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February 08, 2004
What Southerners Know
What southerners know about politics is that it's all dirty. They suffer no illusions about it being anything other than a dog eat dog lesson in graft and corruption. That's why they vote for southerners. It's their dirt.
Beyond all that, I have a great affection for the South, primarily because of how southern competence manifests itself in the attitude of its people. The South knows that it's behind the times and so it has this permanent identity crisis. Living in the south begins with humiliation and misunderstanding which is never quite overcome. The way you prove yourself begins 'I might not know much but I do know this..' Or 'You can't be too sure about many things in the world, but my Daddy always told me...' Southerners make sure they know a thing or two about something and present themselves like they don't know jack about jack. Then the trump you when you least expect it. That victory against the odds becomes the story that you tell your boy, so he knows one thing.
The attitude of underachievement of the South is catching. Nobody catches it faster than new arrivals. Suddenly you realize that the sky is not going to catch fire if you walk out of the house with no shoes or shirt. There's always somewhere you can still get service. You find that everything, everywhere is out in the boonies, relatively speaking. So who cares what you let slip? You face the grinding poverty and it stops you in your tracks, for a while. Before you know it you are finding dignity in places you couldn't before imagine. Or is it that you are imagining dignity in places you couldn't find before? One way or another the dirt gets under your fingernails, the smell of the chemical plant drifts out of your consciousness, the slower talk and accents wend their way into your daily communications and you find other markers of success and failure. You are living another life, a life out of step and out of synch with the America in Miramax films.
One day you find out how far you have gone. You're listening to redneck radio and laughing along and you accidently turn the dial to NPR and Terri Gross. And you hear the accent in her voice. You speak to your mother on the phone and tell her about one of the local streets and you notice show she pronounces it all wrong, like a Northerner. Somebody with a pair of Prada shoes looks at you funny and so you spit on the ground. Then you hear something overbroad said about the drinking habits or education of Southerners and even though you know it's absolutely true, you defend them. Because they're your neighbors and you've come to an understanding.
If you're not from a place, you never quite get the feeling of confidence and depth of shading that location gives natives. There's always some external reference to give you a critical eye. There's always a way you can justify it because you've seen how other places have been. A native Southerner cannot escape, however. They are trapped with calling this place home, it marks them forever. They own that pain. The South is a great place to live, but you'd hate to have to visit there, or be from there. There is no escape from its wicked dominion unless you already have lived the context of someplace else you call home.
In the end, however, the South is reconciled to itself. It knows its faults. And that is what gives its people their geniune honesty, once you get past the spitting. The heat, the air, the smells, the food all slow you down to self-examination. And it is this self that the South needs to know and accept on its own terms. This is the kind of self the South will affirm, and this is the kind of self that John Kerry, or any candidate will have to present to southern folk in order for them to give their nod.
Posted by mbowen at February 8, 2004 12:44 AM
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Comments
That was very well written and well said, Cobb. Although it doesn't describe everyone down there at all, and the south is more modern than a lot of people think. But it is still ultimately much like you say.
I have to keep correcting one thing that people seem to keep not getting: Southerners don't have a problem with voting for people who are not from the South.
Southerners put a New York aristocrat named Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. Difference? He showed them from day one that he cared about them (read some time about the work he did in Georgia before becoming President).
Southerners put John Kennedy in the White House.
Southerners put Richard Nixon in the White House--Nixon, whose running-mate was the Governor of Maryland. No southerner on that ticket.
Southerners put Ronald Reagan into the White House, and Reagan didn't have any southerners on his ticket. They put George H.W. Bush into the White House, and he had no southerner on his ticket either.
Democrats have an image problem with southeners. The south is not more racist than any other part of the country anymore, but they get stereotyped with that constantly. Then they see these pompous elitist ass aristocrats from the North talking down to them, and it makes their blood boil. Howard Dean and John Kerry have both said things that made southerners' blood boil.
John Edwards understands all this, which is why he knows he has a better shot in the South than they do. At least he knows southerners won't think he's a snotty condescending jerk.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at February 8, 2004 02:22 AM