January 14, 2013

"Now the South is becoming isolated again."

"Every demographic and political trend that helped to reëlect Barack Obama runs counter to the region’s self-definition.... The Solid South speaks less and less for America and more and more for itself alone."

Writes some guy from a region where they use umlauts.

118 comments:

Known Unknown said...

Cue Inga.

edutcher said...

Assuming the election was honest.

Notice how the whole Borg thing is in overdrive on the basis of it?

Revenant said...

The "Solid South" were a solid lock for Democrats, not Republicans.

Strange use of the term, given what the rest of the article is about.

harrogate said...

Even if it has truth in it, it's terrible and the writer is a snob for saying it!

Publius said...

Those two dots, often mistaken for an umlaut, are actually a diaeresis (pronounced “die heiresses”; it’s from the Greek for “divide”).

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html#ixzz2HzTTVV00

Publius said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chef Mojo said...

Oh, jeebus. It's the fucking New Yorker! C'mon! It's in their DNA to slag on the South; it's like heroin to them. Every now and then, they've got to take a peek under the Mason-Dixon line and shudder with horror.

Fuck 'em.

I'm a proud Southerner, and the fewer prejudiced Northerners polluting my land, the better. If a single New Yorker fails to come South as a result of this dumb ass article, then it will have been worth its publication.

Known Unknown said...

I can't wait for Civil War 2!

Anonymous said...

Isn't the editor a soft socialist, anyways?

Got to keep pushing those ideas to make a blanket to cover us all, even if the South is left out.

Anonymous said...

OK, I'm heeeere! Southern Austria perhaps?

Franklin said...

Meh. I know there are other reasons than just slavery behind the North's hatred of the South, but let's remind our friends in the North...

Slavery was legal in Maryland (a Union State) nearly through the entire Civil War. Slavery was legal in New York until 1827, Rhode Island until 1842, Connecticut until 1848. Importation of slaves was banned in all states, including the Southern States, in 1807. Union General and US President Ulysses S Grant owned slaves.

The Union was equally guilty of slave ownership in those times.

McTriumph said...

At the New Yorker, Wyoming is considered part of the South.

Anonymous said...

America's still great as long as we follow a collectivist political philosophy!

If you disagree, then YOU'RE the odd man out.

Here are some more cartoons and murmurs about town you rubes, hicks, and culturally unwashed ol Suthen boys.

Get on board. No, really, you must get on board. Come on, it's not a request. Let's go. Seriously. Get on board.

Anonymous said...

Listen, no more drinks for your fat bellies. No more guns. You want to be civilized don't you?

Come on, please? Really, it's mandatory. You don't have a choice. It's rational. It's technology. It's progress. Buy some carbon credits now.

Please?

Revenant said...

The Union was equally guilty of slave ownership in those times.

The facts listed in your own post show that your claim is false. :)

AllenS said...

You'll find just as many people with prejudices north of the Mason-Dixon line, as you will below it.

Oso Negro said...

Saturday morning in downtown Galveston, an older gentlemen dressed in a butternut jacket and gray trousers stepped up just as I got out of my truck to ask if I had seen a Confederate Army march by. Not a question one hears everyday in this century or the last! It proved to be a re-enactment of the 150th anniversary of our local Civil War battle, but just for a moment, I thought how pleasant it might be to have another go at the meddlesome Yankees.

Known Unknown said...

So, the Solid South (sounds like a new college sports conference) isn't part of America?

Talk about inclusivity.

CWJ said...

Inga, LOL Good one. But for the old school Southern Austria would be the Balkans.

Known Unknown said...

, I thought how pleasant it might be to have another go at the meddlesome Yankees.

You killed your own countrymen to keep people as property. Not cool. You'll get the smackdown every time for something like that.


test said...

Shorter Packer:

Those red staters sure are scary. You're better off staying blue and funding our government employment programs.

Balfegor said...

Re: Unknown:

Those two dots, often mistaken for an umlaut, are actually a diaeresis (pronounced “die heiresses”; it’s from the Greek for “divide”).

It might serve some conceivable function is English spelling made any sense. It doesn't, however, so this diaeresis is totally superfluous. And I say that as an affected speller who routinely inserts superfluous hyphens into words like "co-operate" and "to-morrow".

Michael K said...

" Modernization was paved with federal dollars, in the form of highways, military bases, space centers, and tax breaks for oil drilling."

Shorter version: "You didn't build that."

Rick67 said...

This child of Massachusetts - who's lived in Louisiana for 12 years now - is increasingly sick to death of regional bigotry directed against the South.

Why not b*tch and moan about the Northeast becoming isolated? Why do such concerns only apply to thee and never to me?

Ann Althouse said...

And check out the illustration they used. The New Yorker has all these clever and distinctive drawings, and that is an embarrassment. A revealing embarrassment.

Oso Negro said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Balfegor said...

Re:chrisnavin.com:

Listen, no more drinks for your fat bellies. No more guns. You want to be civilized don't you?

Yes, and wear shoes and shirts and bathe and go to school and learn to talk proper. You want to be civilised, deep down, don't you, you Southern savages? Well, the missionaries from New England will descend to bring the wonders of civilisation to your heathen hollows. Look, no more outhouses!

Chef Mojo said...

You killed your own countrymen to keep people as property. Not cool. You'll get the smackdown every time for something like that.

True, EMD.

But that's not the case now, is it?

The next Civil War will be fought over the validity of the Constitution as written; whether America, as an idea, will continue to exist.

Oso Negro said...

EMD said.

You killed your own countrymen to keep people as property. Not cool. You'll get the smackdown every time for something like that.


Uncommonly ill-informed. Has it ever crossed your mind to ask just why Lincoln was so obsessed with "preserving the Union" aka "forcing the Southern people to remain in an arrangement that they no longer found agreeable"? Look into it some time. After that, check the date of the Emancipation Proclamation and compare that to the starting date of the war. For your finale, ask yourself whether you still believe we would have Negro slavery in the South without the war of northern aggression and subsequent slaughter.

Revenant said...

Modernization was paved with federal dollars, in the form [stuff] and tax breaks for oil drilling

A person has to be pretty far gone to think that "the federal government didn't tax you as much as it could have" equates to "the federal government helped pay for that".

Just an observation.

Pulp Herb said...

Those two dots, often mistaken for an umlaut, are actually a diaeresis (pronounced “die heiresses”; it’s from the Greek for “divide”).

We uneducated Southerners call it a yankeeissmarterthanyous symbol. It's used when, well I think you can figure it out. Polite ladies would refer to it as "putting on airs, bless their hearts".

Note, if you're not from the South the last thing in life you want is polite Southern ladies blessing your heart.

Anonymous said...

I grew up in the South and even when I was a Chomksy-loving leftist in San Francisco I despised the casual bigotry of liberals towards the South.

There's a fun TV show called "Justified" about a law enforcement officer in Miami who gets fired and has to return to his home town in Kentucky. It's the first thing from Hollywood I can recall since the sixties that show Southerner country whites as something other than knuckle-dragging racists.

Tim said...

Packer writes...

"(When he began the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, scene of the murder, in 1964, of three civil-rights workers, many Southerners heard it as a dog whistle.)"

What I really love about this statement of "fact" is the citation.

Because, if you are going to slander Southerners AND Reagan (and Republicans) with "facts," it's best to have a citation.

Patrick said...

If I were curious about the cultural and political state of the American South, I highly doubt that I would consider The New Yorker as an authority worth considering.

Tim said...

Packer writes...

"It would be better for America as well as for the South if Southerners rediscovered their hidden past and took up the painful task of refashioning an identity that no longer inspires their countrymen."

Yes. Because for Packer, and Liberals like Packer, identity, values, culture and history are a one-way street to the Liberal Emerald City.

It is inconceivable for them to think of it "being better for the South as well as for America if Americans rediscovered their hidden past and took up the painful task of refashioning an identity that no longer inspires their Southern countrymen."

Balfegor said...

Re: Chef Mojo:

But that's not the case now, is it?

Eh, it's kind of the case. From the Northern side, sure, Lincoln's first priority was preserving the Union with or without slavery. The emancipation proclamation is a bit more like the British proclamation that slaves who fought for the Empire against the rebellion would be rewarded with their freedom. It applied only to slaves in rebel states, after all.

But on the Confederate side, high members of the government saw their rebellion clearly as a means of preserving slavery. As the Vice President of the Confederacy put it:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."


Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth
.

The Union may not have been fighting to end slavery, but the Confederacy was surely fighting to preserve it.

edutcher said...

Franklin said...

Meh. I know there are other reasons than just slavery behind the North's hatred of the South, but let's remind our friends in the North...

The last state to abjure slavery was Delaware, in December 1865.

Home of President of Vice Put Y'all Back In Chains.

gadfly said...

Wiki says:
[George] Packer's parents, Nancy Packer and Herbert Packer, were both academics at Stanford University; his maternal grandfather was George Huddleston, a congressman from Alabama. His sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer. Packer graduated from Yale College, where he lived in Calhoun College, in 1982, and served in the Peace Corps in Togo. His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Packer is a columnist for Mother Jones and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since May 2003.

I find "Alabama" here but I didn't see "Können Sie Deutsch?" anywhere.

Balfegor said...

Sorry, I misread what Mojo was saying. I guess you meant that it might have been true in the past, but it's not true now.

Well, always good to remind people of the Confederacy anyhow.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Over at Drudge just now...

OBAMA MEETS HIS PRESS

lol.

chickelit said...

The same Southern lock that once held the Democratic Party now divides the Republican Party from the socially liberal, fiscally moderate tendencies of the rest of America.

I missed the "fiscally moderate tendencies" that the Democrat Party used to have. Especially in California.

test said...

Balfegor said...
Well, always good to remind people of the Confederacy anyhow.


When you're reminding them do they talk back? Can anyone else hear them?

Rabel said...

"Southern Republicans, who dominate the Party and its congressional leadership..."

The republican leadership listed on the House website:

Speaker - Ohio
Maj. leader - Virginia
Whip - California
Conf. Chairman - Washington
Policy Com. Chairman - Oklahoma

Revenant said...

Has it ever crossed your mind to ask just why Lincoln was so obsessed with "preserving the Union" aka "forcing the Southern people to remain in an arrangement that they no longer found agreeable"?

Lincoln's motivations are irrelevant. Let's take a look at the motivation of a southern state, just for example.

Now, modern-day defenders of the Confederacy love to babble slogans about states' rights and self determination, and to muddy the waters by falsely citing northern tariffs as a significant reason for secession. The secessionist states were more honest.

For example, Mississippi's article of secession begins thusly:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Can't get much clearer than that.

Now, let's take a look at the census figures for Mississippi that year, shall we?

Free: 354,699
Slave: 436,696

Let me simplify this for the benefit of those readers who ate too many lead paint flakes as children and thus still think this was about self-determination: the elected representatives of the white minority took their state out of the union to avoid losing "ownership" of the enslaved black majority.

And despite this, there are still people stupid enough to think democracy, freedom, and human liberty were values the south esteemed.

Irene said...

Limbaugh talked about this today: the liberals are isolating the South. The aim here is to characterize the South as a clownish place with wacky ideas that endanger the rest of the country. Stomp the area where conservative principles still flower.

They'll do to the South what they did to Sarah Palin.

garage mahal said...


I missed the "fiscally moderate tendencies" that the Democrat Party used to have. Especially in California


Childish "Democrat Party" slur aside, isn't Cali looking at a budget surplus?

That leaves a surplus of $851 million for the year, in addition to a projected $785 million surplus for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, allowing the state to put $1 billion toward a rainy day fund.

Keystone said...

Very few people move north to retire.

Anonymous said...

Ann Althouse in a fit of indignation on January 1:

"I want people to learn that they can't get away with empty assertions like "I am aghast" or
"You are despicable." You have to give reasons for what you think. Even if you really feel those feelings. And, of course, many of these hack writers don't actually feel the feelings they scribble about."

Yet two weeks later, Althouse's criticism of an article in the New Yorker is to make a empty assertions about the use of umlauts.

James said...

So, pre-New Deal, the Republicans could not win in the South but Democrats could and that made the South a backwater. But that doesn't make /Vermont/ or California a backwater today.

Packer's article is comfort food for Democrats.

chickelit said...

From garage's link: This is a tentative surplus, and there is plenty of debt,..

LOL

Revenant said...

The last state to abjure slavery was Delaware, in December 1865.

Actually it was Mississippi, on March 16, 1995. That's when they got around to ratifying the 13th amendment. :)

Delaware initially rejected the 13th, but ratified it in 1901.

Thorley Winston said...

There's a fun TV show called "Justified" about a law enforcement officer in Miami who gets fired and has to return to his home town in Kentucky. It's the first thing from Hollywood I can recall since the sixties that show Southerner country whites as something other than knuckle-dragging racists.

If you’re looking for other shows that generally show a favorable portrayal of “Southerner country whites,” you may want to check out “Friday Night Lights” and “King of the Hill.” Also, pretty much all of the main characters from “The Walking” dead fit in the category and the most popular character is the backwoods redneck Daryl Dixon.

Hagar said...

Nah, this is just a New York smartass trying to get a rise out of us, and you sure bit.

Revenant said...

Childish "Democrat Party" slur aside, isn't Cali looking at a budget surplus?

No, we have a $1.5 billion deficit through at least 2014.

The state's analyst is predicting a surplus after that, but given how enthusiastically the legislature is proposing new spending it'd be silly to expect one. Especially given how quickly our tax base is exiting the state.

Michael said...

Garage. The surplus is contingent on the assumptions proving true. Hasnt happened yet per the article.

Stan25 said...

To the Northeastern establishment, anything west of the Hudson River is not a part of the United States. They live and breathe their elitism like the polluted air that they breathe into their lungs. It has been like that since the founding of the United States. Anything remotely equal to their way of thinking are the people along the coast of California Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Michael said...

Garage. The surplus is contingent on the assumptions proving true. Hasnt happened yet per the article.

The Godfather said...

My Yankee credentials are impeccable. Not only was I born in Manhattan and raised in Connecticut, my ancestors immigrated from England to New England in the 1680's and from Ireland and Germany to Brooklyn in the mid to late 19th Century.

I now live in North Carolina. Some of the rural folks I know talk kind of "funny", but mostly because they moved here from the North because this is where they could find work.

I make no excuses for the southerners who started the Civil War. The ones who had political power started the War to protect their right to hold slaves. Other excuses are BS. Nor do I excuse the Jim Crow laws that tried to preserve as much of slavery as they could.

But that is not the South of today. Southerners aren't the ones who are leading the charge to enslave their fellow citizens to high taxes and excessive regulation. It's "liberal" Northerners -- The New Yorker is a synecdoche for the whole bunch of them -- that now promote intolerance and bigotry against those who differ from them.

Michael K said...

Garage, California's surplus is located in the same place as the indictment of Walker.

Your imagination.

AllenS said...

Damn, garage, that was bad information.

Balfegor said...

Re: garage:

Childish "Democrat Party" slur aside, isn't Cali looking at a budget surplus?

If so, it's because -- judging from their budgets -- they slashed spending by around 8% between FY 2011 and FY 2012 (I am comparing the governor's budget requests at p.8). If those cuts are real, then it's not surprising they'd put the state on a sounder fiscal footing than it has been on in the past. That's what we need to be doing federally.

garage mahal said...

Your imagination.

I saw this on the WSJ from a few days ago. See here

So in your expert analysis on California's budget, how far off is Brown from his projected 851 million dollar surplus? I'm guessing you have no fucking idea but happy to be proven wrong.

Crimso said...

'I find "Alabama" here but I didn't see "Können Sie Deutsch?" anywhere.'

Now that's an umlaut, y'all.

jacksonjay said...

Garage,

You remember that cracker Senator Session confronting Jack Lew on the Obama budget! Lew said it gets rid of the deficit. Lew was not counting any interest payment on the debt! That dumbass from Alabama said that's a damn lie!

chickelit said...

Freder scolds: Yet two weeks later, Althouse's criticism of an article in the New Yorker is to make a empty assertions about the use of umlauts.

Stop being so diacritical! Have a piece of blog birthday cake.

And don't call it umlaut -- that's way too Nazi-sounding.

AHL said...

I found it fascinating the ways "Django Unchained" showed how humans can have power over other humans. The obvious way to have power was to own a slave, but the real power was in language and/or guns. There were many times when characters would mock others for not knowing a meaning of a fancy word. This would always place control back in the arms of the intelectual. The other way one could show power was through yielding weapons, and when the slaves had weapons, it revealed a different type of intellect.

This article uses fancy words to belittle people whose political philosophy includes the right of all people to own guns and who have, "political passions have always been rooted in sometimes extreme ideas of morality, which has meant, in recent years, abortion", while also using images of the South to connote white slave owners 150 years ago.

Words are power used over readers who bow down to sophisticated writers with expensive degrees. It also explains how liberal retort disintegrates when conservative intellectuals bring their ideas to the table.

Brian Brown said...

Um, "the South" is growing in population.

NY, IL, not so much.

But hey, ignorance is a virtue for the modern left.

Deb said...

I don't think I have ever read anything as smug and condescending.

AllenS said...

Hey, umlaut could be the new smiley face --

ö

Not really a smiley face, but a look of astonishment.

AllenS said...

OK, guess this one --

ö

Revenant said...

So in your expert analysis on California's budget, how far off is Brown from his projected 851 million dollar surplus?

If all you meant but "Cali is looking at a surplus" is "the Cali government predicts that, in the future, it will have a surplus, even though it doesn't at the moment" then, well, it sure is true that the California government predicts that. :)

If you Google a bit, however, you'll find that the California government has a habit of making rosy predictions that fall apart when tax revenue is unexpectedly low. For example, in early 2011 there was a flurry of news stories about how the government was expecting good revenue growth would halve the deficit... followed by a flurry of news stories mid-year about revenue falling well below expectations.

We're experiencing an outflow of people who are net taxpayers and an influx of people who are net recipients of government services, so I expect the state to continue to desperately scramble for funds.

CatherineM said...

If the South is so awful, why are so many people moving there? I swear half of the middle class in Long Island moved to Charlotte over the last 10 years. I was visiting a friend who moved down there and there wasn't one North Carolinian in their huge fantastic subdivision (oh, the New Yorker hates subdivisions!). Almost all were from the NY metro area which has become unaffordable to middle class families.

NC is beautiful, the roads are in great shape, the hospitals (at least the ones I have been to in Asheville) are state of the art.

The New Yorker probably thinks middle class people from Long Island are hillbilly white trash anyway.

MadisonMan said...

Two dots above the e, and doubtless two spaces after the period. But they're the ones who know it all.

CatherineM said...

P.S. I have lived in Chicago, NC and NYC. In terms of witnessed racism, it's 1) Chicago, 2) NYC and 3) NC

When my sister moved to Alabama I ran into a lot of black people (restaurants, window shopping) who would ask me where I am from when they heard me speak. I would say New York, and they would always say something along the lines of , I lived there/up North for 3, 7, 10 years, and it's so much better down here for quality of life and standard of living.

jd said...

@althouse. If you ever bothered to publish articles anymore you would know the umlaut is probably an editorial call, not the writer's. but that would take away time from begging for amazon portal begging and declaring yourself omnipotent.

Jason said...

I've lived in the South almost all my adult life.

The biggest fucking racist bigots I ever encountered were in California, Illinois and New York.

Fuck y'all.

Jason said...

Scratch that... almost the ENTIRETY of the overt non-ironic expressions of racism I have encountered in my adult life have been in California, New York and Illinois.

Living in Tennessee, Georgia and Florida? I almost never ever encountered them.

This Southern racist fantasy is a projection. Because bigotry comes so naturally to Democrats, they seem to assume it must apply to everyone else. It simply isn't so.

Anonymous said...

Just how much does the White House pay these "journalists"?

David said...

Well he has some south in his veins. His grandfather was a segregationist congressman and his great grandfather was a slaveowner. His father, who had a stroke at age 46 and died at 46, was a Stanford law prof.

Packer is Yale and Harvard all the way, but he's done many interesting things outside of New York, New Haven and Cambridge, including Peace Corps in Africa and on the ground reporting from Iraq. He can write. His qualifications and experience for understanding the contemporary south are not evident, however.

Come on down, Mr Packer. Stay a while. Get out of New York and live in the south for a few years.

Then write about it.

Jason said...

By the way... tons of music industry people from New York and Los Angeles/Hollywood have been relocating with their families to Nashville.

It's simply a much better place to raise a family. With fewer bigots.

edutcher said...

AllenS said...

Hey, umlaut could be the new smiley face --

ö

Not really a smiley face, but a look of astonishment.


Looks more like, "The devil made me do it".

Maybe, "Oh, you devil".

David said...

Jesus, Garage, California had a budget surplus in December because the rich people were upping their estimated taxes after taking gains in 2012. They took the gains to avoid the tax increases, state and federal, for 2013.

That one month proves nothing. The new California rates had not even taken effect.

It's pretty clear you are not entirely ignorant, so why do you keep publishing such misleading crap?

Check in a year and see how they are doing.

I hope you are right, but for now your "facts" prove nothing.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I used to read the New Yorker for the cartoons.

garage mahal said...

It's pretty clear you are not entirely ignorant, so why do you keep publishing such misleading crap?

I posted material from two biz websites like Business Insider and the WSJ. Why don't you give me a list of approved websites I can read from so I can avoid this in the future. If I didn't know better my takeaway from this might be conservatives don't want a balanced budget or surplus. Would confirm a few theories I have.

Chip S. said...

I think this New Yorker guy's right about the solid south.

After all, South Dakota gave Romney 58% of its votes.

Sigivald said...

Our hostess said: The New Yorker has all these clever and distinctive drawings, and that is an embarrassment. A revealing embarrassment.

Distinctive, yes.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a New Yorker illustration that was clever.

(Oh, I'm sure the New Yorker staff and target market believes them to be clever, but that's their problem.)

insurance said...

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Lem the artificially intelligent said...

This article reads like the kind David Brooks used to write... before some un-named republican senator, spent dinner with his hand on David Brooks inner thigh.

Brooks was never the same again.

Michael said...

Garage. Your sources are fine but i dont think you read the linked articles beyond the headlines. The stories do not say what you think they say.

Sinnamon Buns said...

So one orthographer turns to another and says, "I'm sorry I didn't make it to the Spelling Bee last night; I had diaeresis."

Amartel said...

Well if this guy's going to bust out lame stereotypes about the south, is it not fair play to return the favor with a brownshirt reference? One that happens to have more truth than not?
I think it is. Godwin's Law is going to get tested over the next few years.

garage mahal said...

@Michael
I asked the question "isn't Cali looking at a budget surplus?" The linked.

Michael said...

Garage. Yes you did. Understand it is in futuro.

Biff said...

Never mind the South! You should hear the ignorant things that New Yorkers say about New Jersey and Connecticut!

Chef Mojo said...

If the South is so awful, why are so many people moving there? I swear half of the middle class in Long Island moved to Charlotte over the last 10 years.

That's been happening for years down here in Central Virginia. To the east of Charlottesville is a gated community called Lake Monticello. It's populated primarily by ex NYPD and NYFD folks. It's totally weird. You go to a grocery up around there, and you'd think you were out on Lawng Eyeland somewhere.

And despite that, we can't get decent deli for shit around here.

Bagels, on the other hand? Oy! They love our bagels here. http://www.bodosbagels.com.

Anyway, it seems that all those damnyankees can't wait to get out of Yankeeland...

Sydney said...

It has ever been thus:

There's a southern accent,
Where I come from.
The young'uns call it country,
The Yankees call it dumb.

Titus said...

I love being an elite Northeast Yankee.

Italian Restaurants
Clam Shacks
Hot guys
The ocean
Pizza
Top Notch education.
Streets filled with peeps
Expensive Real Estate
Gay Marriage


The South is gross and fat and dumb. And the South is the biggest of the taker states.

traditionalguy said...

That hit piece was a masterpiece of disinformation. Not a single assertion by the writer was even close to any truth on earth.

But the trend in ObamaLand is propaganda dividing Americans and promising group B that it is worthy of loot from group A, because ...well just mythological crap, that's why. And Obama will lead the looters for a cut on the side.

Boeing in Seattle/Chicago has to close down southern manufacturing plants because...well just mythological crap, that's why. And Obama will lead the looters for a cut on the side.

The Russian dictator who is cozy with Obama has predicted that the USA will break apart on regional interest lines and thereby cease to be a world military power.

Now how did Putin know what Obama was up to?



Michael K said...

This is from The Register, a relatively reliable paper, unlike the Times.

The governor projects that the state budget is essentially balanced; the LAO predicted in November that the state would face a $1.9 billion deficit next year. On Monday, Taylor said the differences between the projections are so small that the LAO at this point isn’t going to quibble with the governor’s position that there is no deficit.

But that could change in May, Taylor said, after April tax returns start rolling in. Pending actions at the federal level combined with changing trends in state revenues could dramatically alter the state’s fiscal outlook, he said.

The difference between the governor’s estimated and the LAO’s prediction in November is due to about $1.1 billion in more revenue projected by Brown and a handful of other proposals, including the extension of a hospital quality assurance fee and a delayed schedule for repaying monies borrowed from state special funds.

Taylor said there are “some downside risks” to the governor’s tax forecast and administration forecasts for redevelopment and cap-and-trade revenue, but Brown’s numbers generally are in line with the LAO’s outlook.


There is little confidence, based on experience, that Brown's tax increase will produce corresponding revenue increases.

Let's talk again after April. The California economy is still lousy.

Titus said...

Also, southern rednecks are bad dog owners.

All the dog rescue owners up here have received their dog from the South.

They are bad bad animal people and major homo haters.

I won't even travel South because it mortifies me. I accepted my current job knowing I would not have to go further South than DC-that's my limit. If I would go further South than DC I would turn into a Pumpkin.

tits.

Michael said...

Titus. I have several friends here in the south with Clumber Spaniels and there is a family several streets away with a Clumber pup. Clumbers are much admired in the south and owning one is perfectly normal and not an occasion to congratulate oneself. I also note that you appear to be from a farming background in the middle west, one of those sorts that are laughed at behind their backs in the northeast where you must be born to be from.

Atlanta is crawiling or should I say swaning with gays, they flock here from every part of the nation. To enjoy each other and the open minds of southerners. Who love their Clumbers.

Tom G said...

Ahh, that tired old stereotype of the ignorant, racist, southerner.

I moved my family to central Kentucky from Southern California and raised two beautiful, intelligent, and tolerant young ladies - lived there for twenty years and wouldn't trade the experience.

What makes the south different? Start with manners and respect for other people.

Anonymous said...

Who cares what's said in the 'New Yorker'. The population and the electoral votes are moving South.

Count all the electoral votes that have been lost by the Northeast over the last 40 years. Count all the electoral votes added to the South.

traditionalguy said...

I have an idea.

The next time Obama throws a divisional slander contest pitting the Pacific West against the Northwest and Mountain West against the mid-west, and the North against the South, and Texas against the great plains states, why not refuse to fight?

Then what will our great psyops master do?

n.n said...

Does bastardizing the meaning of MLK's insight -- for material profit and democratic leverage -- denigrate his legacy?

n.n said...

traditionalguy:

A strategic surrender? It sounds like something Ayn Rand, Gandhi, MLK, or Christ would advocate.

Paul said...

The 'DIXIE DEMOCRATS' used to run the south. Such KKK guys as Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd.

It was the likes of them that forced blacks to the back of the bus, not the Republicans.

I remember in High School (1970) when teachers passed out voting literature and called the Republican party 'Repungicans'.

Right now the isolation is the far east and west. Yes NY, NJ, Massachusetts, RI, DC, etc... and California, Washington state, Organ. These are the isolated states.

AlanKH said...

"As its political power declines, the South might occupy a place like Scotland’s in the United Kingdom, as a cultural draw for the rest of the country, with a hint of the theme park."

I wonder what Sean Connery woudl say to that.

Obama won the popular vote by only 4.8 percentage points in a race that drew votes from only 58.9% of eligible voters, and Packer thinks those stats pack enough evidence to assess the South's cultural sway one way or the other. Bigot.

AlanKH said...

On another note, when I saw the word "umlaut" I expected a link to Der Spiegel, which I recall was rather famous for hyperventilating over Bush's policies. Which puts it in good company with New Yorker.

Charlie Currie said...

This person reminds me of the story of the mom, who, watching her son march by in a parade, comments: "Oh look, everyone is out of step except my son."

I think it's the South that speaks for America, and this person who speaks for the new order.

Cheers

Astro said...

The image of the cheap, broken, wooden welcome sign was a red flag that New York superiority was in full monacle-raised snobbery mode.

Yet, he doesn't use semi-colons properly.

gadfly said...

Balfegor said...

But on the Confederate side, high members of the government saw their rebellion clearly as a means of preserving slavery.

Please be reminded that the war was between the industrialized North and the agrarian states to the south. Slaves were as important to the South then as illegals have became as our crop tenders today.

When you think about it, the illegal Mexicans who live here now are also socially abused by a Americans bent on assisting the lawbreakers for personal gain. Solving the problem starts with the rule of law and ends with the elimination of an underground social layer. Unfortunately, anything goes if the results are cheap labor and fraudulent voters.

Kirk Parker said...

Rev,

"We're experiencing an outflow of people who are net taxpayers..."

A buddy of mine who works in government relations for a large CA corporation did a study on what he calls "disinventment events"--companies who may be retaining their headquarters in CA, but move their productive assets out of state. The amount of wealth steadily leaving CA is shocking large when measured in this way.

I'd say get out while the getting's good (for himself, he's hoping he can hold out till retirement.)

Kirk Parker said...

Chuck Currie:

A guy is driving home on the freeway; his wife calls him on his cell phone and asks, "Are you all right? The news is reporting there's some guy driving the wrong way on the interstate!"

"No, it's a lot worse than that--practically everyone is!"


machine said...

Honey Boo-Boo...

The end.

AlanKH said...

Honey Boo Boo may be a Southern hick, but it's blue-staters who gave her a show. And she's an Obama fan.

I imagine she has (yet-to-be-televised) inner-city counterparts up north.

On another note, how isolated can Southerners be if they voted for a Yankee Mormon?

MarkD said...

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if NY was the most racist state in the union. People are cowardly about it, but it's there.

Unknown said...

I am a southerner Ann. You may want to take some time to read the excellent article George Packer wrote about the economic decline of southern Virginia , specifically Martinsvillw in March of 2010. He nailed it! And he fouced on the disconnect between Washington politics and the south. How does that fit your narrative. If Packer warrants a tag, you should have known about the article. he at least spent some time down here.....he is no the one dimensional. New Yorker you portray