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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“It could be an eye-opening experience.”
You couldn’t open the eyes of a NY Slimes staffer with a heavy-duty forklift.
Fave parts of the south are SW Louisiana (anywhere from Breaux Bridge to Lake Charles), most of Texas (the parts that aren't built on top of a swamp), and eastern Tennessee.
This is kinda funny. My ancestors were all Southerners (two Confederate soldier Great-grandpas) but most of my family went West after being burnt out by Yankees in THE War.
Big city types look at us rural folks anywhere in fly-over country the same way; we are backwards, slow talking, God fearing, church-going, and those moving here claim that they can fix things for us to make life better, if we would just rid of all those noisy running cattle about.
What a hoot! Last time I got poked that many times the army shipped me off to Korea. LOL.
Goodness knows how on earth Mississippi could have created such writers as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, not to mention a Pulitzer Prize Winning playwright such as Beth Henley.
Kinda suggests that 'everyone in New York', at least in the writing world, is a goober!
Every Southerner knows there are 2 classes of Yankees.
There are the regular, garden variety who visit, express their disdain and leave.
Then there are the DAM Yankees who visit and never leave!
/s
Then again, maybe the dems/socialists/liberals should fear the South for another reason. Why? What if CWII goes down?
It's something to think about isn't it Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, etc..?
5.56mm
LOL! I have a friend up here in MA who tells me that with my accent, I could tell somebody to go to hell and they’d be happy to make the trip!
‘All your bigots are belong to us.’ NYT
Which is why they won't do it.
Ignorance is their natural state.
Yeah, after the 2004 elections, I overheard one of the Girl Scout leaders in town, one who most of the other women find extremely annoying as well, denigrating the voters down in "Jesusland". I would have engaged her in a lively discussion, were it not for the fact that the girls, who had been doing a 'flag disposal' ceremony, were coming back to join us.
“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.”
Please don’t taint the state with a Slimes Reporter, otherwise, YOU all will have to get shots after he leaves.
“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..”
My dad was from Scarsdale, NY and met my mom while based in Albany, GA. They married in 1943 and remained so until his death in 2002. He loved going down to Albany and he was crazy about the south.
“The Democratic staffers took the shots
My first thought was Jack Daniels. Does that make me biased?”
No, but you might be a redneck, according to Foxworthy. LOL!
THese Washington, New York types have been cloistered for so long and have believed the stories about ‘fly-over’ country that this is where their thinking takes them. Then the liberal mind, once realized it is caught, begins to confabulate fictions such as....well, uh, they were going to the race track and the doctors go the clinic at the race track and they get immunized. That was their agreed-upon coverstory. Only someone asked if they went to the Yankees-Mets game would they recommend the same. NO ANSWER. These people up there are not only illinformed, they seem to be stupid. And they are running the halls of Congress? That New York-Boston-Washington bunch are as rude as any people I have ever seen. We actually have running water down here in Lufkin, Texas. Electricity too. What a ‘shocker’. Those sniveling bastards up there are out of touch with reality. Come on down to Texas. We are all ‘packing’. I’m sure that is what they think. What a bunch of goof balls. I have more degrees than a thermometer and those pricks don’t seem to get it...that Houston is the premier medical center in the world. We’ve got a little thing called NASA. We produce more refined petroleum products than they can shake a stick at, and frankly, we need to withhold shipping to them from December to January just to make them appreciate us. We produce more beef than any state. The New York Strip was named after Texas beef. Those folks would not know a tenderloin from a Chateaubriand. There is no difference if you pricks in Washington are looking it up now. We have better football, basketball, and....well not baseball than you yankees. After you finish looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains with Billybob, come on to Lufkin,...I’ll take you on a horseback ride...you won’t get mugged.....you can ride the stud horse and I’ll ride the mare (in season). You will enjoy the outdoor air. You won’t hear any horns honking here at the ranch. We even have air conditioning. Who would have thunk it? Uppity bastards.
Good job. It takes a lot to be civil simply to set a good example.
Contrast that with liberals...I have a picture of a leftist in Oregon defecating on a burning American flag, while people laugh in the background, one of them has kids with them.
Fine with me if the north think this, funny thing you never here of anyone retiring to the north. So they better stay up there where they are safe from our diseases. FITFLOL
Just so you can get to know me better...
You know you are from Georgia if . . .
1. You can properly pronounce Chickamauga, DeKalb, Dahlonega, and Smyrna.
2. You think people who complain about the heat in their states are sissies.
3. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in
the yard and look for a funnel.
4. You know that the true value of a parking space is not determined by
the distance to the door, but by the availability of shade.
5. Stores don’t have bags or shopping carts, they have sacks and buggies.
7. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.
8. You measure distance in minutes.
9. You go to the lake because you think it is like going to the ocean.
10. You listen to the weather forecast before picking out an outfit.
11. You know cowpies are not made of beef.
12. Some one you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding
date.
13. You know someone who has a belt buckle bigger than your fist.
14. You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, beer, and
bait all in the same store.
15. A Mercedes Benz isn’t a status symbol. A Ford F350 Crew Cab is.
16. You know everything goes better with Ranch dressing.
17. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned how to multiply.
18. You actually get these jokes and are “fixing’” to send them
to your friends.
19. You wanna go back to Georgia, where everything is normal. And
finally:
20. You are 100% Georgian if you have ever had this conversation: “You wanna coke?” ~ “Yeah.” ~ “What kind?” ~ “Dr Pepper.”
Then there’s my personal favorite, Shelby Foote.
And will gain at least ten pounds.
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