Posted on 10/13/2007 4:48:31 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
Anybody remember “That’s What I Like about the South”? How about Phil Harris, who had a hit with that ditty in 1947? Let’s not always see the same hands. The point is I like the South. Born and raised here. Have relatives all over. But some folks actually fear the South. That got me thinking.
Last week staffers from the House Homeland Security Committee came to the Bank of America NASCAR race in Concord, North Carolina. It was a fact-finding trip about “public health-preparedness at mass gatherings.” Organizers of the trip advised the staffers to get vaccinated before they went – for hepatitis, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza.
The Democratic staffers took the shots. The Republicans didn’t. The local Congressman, Robin Hayes, wrote a blistering letter to the Chairman of the Committee asking “why the heck the committee feels that immunizations are needed to travel to my hometown?”
Whoever made this suggestion fears the South. Did they think we were going to bite the visitors? Force them to drink swamp water, or worse, moonshine? Did they think that Southerners are a lesser breed, like the inhabitants of a third-world country? Dumb as dirt, and contagious with every known disease including housemaid’s knee?
This incredibly stupid approach to the South caused a substantial reaction from members of the Highlands Writers Group at our meeting just after the story broke. Several of our group are doctors. Most are published authors. One with ample credits is a well-established travel writer from New Orleans.
I won’t give her name because she didn’t ask to be dragged into this spat. But she told this story. When she first began as a free-lance travel writer, she would send offers to cover events in her home town, New Orleans, and editors in New York would respond “if they wanted to cover that event, they would send a staff member down.”
Once she broke through and became published, she found that her inquiry letters were being dismissed because her return address was in Mississippi. And “everyone in New York knows that everyone in Mississippi is, at best, a functional illiterate.”
My fiancee had a similar experience when she told her co-workers at the bank in New York where she then worked, that she was leaving to move to North Carolina. “I hope you like NASCAR.” And, “You’ll miss indoor plumbing.” And generally referring to Southern males, including me, as knuckle-dragging uni-brows.
I’ve almost always lived in the South, but have traveled and worked across the country. I’ve never experienced anti-Southern bigotry. On reflection, there are two reasons why not. One is my accent. It’s from Baltimore, Bal-mer as the natives call it. My mother’s family is from Birmingham, Alabama, and have accents you can spread on toast. But my father and all of my classmates spoke Balmerese, so I did, too.
The other reason I didn’t experience anti-Southern bigotry is that most people I’ve worked with over the years either knew me or had direct experience with my work (law and journalism) before we met. Everyone who’s ever experienced bigotry on any basis, knows that personal knowledge is the antidote for bias.
The bottom line is, there’s still a great deal of anti-Southern bias. Southerners are as intelligent, and more sociable, more hospitable, and more dedicated to culture, food and music, than any other population group in the nation. So, what explains the bias?
It may be fear of Southerners as a political group. The national importance of the South as a political block has been growing steadily in recent decades. Census data explain why. The South and the West are roughly tied in top growth rates.
That means more Congressmen for the South, and more Electoral College votes. It means the national press will pay attention to the results in the South Carolina presidential primary, as a barometer of “how the South might go” in the 2008 election. But sadly, many of the press will be like the ignorant advisers who told staffers to get shots before coming to visit my state.
They will assume that we are a pack of Forrest Gumps, stumbling through life with marginal intelligence. Therefore, how we vote in national elections is merely an obstacle to get over or around, rather than in indicator of how pragmatic voters with a good dollop of common sense, figure out the candidates.
So, here’s my offer: I challenge the New York Times to send a reporter chosen at random, to spend a month here on our mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. We will take him/her everywhere we go, to meet everyone we know in this small town. We’ll feed and water that reporter handsomely. Most of all, that reporter will come away with a real knowledge of real people in the South.
It could be an eye-opening experience.
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About the Author: John Armor practiced in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu He lives in the 11th District of North Carolina.
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I remember the interview team had three Harvard post-grad degree holders or doctoral candidates on it. I also remember my sister, when I was back up North before heading into the heart of the beast, saying, "But they're all backwards in Mississippi!"
Yeah, right. Them backwards Harvard Psytricyclists and Lawyers really get depressing after a while.
Mind you, I didn't really get accepted at the co-op here in central VA until I came in often,dirty, smelling like sheep, and ready to pay cash for over $1k in sheep feed. It helped when I told my little one to call the manager "Mr. Earl." But when my pickup got dirty too and I joined the sheriff's office, then they completely forgave the funny way I talk.
What Yankees and city folk don't get is if you want friendship, real wit, and good solid thinking, there's nothing like the seed 'n feed store. I'd rather sit on a stack of sacks of corn and chat with those guys than hang out in a university common room, and I DO read medieval and patristic theology and Heidegger, etc. for recreation. (I'm sick and I need help, uh, he'p.) It's just that the folks are smarter, wiser, and more kind and charitable, as a rule, in the seed 'n feed store.
“NASCAR is to Americans that Viagra is to sex.”
It hardens them?
bump for later reading
It hardens them?
It's uplifting. ;-)
Vaguely. But I remember this one:
"We give people rides, but we don't 'carry 'em.'
- We love our cousins, but we don't marry 'em.
That's what I like about the North."
I can see tailgaters at the next few NASCAR races walking around with large syringes full of beer offering free oral “immunizations” before the race.
“Unfortunately we are running out of somewhere else’s”
Ah suggest that we Southorners implement the Swisse method of full citizenship to all newbies. This would allivate the influx of yankeeism onto our local breeding stock.
Who are the Rocket Scientist?
Heck yes there is a lot of bias against the South..Used to be a Yankee myself til i came South and saw the light..It wasn’t on a train in a dark tunnel either, it was from the many good people who escaped from the north and moved down here too, to gator land..People in the rest of the country forget that nearly 80% of the people in this state are transplants from other states, including the Yankee states, not just dumb redneck hicks..Down here you either learn to think right or you get bent, folded, stapled, then glued and tattoo’d til you get it right. It’s just that when things go wrong down here the northern libs say ‘See, told ya....’ Funny, we say that when things go wrong up north, or in other parts of the country..
You mean like Rudy? Marriage, that is.
My wifes Grandma always had food on the table and I would go and eat lunch sometime..One day I went to get some tea and seen water in a mason jar..I ask Lucille why the water in the jar,,she came over to me and said SHHH Butch,it’s shine,a tablespoon a day is all you need..Don’t reckon she ever took a flu shot..Funny to this day..
“The comments made by Benny Thompson were blatantly RACIST. If a white Republican had made such comments about staffers regarding a rap concert, or Juneteenth gathering it would be all over the msm and their resignation would be demanded”
Why I do declare I see a perfect agitprop stunt herein this posting. It just warms mah heart to think we have ways and ways more to snooker them thar LiboRatMSM airheads and convert them to doodooheads (gotta put somethin in the void) at the same time.
Besides, racism is a commie propaganda term and has no rightful place in any honest real conversation. Everybody knows that us white American folks are the best there’s ever been or “they” wouldn’t spend so much effort to run us down - so why belabor the issue.
Seriously, make racsism the joke term it is and “they” will stop the blather - “your nothing but a southERN racsist !! Why thank yah kindly, so nice of ya’ll to be so aware of our differences.”
And although "That's What I Like About The South" was a little before my time, Phil Harris, if his work for Disney was anything to judge from, was a cool old guy.
Which is ruining the south because not only the "good" come; the RATS follow! They then try to remake everything in their own image.
Fact is, we make ALL foreigners get shots before we let um move into the neighborhood her in Carolina. Can’t tell what all they might be spreaden these days.
Ping.
That’s more acceptable than my thoughts of “keeping ‘um up”.
The whole point of this article is that people like you look at the South and see a bunch of dirt poor ignorant people. My husband and brothers have six figure incomes. Most people I know have college degrees in real fields like BSEE, and not some namby pamby yankee Gay Studies or some such. We have better manners, dress better, smell better, look better and hold ourselves to a much higher moral standard than any stinking yankee. I am sick and tired of stupid yankees living in what looks like a third world bombed out city like New York, Detroit or Los Angeles and looking down on those of us in Pensacola, Dallas, or Huntsville, Alabama.
No, we are most certainly not poor and no, we do not lack indoor plumbing.
Sh-h-h!!! Keep ‘em ignorant, and we can keep the best place on earth to live, all to ourselves!!!
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