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Originally Posted by jinx
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http://www.nealpollack.com/cgi-bin/b...1441/permalink
Don't Fuck The South [Nov 10, 2004]
I know I promised I wouldn't post again this week, but I've been receiving emails all day about this site, because people think I'll find it "funny." Well, it's not funny. The writer makes some valid points about how the South seems to get a disproportionate amount of federal pork. That, I'll give him. But as for the rest of his (or her) argument, I can say one word: Nonsense.
The South isn't the only region of the country that is over-pious about its churchgoing and aggressive in trumpeting its "values." You can find equal culprits all over the country. This isn't a regional conflict we're in, it's an intellectual one, and people live on both sides of the debate in every state. Northern stereotypes about the South are snobbish and annoying. Enough already!
I was born in Memphis, grew up in Phoenix, got married in Nashville, went on my honeymoon in North Carolina, and live in Austin. Many dear friends grew up in and still reside below the Mason-Dixon Line. The South is diverse. It's varied. And yes, it's ignorant in many ways. But I've never lived in a more segregated place than Chicago, the epitome of a great Northern city, and have never seen as much concentrated poverty and injustice in this country as when I lived in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. So spare me the superiority rap.
The south gave us Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Michael Jordan, Hank Williams, Tennessee Williams, fried chicken, Gone With The Wind, Truman Capote, pecan pie, barbecue, Mark Twain, and manned flight. The list goes on and on. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were both from Virginia, both founding fathers and both gun-toting slave owners. If you say 'fuck the South," you're saying fuck Nashville and Charlotte and Charleston, and Atlanta, and Austin, and New Orleans, and Athens, Georgia, the city that gave us the B52s and R.E.M. and...OK, well, fuck R.E.M. But that has nothing to do with the South.
I assume this person is a Democrat. The last three Democratic Presidents came from Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas, respectively. I say this to all of you who think it's funny and wise to say "fuck the South." If you fuck the South, you're fucking yourselves.