Southern discomfort: Howard Dean's whistling wrong Dixie

NY Daily News ^ | 12/28/03 | Zev Chafets

[bdeaner]

Southern discomfort

Sunday, December 28th, 2003

A few weeks ago at a ritzy fund-raiser for the Committee to Protect Journalists, my wife, Lisa, was introduced to a man named Steven Isenberg.

Isenberg was once Mayor John Lindsay's chief of staff. Later, he was the publisher of Newsday. Now he teaches literature at the University of Texas in Austin.

That gave them something in common: Lisa is a graduate of the University of Texas.

"Are you from Texas?" he asked.

"No. I'm a Louisianan."

And he said: "Well, you're the cleanest one I've ever met."

Reading Howard Dean's Christmas Eve interview in The Boston Globe reminded me of Isenberg. Both are New York liberals who now live among people they regard as their inferiors.

Isenberg thinks these people are too primitive to bathe. Dean imagines that they're too stupid to think.

The Dean we have come to know is the very model of the modern metro-secularist, a Christian so tepid that in the 1980s he quit his Episcopal church in a dispute over a bicycle path.

But on the eve of primary season in the Bible Belt, Dean has found religion. And not just any religion. That old-time religion.

He confided to The Globe that he prays every day, is a committed believer in Jesus Christ and plans to include his relationship with his Savior in his hitherto godless campaign speeches.

This will probably come as a surprise to Jesus. It will not, however, shock Southerners long accustomed to the Northern belief that they will swallow anything.

This assumption runs especially strong in what Dean likes to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." These people don't believe in much, but they are fervent on the subject of their own superiority. To them, America's red states (as identified in TV maps on Election Night 2000) are populated by ignorant cowboys, unwashed swampies, hellfire preachers, beauty parlor bimbos, redneck sheriffs, Confederate flag wavers and retarded hillbilly kids sitting in trees playing the banjo.

This picture of Southern inferiority, like all articles of faith, is immune to both empirical observation and personal experience. To guys like Dean, Dixie is and will forever remain a vast county fair where a slick Yaleman can sell 5-gallon jugs of snake oil in return for votes.

But that doesn't work, especially not in national politics.

There's a reason no Northern Democrat has been elected President since John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 (in a contest at least as close and as fishy as the 2000 vote) or that only three have gone to the White House in the past century and one, Woodrow Wilson, was born and raised in the South.

You'd think that Ivy League Democrats would have figured out by now that they can't win the states south of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi (or downscale from Zabar's) by transparent pandering. Howard Dean in the pulpit is like Michael Dukakis in a tank - at once ridiculous and insulting.

It's possible that Dean will do all right in the Southern primaries. If he does, it will be attributable not only to the weakness of the Democratic field, but also to the falsity of Dean's own caricature of the South. There are enough of his people down there - techies, yuppies, peaceniks, gays - for him to make a respectable primary showing.

But not enough for him to win any red states in November and certainly none of the Southern states.

If he goes down in flames, the Steven Isenbergs of the world will say, in their unguarded moments, that white Southerners were too dirty and dumb to vote for him. But that is wrong. A lot of them will vote against Dean because they are smart enough to spot a phony.

[GulfWar1Vet]

Bravo! Bravo!

[billorites]

[Servant of the 9]

Howard Dean in the pulpit is like Michael Dukakis in a tank - at once ridiculous and insulting.

What else needs to be said.

So9

[vp_cal]

a great contrast would be this pic with gw standing on the carrier...do you have such pics handy?

[OpusatFR]

"If he goes down in flames, the Steven Isenbergs of the world will say, in their unguarded moments, that white Southerners were too dirty and dumb to vote for him.."

Like my northern relative (now departed to the hinterlands of NYC this p.m.) who was agog at a "pink ham." "How do you prepare a pink ham?"

I guess northerners are too dumb to read the enclosed directions from the Smithfield packing plant.

Lord help them if they ever attempt to prepare a Virginia dry cured Country ham.

(Note to Islamofascist terrorists: The ground in the South is covered with the remains of porkers both wild and domestic. We cook, eat, wash and drink pig fat. I also clean my shotguns with it.)

Pork rules.

[Malcolm]

LOL, no Southerner cares what any Yank thinks or says, even on FReep. But arrogant Northerners, and other non-Southerners think that they do. Blab away, for all the good it will do you. The smartest thing a Yank can do is keep his mouth shut. You'll impress more people with that than demonstrating your ignorance, believe me.....

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

This assumption runs especially strong in what Dean likes to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." These people don't believe in much, but they are fervent on the subject of their own superiority.

BTTT.

[CedarDave]

...a ritzy fund-raiser for the Committee to Protect Journalists...

Protect them from what? Conservative ideas or Rummy's stare after they ask a particularly inane question?

[Keith]

Malcolm, I married into a southern family...truer words were never spoken.

[txzman]

As a transplant to Texas 17 years ago, who loves his adopted 'country', this article is right on! And in the South, the answer is still the same to Northern carpetbaggers - no thanks, we do things our way.

[RckyRaCoCo]

"Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it, and sold it."

sound familiar?

[goldstategop]

Amen. Nikita Dean is like every Northern Man who has tried to court a Southern Woman. They just aren't compatible.

[Arizona Pard]

Just gotta tell my favorite Alabama story here. It fits, so stick with me for a bit. We have two different colors of shop jackets they make us wear at work, mostly blue. The other color, grey, is very rare and hardly ever seen. One day a young guy from Alabama came into my lab in the midst of a tour group. The young guy was of course wearing a grey jacket. I asked him about why he didn't seem to fit in with the color code of the day and he replied in a great Alabama drawl, "You know where I'm from?!? I cain't wear no blue jacket!!!"

Thanks. I love that guy!

[Jim Noble]

A committed believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ would not raise his own children as Jews.

It's that simple.

[mathluv]

I was working with a lady from New Jersey. Somehow, the subject of the Civil War came up. I referred to it as the War of Northern Aggression. She was flabbergasted that it was a topic that still had an impact.

[Capriole]

Honey, they just don't get it. They didn't get it 140 years ago, they don't get it now, and they're never gonna get it. Let it be.

[Malcolm]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a redneck. I'll vote AGAINST the old Georgia flag early next year. The Civil War was a gross error on the part of the South, (not to mention Slavery). I'm glad to be a Southerner, and proud of the conservative culture here but don't mistake that for me being an extra on Hee-Haw.....

[Texas_Dawg]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a redneck. I'll vote AGAINST the old Georgia flag early next year. The Civil War was a gross error on the part of the South, (not to mention Slavery). I'm glad to be a Southerner, and proud of the conservative culture here but don't mistake that for me being an extra on Hee-Haw.....

Be careful... you'll upset the isolationist, Bush-hating, Buchananite FRinge wack-jobs around here.

[Hoosier43fan]

Excuse please, but Indiana is neither south of the Mason Dixon line, nor is it west of the Mississippi, but we are most certainly "red".