Bias against Southerners misses the mark

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Does prejudice exist in Pasco County, an area with a very diverse population and seemingly very progressive?

I am certain that African-Americans, Hispanics and people from other countries, the poor and homeless, as well as members of certain religious faiths, experience treatment different from the mainstream populace. However, I am a member of a minority who has experienced attitudes and reactions from many individuals who assume that I am intellectually and socially challenged.

A very large percentage of the population of New Port Richey in particular is from the Northeast. I personally like the outspokenness, mince-no-words attitude, the ability to criticize as well as accept criticism without being offended, that seems to represent the culture in which Northerners grew up.

My family members seem to have the disadvantage of being born and living most of our lives in the South, in our case, Tennessee. I grew up in Knoxville, a city that many people seem to associate only with the fanatical behavior of our college football fans, and my wife is from a small city near Chattanooga.

There still seems to be a stereotype that some people associate with Tennesseans. When those individuals heard the distinct accent of my wife, my stepdaughter, and myself, it seemed to conjure up that redneck image one might associate with the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and other Southern comedians. That image is of a culture of ignorant hillbillies (certainly due to inbreeding!), barefoot, living in a shack with no indoor plumbing (but certainly an outhouse in back), having a dog living under the front porch, and owning an overgrown lawn populated with broken-down, dilapidated automobiles. And, yes, we all chew tobacco and sit on the front porch swing playing the banjo. Everyone also flies a Confederate flag and reminisces about the War Between the States.

I first noticed this attitude when my stepdaughter, an honor student, came home from middle school several days in tears because several other students harassed her daily, calling her an ignorant redneck and hillbilly among other derogatory terms. My wife and I have experienced the sudden change in facial expressions from many when they hear our accent. They seem to associate our accent with ignorance, and speak in simpler terms so that we can understand what they are saying. Telephone conversations often produce the same reaction.

I beg to differ. Tennessee is the home of several major universities, four major metropolitan areas with all the drug and gang problems associated with other large cities, and the most visited national park in the United States. Oak Ridge, in the Knoxville area, probably has as high a percentage of residents with doctorate degrees as any city in the United States. Tennessee has a musical heritage equal to none, and it is not exclusively country or bluegrass genres. Many nationally prominent politicians are from my home state, including three former presidents.

Tennessee has produced many famous musicians, actors, scientists and other intellectual and talented natives.

Well, to set the story straight, rural areas of most states have their own populace and dwellings that approach this stereotype.

My wife and I grew up in your average suburban neighborhoods, we both graduated from major universities and had successful professional careers, and, to risk seeming boastful, are probably as intelligent and knowledgeable, if not more so, than the average American. Believe it or not, East Tennessee, the section of the state we are from, fervently supported the Union during the Civil War.

I have noticed in the Pasco Times notices of meetings for various groups from areas of the Northeast and from other countries. Perhaps Southerners in our area should form a similar group. With apologies to an African-American group with a similar title, we could call our group the NAASF, the National Association for the Advancement of Southern Folks, Pasco County Branch. I hope there are enough local Southern residents available to attract to our organization.

--Richard Cox, a retired middle school science teacher and department head, lives in New Port Richey

Another Day In Mondo Moderno
This episode - The Phone Call

[We join our happy crew on a Saturday morning when our Modern Superhero, COMMODEnman, isn't home. It's his day to have his toenails painted, his brandy and caviar enema, his face painted with marine varnish, and a full body waxing to increase his attractiveness to homosexuals who like that drag queen look, and his attractiveness as a sex object for himself. While he's out his ring wearing service unit (as he calls his wife) decides to call her old firehouse buddy, Mistress X.]

"Hi, Missy! It's Commodernia. Yeah, things are great. No, not much has happened since then except I got married! Yeah, I'll tell you about what I married! No, it's nothing like that, I'm not a lesbian. I say 'what I married' because I didn't marry a man, I married a metrosexual! Hey! Don't laugh! It has certain advantages! It's like having a girlfriend for a roomie, but getting the image of a marriage to a stylish person that gets me into all the best Washington dinner parties where the hunks hang out. Ooooh, they're yummy, especially those hunky Southern guys from Southside Virginia and places like that. Yeah, no kidding! With a rebel yell I say "more more more!". Anyway, my hubby's the perfect fashion accessory and work unit!"

"What? Yes, Missy, he CAN change the light bulbs as a matter of fact. If he borrows my high heels, that is. No! I'm not kidding! Yes, he sure does, as often as he can. I've even caught him breaking bulbs with his gold plated designer peashooter just so he'd be "forced" to change it!"

"No, Missy, he's no trouble as long as I give him enough allowance to keep him in toenail paint, gourmet enemas, marine varnish face paintings, and full body waxing to make him more attractive to homosexuals who like that drag queen look, and a more attractive sex object to himself. He says he's 'a blue state kind of guy', so you know that means he's easily controlled and needs direction and supervision at all times - and I'm just the one to do it! Once he's happy and has enough mascara to make him stop whining, I send him off to the library where he's happy to spend all day in front of the computer. It keeps him from being underfoot here so I can 'take care of business' if you know what I mean. I've even learned to say "how were things at the office?" with a straight face when he gets home. You ought to see how proud he is when he walks to the library down Pennsylvania Avenue. He tells me that when he goes by, people turn their heads, their eyes bug out, their jaws drop and they point at him when they see how beautiful and superior to them he is! They're so ecstatic at just seeing him that they start laughing uncontrollably from sheer joy!"

"No, I don't exactly know what he does there. I just know that he's addicted to something called 'Free Republic' or some such equally unlikely thing. He posts there several dozen times a day during business hours, weekdays only, with an average of ten minutes between posts except for an approximate one hour break around 11 AM. What does he say there? You must be kidding, Missy. I wouldn't bother to read his claptrap. In his diary he wrote that he only goes there to be humiliated, so I asked him about it. He didn't quite deny it and got a really weird smile on his face, but explained all he ever posts is to tell everybody how worthless they are compared to him. He says that's the only fact their little minds could ever be able to grasp, and is the only fact they need to know in life, and that's why he says it so much."

"Well of course he's smart, Missy. The real reason I called you is to tell you how brilliant my fashion accessory is. You know how women like to feel protected? Exactly! You get it. Well anyway, he's found a brilliant way to protect us both. He says all we need to do to protect ourselves is to make fun of people who can provide for themselves. 'If the lights go out or the water plant breaks down, that's the same as the apocalypse, and only stupid people prepare against that' is why, he says. He says things like 'self reliance makes you a fearful paranoid, total dependence on the level of an infant makes you strong, war is peace, freedom is slavery"; and "knowing how to do anything at all is solely the province of backward, dirty, menial subhuman worthless hicks." It works perfectly! His power of derision keeps anything bad from happening and gets everything done!"

"Huh? Oh, really? Well, I'm certainly not surprised that YOU would be skeptical, you gap toothed incestuous barefoot inbred trailer living white trash hillbilly hick! How can you still not believe it? I called you a gap toothed incestuous barefoot inbred trailer living white trash hillbilly hick didn't I? That was the proof, only you were too stupid to get it. All right, all right, just for you, Missy - since you're so stupid - I'll give you an example. Remember that last hurricane that came across the Bay and up the Potomac? Yeah, that one. Well, my metrosexual hubby said, "A hurricane is really a nuke, and since you can't survive a direct nuke hit, we don't need to do anything. If we prepare at all, we're doomed. Let's party! Shall we do each other's nails or shave each other's heads?" Yes, Missy, of course we did both. Well, when that tree came thru the roof it pinned me to the floor and I was unable to move for four days. I was SO PROUD that my hubby had no way to get me out from under there, and had no ideas about how to. THAT would have been so humiliating."

"Yeah, the Red Team came by and offered to help, but there was one of THOSE - you know, Southerners - on the team, so we had to decline. Besides, he wasn't our kind, if you know what I mean. I dunno, I think he said Ani-Yunwiyah or something like that. Funny thing, he didn't look Japanese. When they saw hubby frothing at the mouth and having seizures because a Southerner was within a mile of him, they thought he'd die of spontaneous combustion and left. You know what's worse, Missy? The National Guard offered us FOOD and WATER! Can you imagine? Yes, they REALLY were that insulting. Hubby told them off. "Thir", he lithped, "thith ith a yuppie houthhold. We allow no food on the premitheth. We have our pride. We take all our mealth out, at only the motht overpriced restauranth." The Guardsman said, "the restaurants are closed". But hubby proved him wrong by saying, "You're boinking your toothleth thithter in a doublewide".

"But the last straw, I mean SO last straw, was when this guy from South Carolina drove by in a rusty old pickup truck and stopped. When hubby asked about the truck, he said, "I was just a-deliverin' this here ol' truck to some guy in New York who says he done got bit by a danged nuclear gator or some such tomfoolery. But he done begged me to sell him this here pile of scrap metal for $12,000 dollars, so this here ol' swamp cat don't mind if he sees them nuclear gators, bless his heart". Then he took off his shoes, spit some tobacco, knocked out his own teeth, played Dixie on the banjo, pulled out a chainsaw, cut up the tree and pulled me out from under it, threw a tarp over the hole in the roof, stacked the wood neatly into cords, and gave me his business card.

He ruined everything! I wasn't helpless anymore! Do you KNOW how humiliating that is? He ruined my husband's plans! COMMODEnman was out in the yard saying how stupid people with chainsaws are. If he'd just been allowed to repeat it a few more thousand times, that tree would have disappeared! I'm still furious about it! The only good thing about it is that our son now has a year's supply of sawdust sandwiches for his school lunch."

"Oops, he's back. Gotta go. Later."

"Hi honey, how were things at the 'office'?", she said, barely stifling a laugh.

[Next time - COMMODEnman's son goes to school and pays bullies to steal his lunch.]

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Copyright © 2005 by that backwards hick known on Free Republic as Wampus SC. All rights reserved. May not be distributed or reproduced in whole or part without prior written permission of the author.

Diss Claimer: This story is fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons in coincidental. Really. Yes, I really mean it. Would I kid you? Any imagined resemblance to yourself or strange feeling that you're being talked about is a product of your fevered brain, you weirdo. But if you see anything like that, you must explain what you saw that reminded you of yourself so much.

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