Confederate flags in their pickups when I was in high school, and I don't think they were members of the Klan somehow :) Oddly enough, I can recall being more surprised by an Asian redneck I went to school with than by the blacks. Weird how adaptive people can be to their surroundings.

Just a question for our left-leaning members--how is all of the South bashing (I mean in general, not here) going to help the cause? There are an awful lot of Southern Democrats, after all. A bunch of them may have been voting Republican over the last twenty years, but still. . . .

|11.13.04 @ 11:44PM|#

Well if there are Texans who aren't Cowboys fans, well, then I guess they're not all bad.

|11.13.04 @ 11:51PM|#

While I've always lived in the South, I wasn't always very proud of that fact. In fact, I loved exchanging vicious insults with persons of Celtic descent, whom I addressed (when I was feeling polite) as "rednecks."

However, as I came to realize that there are actually people in this country who either dislike me for being Southern, or at least require me to demonstrate that I'm different from those "other" Southerners, then that really got my [Scotch] Irish up, and I'm not even Irish! I decided to embrace my Southernness, and reply in kind to outside criticism of my region.

So you think maybe I'm a bit defensive? Well, it's your own fault, you soteriologically-challenged Yankees.

As to the Confederate battle flag: Would you believe that there are actually a diversity of reasons for people to fly that particular ensign? Some people fly it to show their support for white supremacy. Others fly it out of respect for their ancestors. Others fly it to exhibit a generalized rebellious attitude. Yet others fly it precisely because it annoys the living heck out of Yankees, Chamber of Commerce members, the NAACP, etc.

Andrew|11.13.04 @ 11:59PM|#

I have Confederate vets in my family tree, and I really am over the fact that we lost a war to the North the century before last. It is the generalizations and the condescension by raw condescension by people who know so little that keeps Southerners, including Texans, sensitive. The South was lucky enough to have a peaceful social revolution during the last century that in many respects has put us far ahead of the North or the West Coast. We were integrated long before the civil rights movement. The changes that came simply threw away the social structures that restrained friendships, kept lovers apart, etc. There is a rough comparison to the way Germany has been forced to reconcile its horrible past, and France has continued its anti-Semitism and arrogance. There is the national shame of Native American extermination. At least we don�t get all the blame for that. I don�t want to make too much of a comparison to Germany. They were so fucked up that they make the Snopes family look perfect. While the South maintains conservative values, the fundamental cultural shift in the South is that it a looks to the future much more than it used to. In summary, can we all agree to be disgusted with the French?

|11.14.04 @ 12:15AM|#

We were integrated long before the civil rights movement. The changes that came simply threw away the social structures that restrained friendships, kept lovers apart, etc.

You know, your point here would be much stronger without the word "simply". Your statement comes across as giving short shrift to those very odious social structures.

Although you do have a good point in that legal structures are not the only obstacles to racial harmony, hence the north has its own considerable racial problems.

|11.14.04 @ 12:29AM|#

Blue County / Red County is a more relavent if you want to understand politics at the grass-roots level where it really has meaning. No state is either all red or all blue. Do the hard work, research the facts, and make some kind of reasonable fact-based comment. Don't be like those slime-balls at CBS or at the NYT who just throw a bunch of shit on the wall to see how much sticks. This juvenile one-up exercise of in-your-face North v. South brain-damage is tiresome for all but you thirteen-year-old geeks looking for "fun" after getting permanently blocked from the porn sites. All you little bastards ought to be out there smoking crack and turning tricks with the REALLY COOL kids. Then when you grow up, you can be like the real LIBERALS. True progressive democrats will GIVE YOU CRACK for registering new voters. What a country!

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 1:11AM|#

thoreau: I am continually amazed at what people take out what other people say or write. Did you notice that I was also talking about war, genocide and slavery? Did you notice the reference to the sordid decline of the Southern establishment?

Should I read your post to say that the North never had legal barriers to social harmony? Have you ever wondered why the North is so much more segregated than the South? Should I read your post to say that the North has clean hands, that American slavery did not originate in the North, that no one in nineteenth century blue states was a bigot and that we in the South need to take an even closer look at our past? Well of course not. I doubt that is what you meant, but I do wonder where you are coming from. I have no idea what your life experience or education is. It looks like you made an offhanded critique, but I really wonder what your assumptions were when you wrote it.

I said nothing about Southern law or Southern society being simple or uncruel. I simply noted a simple change from a major revolution.

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 1:14AM|#

Ray has at least one good point.

Here is a national map with a county-by-county breakdown of the election:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/images/counties-2004.gif

|11.14.04 @ 1:51AM|#

Andrew-

I frequently critique people for poor phrasing when I think they had a good point but communicated it poorly. I'm much less likely to recommend better phrasing when I disagree with a person's point. My own anecdotal observations of the north and south suggest that you are correct, and that northern cities are frequently more segregated than southern cities. (Not having lived in a rural area of either region I can't compare rural areas.)

|11.14.04 @ 2:23AM|#

Regarding Texas:

George W. Bush AND Lyndon B. Johnson. I mean, really, what more evidence do you need?

|11.14.04 @ 2:30AM|#

"No state is either all red or all blue. "

Oklahoma and Utah would like to respectfully disagree. Although Idaho is more Rep. than any state but Utah, and even Idaho has a blue county.

|11.14.04 @ 3:04AM|#

Even Utah isn't all red. I can take you to Salt Lake County, which voted blue by a small margin. Going into the heart of Salt Lake City, you're in a happy blue bubble with a very progressive culture. The mayor is very liberal and is often openly at odds with the Mormons and the state GOP. He also won reelection by a substantial margin so he isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

You'll also find blue bubbles in the laid-back ski town Park City, in the hippy-friendly red rock mecca Moab, and even a traditional (almost extinct) working-class Democrat enclave in Price with its coal-miner vote always going for whatever Democrat is running.

|11.14.04 @ 5:28AM|#

I definitely agree that the blue state/red state divide is crap. However, I also want to call bullshit on the posts that list former slaves as great people to come from the South. Yes, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington were amazing people, but they were enslaved by white Southerners, and Tubman and Douglass had to flee to the North to escape oppression. They were hardly Southerners by choice.

|11.14.04 @ 10:02AM|#

Snarky-
Surely, even you are capable of telling the difference between earrings and a child.

Admittedly, my creationism example may not have been the best--it came to mind because just last week, Cobb County, Georgia tried to fire it up again. But I agree with Joe about the "man-bites-dog" aspect of "Fuck the South."

Back in the early 80s, when Texas was enjoying the "oil boom" and Northerners were suffering from high oil prices and low temperatures, there were plenty of Southern bumper stickers sporting slogans such as "Let the Yankee bastards freeze" or "Turn up your thermostat--freeze a Yankee." By contrast, when hurricanes demolish Southern regions from time to time, I've never seen a Northern bumper sticker saying "Let the Southern fucknuts drown." So which part of the country still has a Civil-War era chip on its shoulder?

This historical revisionism is puzzling. Are you guys seriously trying to say that the Southern states have been a bastion of civil rights and progressiveness all these years? If so, you need to do better than "Some of our former slaves went on to become very successful people." For "The South" to try and claim credit for Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman is like the Nazis claiming Anne Frank.

|11.14.04 @ 10:17AM|#

"Yes, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington were amazing people, but they were enslaved by white Southerners, and Tubman and Douglass had to flee to the North to escape oppression. They were hardly Southerners by choice."

You're right, of course, just like me, they were Southerners by birth. And as a white Southerner who loves freedom, I choose them as an important part of my Southern heritage. Meanwhile, I also choose to remember that when Sheridan treated both the slave owning and non-slave owning civilians of the Shenandoah Valley much the same way that Osama bin Laden treated the civilians in the World Trade Center, the North cheered.

...and even today, many from the North continue to project a distorted, quite frankly, quasi-racist image of me and and my ancestors. I can only wonder why.

|11.14.04 @ 10:21AM|#

"many from the North continue to project a distorted, quite frankly, quasi-racist image of me and and my ancestors. I can only wonder why."

Could it be because the ancestors in question lived in a country that fought a war in order to hold onto the right to own slaves, and then when that failed, instituted a series of Jim Crow laws that lasted for a century until activist judges struck said laws down?

Again, I want to reiterate: I am NOT saying that every single person below the Mason-Dixon line is a racist idiot, just that the racist idiots have more sway down there than in other parts of the globe.

|11.14.04 @ 10:24AM|#

Snarky-
By any chance, is your real name Eddie? I ask because I received an email from an "Eddie" (last name withheld) with the exact same message as you posted here, and when I responded I got an email back saying "I don't recognize this address and therefore I haven't seen your email."

Just checkin'.

fyodor|11.14.04 @ 10:34AM|#

Ruthless,

The problem is public schools peddle progaganda that the Civil War was about slavery, when it was about states' rights and a pesky tariff.

I learned in school that it was about all those things. If you're claiming that slavery was not a major issue for the South at all, I scoff and laugh.

|11.14.04 @ 11:06AM|#

Does anyone here believe that the "fuck the south" mentality is going to help the Democratic party?

|11.14.04 @ 11:29AM|#

Monica-
Well, "fuck Massachusetts" seemed to work for Bush.

|11.14.04 @ 11:31AM|#

Jennifer -

So you're saying it will work to the advantage of the Democrats?

|11.14.04 @ 11:40AM|#

Monica-
No. What the Democrats need to do is fight the Republicans on their own terms, but I don't think they'll do that.

As an atheist, I would like to see religion completely divorced from politics, but the modern Republican party has made that impossible. So, pragmatically, here's what I think the Democrats ought to do: fight religion with religion. The Repubs are all but claiming that Jesus (or, rather, Jay-zus) is a registered member of their party; the Democrats, alas, need to fight this using some Christian imagery of their own:

We need to fix the health-care system in this country, since Jesus has ordered us to heal the sick!

We need to help the nation's unemployed, since Jesus ordered us to help the poor!

We must be less judgmental of those with different lifestyles, since Jesus said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone!"

But this probably won't happen.

|11.14.04 @ 11:53AM|#

Well, in all fairness, Bush has good reason to look down on Massachusettes.

He saw first hand how the most prestigious school in that state admitted to its MBA program a guy who got C's in college and then spent several partying, going AWOL from the National Guard, working light duty on a few political campaigns, and failing in the oil business. If the most prestigious school in Massachusettes would admit this guy based on his elite family background, while turning down serious young men and women who worked hard and succeeded in their professional endeavors, how could he possibly respect the state?

Bush has seen what the Yankee idea of "standards" is, and he firmly rejects it ;->

|11.14.04 @ 11:59AM|#

"So which part of the country still has a Civil-War era chip on its shoulder?"

i told this story here a few times, but once more for fun. down in virginia i had a friend of a friend ask me, in all seriousness, if we had a ulysses s. grant day, a la their robert e. lee day.

that still makes me giggle. not because he was southern, but the idea of honoring USG is pretty fucking hilarious.

|11.14.04 @ 12:17PM|#

"Could it be because the ancestors in question lived in a country that fought a war in order to hold onto the right to own slaves, and then when that failed, instituted a series of Jim Crow laws that lasted for a century until activist judges struck said laws down?"

A small minority of the people who fought for the south owned slaves. It might follow that the rest of them weren't any more enthusiastic about getting blown apart for slavery than you would be about getting blown apart for Microsoft.

...and just because there were vocal people in the North who fought the war to end slavery, doesn't mean that everyone in the North was fighting for that reason. Anyone who's studied US Grant, a slave owner, for instance, knows that, for him, it was almost entirely about preserving the Union.

There were people in the South who were against slavery. There were black slave owners. In the Shenandoah Valley, many small farmers didn't own any slaves at all. There were free blacks who had their farms burned to the ground. People in the north can go on and picture Scarlet O' Hara if they want to, but why ignore all the diversity?

If I had to hazard a guess as to why my ancestors are so maligned by the people of the north, I would guess that it's an attempt to soothe their conscience. They try to justify the barbarism of their ancestors with the delusion that the people they victimized weren't really human. That's not hard to imagine, is it? Of all the times that armies have been used to target civilians specifically, I can't think of a single instance in which the authority in question didn't work to dehumanize their intended victims in the minds of soldiers. Go ahead, rape the women, kill the old and the children, burn their farms to the ground, it doesn't really matter, they're slave-holders.

...even if they aren't.

As for Jim Crow, once again, if you look above, you'll see that I said our next national monument ought to be to Martin Luther King. He's my hero. Black leaders throughout the Jim Crow period stood in the face of the Klan and the police, they fought and died for freedom against incredible odds. I'm proud of them. They're all my heroes. That is to say, as a white Southerner, they're important to me as part of my cultural heritage. Besides my general hatred of stupidity, the thing I hate about being portrayed as the cultural descendant of racist white idiots is that it strips me of my black cultural heritage.

Do you understand that? The black civil rights leaders of the South, as well as the slaves, are as important to my Southern identity as the farmers of the Shenandoah Valley. When people from the North so grossly mischaracterize my ancestors and me, it's an attempt to strip me of my culture.

They just don't seem to get it. Maybe they're afraid of embracing the black roots of their own culture.

|11.14.04 @ 1:17PM|#

"Again, I want to reiterate: I am NOT saying that every single person below the Mason-Dixon line is a racist idiot,"

I appreciate that gracious gesture! Your fairmindedness astounds and humbles me.

"just that the racist idiots have more sway down there than in other parts of the globe."

That *is* saying something! Racist idiots have more sway in the South than in other parts of the globe. Which parts? Sudan? Is the South worse than Sudan, with its mistreatment of its black African population? Is the South worse than Malaysia, with its blatant discrimination against the ethnic Chinese? Is the South (with its Jewish Confederate Secretary of War, Judah Benjamin) worse than all those Arab countries where the media publishes stories about Jews eating Gentile blood?

Although this isn't about racism, I'm still curious: Would an atheist like yourself be safer in the South, or in Pakistan, with its death penalty for insulting the Prophet Muhammad?

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 1:51PM|#

If you are a Southerner, you don't need to be explained the complex social relations in the South before the Civil War, or the revolutionized changes that came with that war and, a century later, with the Civil Rights Movement.

My ancestors didn't own slaves. They just had their homes invaded and destroyed. One actually fought for the North because he lived near where some Union soldiers were occupying, and got to know them.

There was lots of tension between the wealthy slaveholders and the non-slaveholders. In the middle, were the majority of slaveholders (but a minority of the population) who owned one or tow people and worked next to them for the same long hours, and lived in the same buildings, or very close by. Only a bitter racism and fear of Black revolution held them together.

I wish that Northerners could understand that overcoming this racism is the prime element of Southern history and the Southern identity today. They might learn from it. You may have sung, "We shall overcome." But we are the only people who had to work at overcoming.

Southern clich�s about the North were destroyed when Sherman burnt down the Georgia and other campaigns destroyed the South for generations to come. Only bitterness remained. Northern clich�s about the South remain the norm to this day among so many people, and not just the insular people who would think that the "Fuck the South" website is funny--or is based in reality. Southern bitterness and sensitivity would be long gone if Northerners would realize the changes that have come about or if they actually studied Southern history.

But the mean-spirited clich�s continue because the South is generally more conservative than the North or the West Coast. Southern conservatives, on the other hand, now with national influence that was once monopolized by the North in business, politics, culture and media, are tempted to say, "Fuck you after all of these years." or "Why don't you secede is you don't like it." But of course, upon close examination of regional and national history, we are all forced to recognize that Lincoln was right about Union, even if he had to burn down most of the South to keep it. He was probably right about Reconstruction too, but of course that never happened.

Oh, and to echo Torquemada's points, I am one of many Jewish Southerners. Read the book "Jewish Stars of Texas" for a great history of Rabbis in Texas. They were, and remain, well intigrated and respected leaders in cities and towns across the South.

James Wolcott|11.14.04 @ 1:54PM|#

"I root for hurricanes."

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 1:55PM|#

"Only a bitter racism and fear of Black revolution held them together."

I should have been more clear. "Only a bitter racism and fear of Black revolution held White people together."

|11.14.04 @ 2:39PM|#

Man I love the south.

I was stationed there, and have been there varios times for buisness. I always have more fun there than the north. The people are more friendly, more down to earth. People of all races are more friendly. Maybe it is the weather.

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 2:58PM|#

You know what I really like about the South?

Octopussy.

-Bob Wills

|11.14.04 @ 3:37PM|#

Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were Southeners by birth? Sure, because their ancestors were kidnapped and dragged to the South in chains. Again, I say that they, and their ancestors, were not Southeners by choice.

Jon Lester|11.14.04 @ 3:52PM|#

If any of this is fair, then why are we giving a free pass to the Northwest?

And I doubt very many big-city liberal secessionists could put food on their table if they really separated themselves from red states and their own states' red counties.

I'm from Athens, GA and the whole music scene here. It's one of only a couple of places in Georgia that are really cosmopolitan enough to live in and feel somewhat fulfilled yet the liberals here really are overbearing. Few are really as smart as they think they are.

fyodor|11.14.04 @ 5:31PM|#

yet the liberals here really are overbearing. Few are really as smart as they think they are.

Who is as smart as they think they are? I mean, besides me of course.




;-)

|11.14.04 @ 8:36PM|#

Jennifer said:
"The Repubs are all but claiming that Jesus (or, rather, Jay-zus) is a registered member of their party; the Democrats, alas, need to fight this using some Christian imagery of their own..."

White DemocRATS preach in black churches every chance they get. They preach Jay-zus is black. You would think that "Christian imagery" would jolt Repuglickins. It does, but what jolts Repuglickins more is black churches continuing to keep their tax exemptions thanks to a perceived DemocRAT conspiracy.

|11.14.04 @ 8:44PM|#

Andrew, in your essay you meandered one time too many.
I was on the verge of sharing it with my Likudnic buddies, but you lost me.

I'm a Southern hillbilly (living in Sinincincinnati) empathetic to Jews.

|11.14.04 @ 9:12PM|#

He saw first hand how the most prestigious school in that state admitted to its MBA program a guy who got C's in college and then spent several partying, going AWOL from the National Guard, working light duty on a few political campaigns, and failing in the oil business.

No way. MIT did no such thing.

|11.14.04 @ 11:38PM|#

I'm Australian, so you may not agree with my entering into the debate. Taking the outsider position, though, it would seem as though both North and South, red and blue states have made a contribution to the world, both positive and negative. Frankly, I'd be more worried about the growing negative light in which all of America is being portrayed in the rest of the world...It's a shame, because America and Americans have given us so many things. Granted I don't have the exposure that you guys do to the everyday life events that define 'North' and 'South', but from where I'm coming from, both sides have been the birthing places for some great events and people.

Andrew|11.14.04 @ 11:38PM|#

The Likudnics? They're crazy.

|11.15.04 @ 12:40AM|#

Simon,

Don't worry the rest of the world will come around.

And the whole north south thing is foreign to us Americans from the west coast of the US also. You can travel from Seattle to San Diego on the west coast, and really only the weather changes much. Accent is close to the same and all.

If you drive from Sacramento to LA a few things change a little, but not much. The same distance on the east coast and you have maybe crossed seven states and almost as many different accents.

I think that if you do travel to the US you will find that those most hospitable to an outsider white or black will be in the south.

I also think that there are racists in the north south and in the west. It may seem like there are more in the south only because the southerners are more honest about it.

|11.15.04 @ 3:36AM|#

Friends, don't be duped into joining these polarizing arguments pitting some of us against others. Just for a moment, consider some essential facts about the election.

John Kerry is a good man, but he conducted a terrible campaign. His campaign was a painful exercise in evasions, ambiguity, mixed signals and duplicity. Every appeal to the popular base of the Democratic Party was invariably balanced by reassurances to corporate sponsors. Kerry's criticisms of the war in Iraq were followed by earnest declarations of his unyielding support for the war on terror. He was for increasing the taxes on the rich, but not by very much. He was for critical social programs, but only if they could be justified on a pay-as-you-go basis. The campaign motto, should have been "Absolutely, but not really." The Republicans were right when they mocked Kerry as a flip-flopper.

Today, many among us consider the re-election of George Bush to be nothing less than some kind of systemic breakdown, and conspiracy theorists with the tin-foil hats take that to an absurd degree. But, when you really think about it, it would have been some kind of modern miracle if Kerry had actually been elected. He offered nothing concrete, only change. In time of war "change" is a hard sell. Always has been. It had almost noting to do with religious fundamentalism, embryonic stem-cell research, gay marriage, red v blue, north v south, east v west, or even an ignorant electorate. Those false arguments are the red-herring constructs of paid politicial consultants, media spin-doctors, and campaign communication directors (on both sides) intended only to divide us. They are not OUR issues. They did not spring up from the voice of the electorate. But post-election these so-called issues were emphasised to obfuscate the failure of those political hirlings to "deliver the goods" after taking millions of dollars. They blammed "ignorant voters" for their failures. What a load of crap.

But, did the best man win? Maybe, maybe not. Was there really any difference between the two? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, the majority voice of America was heard. It doesn't matter if the margin is 5 million or just one vote, the majority has spoken. That is, after all, the basis of our democracy and we like it that way, regarlesss of what France thinks. Let us use our rich intellect and our boundless energies to defeat those who would destroy America. They are among us. They are not imaginary. Given the chance they will surely kill each of us as easily as they killed 3000 people just like us on 9/11. They are the enemy. They are real. They are here.

|11.15.04 @ 9:07AM|#

The dumbest element of fuckthesouth is the line about the founding fathers being from Boston, Philly and NY.

Um, ever heard of Virginia, where minor figures such as Washington, Jefferson and Madison lived?

|11.15.04 @ 9:47AM|#

Fuck Jennifer.

|11.15.04 @ 11:01AM|#

"I loved it a few years back, when South Carolina decided to keep the Confederate stars-and-bars on its state flag"

I don't believe there have ever been any stars (though there is a crescent moon) or bars on the Palmetto Flag of South Carolina. Maybe you're thinking of Mississippi. (I know, they all look alike, don't they?)

(I'm assuming that when Jennifer refers to the "stars and bars," she's actually speaking of the Confederate battle flag, which is on the Mississippi state flag (and used to be on the Georgia state flag).)

|11.15.04 @ 11:07AM|#

History of the Georgia flag:

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/flags/ga_flag.htm

History of the Mississippi flag:

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/flags/ms_flag.htm

History of the South Carolina flag:

http://www.netstate.com/states/symb/flags/sc_flag.htm

|11.15.04 @ 11:14AM|#

Seamus,

What's interesting to me is how many states failed to create a state flag until well after their founding.

|11.15.04 @ 11:18AM|#

No way. MIT did no such thing.

Point well taken! OK, the second most prestigious school in Massachusettes admitted a manifestly unqualified student to its MBA program. This guy got C's in college and then spent several years drinking, partying, going AWOL from the National Guard, working light duty on a few campaigns, and failing in the oil business. Bush saw how serious young men and women who had studied hard and succeeded in business were admitted to Harvard's MBA program while this guy got in based on his last name, and that's why he has no respect for Massachusettes.

|11.15.04 @ 11:20AM|#

CORRECTION

serious young men and women who had studied hard and succeeded in business were admitted

should be

serious young men and women who had studied hard and succeeded in business weredenied admission

|11.15.04 @ 12:46PM|#

throeau, you are either putting way too much work into a silly quip, or you are completely deluded about Bush's disdain for the northeast.

Does anything you have seen the man do over the course of his public life suggest to you that he considers himself less able, qualified, or responsible as those snobs whose long words he can't quite understand?

|11.15.04 @ 12:52PM|#

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, I always thought of myself as a Northerner. (No matter what the rest of the country thinks. We stayed in the Union.)

However, whether it be a sympathy for the underdog or my contrarian streak, I find I have a growing sympathy for the people of the Occupied Southern States.

I think my sympathy started when Spike Lee's movie Malcolm X came out, and "Malcolm X" caps were briefly trendy. At that time, I was looking at caps in a shop and saw one with a Confederate flag on it and the words, "You wear your X, and I'll wear mine."

At the time, I thought that was rude and provocative. Then I thought about it. I think the point was this:

The Malcolm "X" caps could stand for many things, including any of the following:

- I don't like white people.
- I'm not looking for trouble; just leave me alone and don't try to push me around.
- I like Spike Lee's movie.
- My homies are all wearing this cap and I want to fit in.

Similarly, the Confederate flag could stand for many things, including any of the following:

- I don't like black people.
- I'm not looking for trouble; just leave me alone and don't try to push me around.
- I like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Charlie Daniels.
- My homies are all flying this flag and I want to fit in.

However, at this time all I ever heard was "the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, period" and that just got my back up.

Oh, BTW:

"..a southern man don't need him around anyhow"

That song's about George Wallace, you know. Let's not give joe any more ammunition, okay?

Is the song about George Wallace? I think that particular line is about Neil Young.

Well, I heard Mister Young sing about her.
Well, I heard ol' Neil put her down.
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A "Southern Man" don't need him around anyhow.

|11.15.04 @ 1:07PM|#

joe-

I'm putting way too much work into a silly quip, but it ain't work if you're having fun! Somebody said that Bush started it by talking about MA liberals, and I decided to have some fun with why he disdains MA. And then Mo responded with a defense of his alma mater, so I decided to have some more fun with it.

fyodor|11.15.04 @ 2:03PM|#

I think that particular line is about Neil Young.

True enough. But other parts of the song might (I've never been quite sure) be expressing support for George Wallace, thus Ken Shultz's point that because of that, the song is tarnished and its sentiment is not a good one to be evoking. Either way, interesting how the song joyously flips off Neil, yet never addresses Neil's actual beef with the region. Oh well, it is only a song (and only rock n roll, to boot).

|11.15.04 @ 2:04PM|#

As someone who grew up in the evil state of Massachusetts and has lived most of her life in New England and NY/PA/NJ area, I have had it up to HERE with the whining and northern-bashing by southerners. Neal Pollack and anyone else defending the south don't get it: the south is the one that is constantly defended and sympathetically portrayed in the movies (when was the last time you saw a movie or read a novel about the lives of people in the NORTH during the civil war). It is absolutely OK for a presidential candidate and his party to attack someone for being from Massachusetts, as if that in and of itself is an insult to be understood and agreed to by everyone. We're not real Americans. But heaven forbid that John Kerry attacked Bush for being from that backward state of Texas. He would've been lambasted by the media pundits ad nauseum. It's perfectly ok to insult the people of the north. We're all just a bunch of elitist, latte-drinking atheists. Why is it that it's always people in the NORTH who have to stop stereotyping the south but it's perfectly fine for the south to stereotype us? It's only us who have to do some self-reflection? We're the only ones doing the stereotyping? I'm sick and tired of southerners who talk about the north in insulting, venomous, bigoted language but whine like babies when they get some of their own medicine. The "fuckthesouth" rant was an example of someone in the north finally letting off steam after decades (since the Reagan years) of having to listen to this bullshit whining and bashing from southerners whose preferred indulgence is their own mythical victimization by us evil northerners.

|11.15.04 @ 2:37PM|#

For example, how many people here, and across the country, assumed the John Kerry's hunting trip was a completely phony put-up, because as a liberal from Massachusetts, it simply wasn't possible that he could fire a gun, and goes hunting for recreation?

In reality, Kerry has been a hunter since he was a kid, and his father took him, in the same manner as every other hunter in the country. In Massachusetts, hunting is a common vacation activity for people from the old WASPy families. But the visuals didn't fit people's favored stereotypes, so they had to be phoney.

Ditto with the Swift Boat liars' charges - millions of people believed them, because as a Massachusetts liberal, John Kerry couldn't really have been a patriot who fought valiantly.

And despite basing his anti-terror strategy around a MORE vigorous use of the military and clandestine services agains terrorists, Kerry's policy was broadly interpretted as pacifistic acceptance, because a Massachusetts liberal couldn't really want to attack the country's enemies and kill them.

If John Kerry had run exactly the same campaign, but he was "John Kerry D-WI," he'd be president-elect.

|11.15.04 @ 4:34PM|#

If John Kerry had run exactly the same campaign, but he was "John Kerry D-WI," he'd be president-elect.

Are you saying that the Dems should nominate Russ Feingold?

|11.15.04 @ 7:06PM|#

"That song's about George Wallace, you know. Let's not give joe any more ammunition, okay?"

Why is Alabama so sweet?

...becasue the Governor's true.

...now wategate doesn't bother me

What's Birmingham got to do with anything?

Gimmie a break.

P.S. Isn't "Southern Man" about George Wallace?

|11.15.04 @ 9:26PM|#

"It doesn't matter if the margin is 5 million or just one vote, the majority has spoken. That is, after all, the basis of our democracy and we like it that way, regarlesss of what France thinks."

Actually, Presidential elections in the U. S. are based on the electoral vote, not the "majority" of the popular vote, and thank God for that! If you think electing the President by a nationwide popular vote is a great idea, just look at France. We're a republic, not a democracy; a union of states, not a consolidated nation-state. A say this as a third-party supporter who is considerably disadvantaged by the current system.

"As someone who grew up in the evil state of Massachusetts and has lived most of her life in New England and NY/PA/NJ area"

I'd like to offer an olive-branch to the Northern states by mentioning some of their good qualities. For example, some of the greatest states-rights/secession rhetoric came out of New England in the early nineteenth century. Also, numerous Northern states stood up for states' rights on the eve of the Civil War, when the South, blinded by short-term considerations, used the federal government to promote federal centralization via the Fugitive Slave Act. New York, Rhode Island and others stood up for states' rights during the dark era of federal Prohibition in the 1920s. Also in the 1920s, the great state of Massachusetts went to the U. S. Supreme Court in a vain attempt to stop an unconstitutional federal spending law (Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447 (1923)). So I graciously acknowledge your proud history of resisting federal tyranny.

"the south is the one that is constantly defended and sympathetically portrayed in the movies . . ."

Which movies are you thinking of? *Deliverance?* *Easy Rider?* *Inherit the Wind?* *Mandingo?* *Mississippi Burning?* *The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?* *To Kill a Mockingbird?* Yeah, Hollywood certainly spares no effort in trying to make Southerners look good!

|11.15.04 @ 9:28PM|#

Correction. I said:

"A say this as a third-party supporter who is considerably disadvantaged by the current system."

Of course, what I *meant* to say was

"*Ah* say this as a third-party supporter . . ."

|11.16.04 @ 12:10AM|#

Or, in Yankee dialect:

"*I* say this as a third-party supporter . . ."

Andrew|11.16.04 @ 12:47AM|#

Sandrahn, I'll take the bait too:

"when was the last time you saw a movie or read a novel about the lives of people in the NORTH during the civil war"

The people in the North didn't have their entire world revolutionized by an invading army burning it to the ground.

You make a good point about how Massachusetts is portrayed in the national media. However, it is as if you are in an entirely different discussion. The Southern voices in this conversation are mainly speaking about private receptions that individuals from the South get when they visit the Northeast, and the responses they get that are alarmingly similar to the rotten rant that started this conversation. (Or at least I am.) You are probably one of the many Northerners who treat visitors with respect when they have a Southern accent or dare to say something positive about their home. The next few times you meet someone raised in the South in your day-to-day life and have a conversation with him or her, ask what type of reception they have if they talk about politics, religion or other cultural issues while visiting MA. See if they have not met some people who expect them to be disdainful of their home, and then treat them like idiots when they do not. See how much they have had to face silly attitudes based on negative stereotypes instead of personal experience. Most people in the North are respectful and enjoy friendly teasing, but a lot will be very close-minded and ugly. It is this last subset of Northerners that is on display in the Fuckthesouth website and its popularity. Individuals from no other region in the world receive this sort of reception on a person-to-person level. It is the opposite of hospitality and exposes ignorance. So please don't listen to the media or the spin doctors who push buttons to win elections. Instead, fine-tune your listening when the South comes up in conversation. You may be surprised. Please speak up when you hear hate-filled uncritical thinking, just as you would with any other subject matter.

Andrew|11.16.04 @ 12:54AM|#

The Confederate flag can of worms:

The Stars and Bars was so misused during the Civil Rights movement, that they had their symbolism incorrigibly tarnished. But, as one person stated, the Stars and Bars is not the Confederate flag. It is the war flag of Northern Virginia. The Confederate flag flies without protest in many private - and public - forums. Most people don't even recognize it.

|11.16.04 @ 3:21AM|#

This http://flagspot.net/flags/us-csa1.html is the "Stars and Bars."

The battle flag of the ANV is here:

http://flagspot.net/flags/us-anv.html

My favorite is here:

http://www.bluegreenearth.com/site/images/misc_art/nusouth.gif

Kevin

|11.16.04 @ 11:07AM|#

Andrew,

The people in the North didn't have their entire world revolutionized by an invading army burning it to the ground.

Or by a million slaves which fled its borders. 1 out of every 9 Southerners fled the South's control during the Civil War; 200,000 members of the South's population took up arms against the South; this should tell you something about the South. Indeed, the South was "revolutionized" from within as from without by the many number of its members who fled its clutches.

The Southern voices in this conversation are mainly speaking about private receptions that individuals from the South get when they visit the Northeast, and the responses they get that are alarmingly similar to the rotten rant that started this conversation.

Actually, this Southern voice finds idiotic prejudice and stereotyping on both sides of the line. The mere fact that I live in New England has caused remarks of derision and insults in my family. Honestly, Southerners need to stop playing like they are victims.

Andrew|11.21.04 @ 2:50PM|#

Jason Bourne,

"Indeed, the South was 'revolutionized' from within as from without by the many number of its members who fled its clutches."

So the South was revolutionized, but by more than cause. Right? I think you are right about that, but my point was about the effects of the revolutions, not the causes.

OH LAY MY BURDEN DOWN! Don't equate Southern history or reaction that awful "Fuck the South" site and its desperate base with the whiny subculture of victimization in our country, although it is interesting to look at the South's last 140 years in this light. My concern is not with insular people in any region who refuse to go elsewhere for work, education, etc. My concern is for the many who leave and are repeatedly faced with clich鳠s and bigotry based on regionalism alone. Of course it happens in the South too, but the North does not have the same culture of hospitality and manners, and my impression is that there is more regionalized clich鳠s and bigotry in the North than in any other region in the country. I work in the legal profession, where I have known transplants from the North who are very successful and respected by the bar, judges, court staff and juries in local district courts - with thick NJ/MA/NY/MN accents. I have a difficult time picturing an attorney with a Southern accent with similar success in your adopted region. But, you're the transplant; I'm just a periodic visitor.

More broadly, Northern problems are most visible right now because of the Democratic loss of the election, and more importantly, because of the power shift in politics, business, media, and academics away from their historic bases in the North. Disaffected Northerners are expressing an anger and resentment that has plagued the South for too long. You can't possibly be defending the victimization the "Fuck the South" rant. Just because there are insular idiots everywhere does not mean that you should throw the victim card, particularly when such insularity is applauded by the thousands of people who cheered the rant and passed it around the web.