I'm Mad As Hell...
Nov. 12th, 2008 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sadlikeknives...and I'm not gonna take it any more.
Everybody can just STOP TALKING SMACK ABOUT THE SOUTH ANY DAY NOW.
It started when I saw, on a message board I normally like, someone make the argument that the election results proved that the South is still full of ignorant racist bigots, and furthermore, should not be allowed to vote since clearly they keep getting it wrong. But I was like, okay, that's a message board, anyone can say anything on a message board.
It's different when it's the goddamn New York Times: And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.
Buh? Maybe the political analyst they consulted will be more kind.
“There’s no other explanation than race,” he said.
...never mind.
It couldn't possibly be that the South tends to be very socially conservative. It couldn't possibly be that people in the South have different views on any of the issues of this campaign, such as, perhaps, being concerned about what withdrawal would do in Iraq, or happen to respect McCain's half-century of service and all he has done and sacrificed for his country, or find Sarah Palin's folksiness appealing (look, they went for Bush twice, why are you surprised?). It couldn't possibly be that the Obama campaign essentially went, "Well, we're gonna lose them," and turned their campaigning money to states they had a chance of winning, leaving us to be inundated by McCain ads every time we turned on our TVs, with very little parity. It couldn't possibly be that many white Obama voters went, "I don't stand a chance of flipping this state and I know it, and I'm tired of getting my heart broken," (I personally spent election night with my hopes pinned to Georgia, then North Carolina, to see at least some of the South flipped blue) and stayed home. No, the only possible reason a band of counties in northern Alabama (Not even the entire fucking state, if you look at their map, just a band of counties north of Birmingham) went more heavily for McCain than they had for Bush in '04 is because his opponent was black. Because we don't think with our brains in the South, don'tchaknow?
To make matters worse if you're me, this article focuses on Alabama specifically, when if you look at the map, way more of Arkansas went more Republican. He could've gone and picked on them, but no. I am so fucking sick of people beating up on my state. Sane people live here but we can't get anything done if you keep poking at the crazies, because it doesn't help, it just gets them riled up.
I'm sorry if we're kind of backwards down here, but we're poor, and poor leads to shitty education, and poor means many of the students in those counties that went more red still don't even have a computer at home, never fucking mind internet access, and yes I know this to be fact because my mother teaches in one of those counties, has for thirty years, and some of us are trying to fix the problem and no one helps, not really, oh, no, you keep fucking making fun of us for it. "Ha ha, Alabama and Mississippi are at the bottom of the education rankings again. Ignorant Southerners."
And I am sorry if we're stagnant, but you guys, we have a problem in this state, and it is called the Alabama Constitution. We can't get shit done in this state without a goddamn constitutional amendment, and it's just out of fucking control, so we vote no on everything as a matter of course to try to keep the length down, unless we'd be fucking over some county that just wants to raise their fucking taxes. It's stupid, okay, it's stupid and fucked up and for some reason they won't just cave and write a new one, and yes, there's still discriminatory language in there, because when the amendment went up to remove the rest of it everyone screeched, "JUST WRITE A NEW, NON-RACIST CONSTITUTION ALREADY!" It's fucked up. We're trying. I have high hopes that this state will begin to be able to move forward if we can just get the goddamn constitution fixed.
Some of us are trying. Democrats, yes, but a whole fucking lot of Republicans, too, would love to see us be less poor and better educated and have a decent goddamn constitution already. And calling us stupid and saying we shouldn't vote doesn't fucking help.
I have a few respectful suggestions for Adam Nossiter of the New York Times. 1: Fuck you. 2: Get the fuck out of Vernon. There's half your fucking problem right there. I congratulate you on finding idiots to quote in Vernon, but it's a bit like finding sand at the beach.
And now I'm just going to pause and tell you about my grandfather, because people can surprise you. Except for a stint in the army, served in Germany, my grandfather has essentially never been out of Alabama. He's from one of those dirt-poor, very red, full of racists counties, brought up well before the Civil Rights movement. I have heard him toss out the n-word without a thought. He will say to anyone who dares broach the issue with him, "Look, if you don't want gay marriage don't marry a gay person, but it's not your business who they marry." He's a huge Obama fan, who's absolutely thrilled about his election, and I would love to buy him Obama's memoir for Christmas, I think he'd really like that, except his eyesight's going and he can't read any more and he doesn't know how to work a CD player to listen to the audio book and now I'm crying, great.
I would like this entry to contain reason and sense-making, but it's just not happening. If you think the South is inferior and backwards and racist and you and want to come in here and argue with me about why or point and laugh at me for trying to say otherwise, please just...don't. I can't take any more of it today.
Everybody can just STOP TALKING SMACK ABOUT THE SOUTH ANY DAY NOW.
It started when I saw, on a message board I normally like, someone make the argument that the election results proved that the South is still full of ignorant racist bigots, and furthermore, should not be allowed to vote since clearly they keep getting it wrong. But I was like, okay, that's a message board, anyone can say anything on a message board.
It's different when it's the goddamn New York Times: And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.
Buh? Maybe the political analyst they consulted will be more kind.
“There’s no other explanation than race,” he said.
...never mind.
It couldn't possibly be that the South tends to be very socially conservative. It couldn't possibly be that people in the South have different views on any of the issues of this campaign, such as, perhaps, being concerned about what withdrawal would do in Iraq, or happen to respect McCain's half-century of service and all he has done and sacrificed for his country, or find Sarah Palin's folksiness appealing (look, they went for Bush twice, why are you surprised?). It couldn't possibly be that the Obama campaign essentially went, "Well, we're gonna lose them," and turned their campaigning money to states they had a chance of winning, leaving us to be inundated by McCain ads every time we turned on our TVs, with very little parity. It couldn't possibly be that many white Obama voters went, "I don't stand a chance of flipping this state and I know it, and I'm tired of getting my heart broken," (I personally spent election night with my hopes pinned to Georgia, then North Carolina, to see at least some of the South flipped blue) and stayed home. No, the only possible reason a band of counties in northern Alabama (Not even the entire fucking state, if you look at their map, just a band of counties north of Birmingham) went more heavily for McCain than they had for Bush in '04 is because his opponent was black. Because we don't think with our brains in the South, don'tchaknow?
To make matters worse if you're me, this article focuses on Alabama specifically, when if you look at the map, way more of Arkansas went more Republican. He could've gone and picked on them, but no. I am so fucking sick of people beating up on my state. Sane people live here but we can't get anything done if you keep poking at the crazies, because it doesn't help, it just gets them riled up.
I'm sorry if we're kind of backwards down here, but we're poor, and poor leads to shitty education, and poor means many of the students in those counties that went more red still don't even have a computer at home, never fucking mind internet access, and yes I know this to be fact because my mother teaches in one of those counties, has for thirty years, and some of us are trying to fix the problem and no one helps, not really, oh, no, you keep fucking making fun of us for it. "Ha ha, Alabama and Mississippi are at the bottom of the education rankings again. Ignorant Southerners."
And I am sorry if we're stagnant, but you guys, we have a problem in this state, and it is called the Alabama Constitution. We can't get shit done in this state without a goddamn constitutional amendment, and it's just out of fucking control, so we vote no on everything as a matter of course to try to keep the length down, unless we'd be fucking over some county that just wants to raise their fucking taxes. It's stupid, okay, it's stupid and fucked up and for some reason they won't just cave and write a new one, and yes, there's still discriminatory language in there, because when the amendment went up to remove the rest of it everyone screeched, "JUST WRITE A NEW, NON-RACIST CONSTITUTION ALREADY!" It's fucked up. We're trying. I have high hopes that this state will begin to be able to move forward if we can just get the goddamn constitution fixed.
Some of us are trying. Democrats, yes, but a whole fucking lot of Republicans, too, would love to see us be less poor and better educated and have a decent goddamn constitution already. And calling us stupid and saying we shouldn't vote doesn't fucking help.
I have a few respectful suggestions for Adam Nossiter of the New York Times. 1: Fuck you. 2: Get the fuck out of Vernon. There's half your fucking problem right there. I congratulate you on finding idiots to quote in Vernon, but it's a bit like finding sand at the beach.
And now I'm just going to pause and tell you about my grandfather, because people can surprise you. Except for a stint in the army, served in Germany, my grandfather has essentially never been out of Alabama. He's from one of those dirt-poor, very red, full of racists counties, brought up well before the Civil Rights movement. I have heard him toss out the n-word without a thought. He will say to anyone who dares broach the issue with him, "Look, if you don't want gay marriage don't marry a gay person, but it's not your business who they marry." He's a huge Obama fan, who's absolutely thrilled about his election, and I would love to buy him Obama's memoir for Christmas, I think he'd really like that, except his eyesight's going and he can't read any more and he doesn't know how to work a CD player to listen to the audio book and now I'm crying, great.
I would like this entry to contain reason and sense-making, but it's just not happening. If you think the South is inferior and backwards and racist and you and want to come in here and argue with me about why or point and laugh at me for trying to say otherwise, please just...don't. I can't take any more of it today.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 05:32 pm (UTC)*gives more chocolate*
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 11:01 pm (UTC)Oh my God, the Constitution is so insane. It's, like, several volumes in a bookshelf in Montgomery, and there is only one copy, because holy cow.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 11:00 pm (UTC)And maybe it's just that I'm here so I'm ultra-sensitive to it, but yeah, it always seems like Alabama gets the brunt of this stuff. He couldn't have gone and picked on Arkansas?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 06:15 pm (UTC)I worry that this sounds condescending, but thank you for an awesome rant. And I hope you do make your state better.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 10:35 pm (UTC)And yeah, *hugs*. People suck, a lot. And a lot of the people bitching about stereotypes seem to miss the fact that they use them themselves.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 10:55 pm (UTC)I actually have nothing against the people of Vernon, except that some of them apparently said some stupid shit to somebody from the NYT. I would loooooove to hear the quotes from the people who told him to fuck off when he tried to get them to spew racist nonsense. If there's anything Jay Leno's Jaywalking has taught us you can find somebody to say anything.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 10:48 pm (UTC)I'm a Georgia native, well-educated, and (I hope) fairly well-spoken. And, as I'm sure is clear by my LJ entries, I didn't vote for the President-elect, but for The Other Guy. But I think narrowing it to simply education and poverty over simplifies the issue. It has been my experience, in talking to fellow Southerners -- friends, family -- a lot of it is a fundamental difference of opinion on the role of government in everyday life.
Of course, I'm quite different from a lot of my Red State bretheren. I don't think either side is "right" or "wrong"; I tend to pick and choose a bit from both sides of the aisle, as neither platform really fits me. But I get just as pissed as you do when people start intimating that we're ignorant hicks because of the way we vote.
Especially when it's from a northern Democrat. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 10:53 pm (UTC)But when people come to slam on the South, and this was mostly at that message board I will not name, really, it's always, "They're poor and the education sucks, what do you expect?" and both of those things are true but the haters aren't exactly helping to fix the problems. Grr.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 12:37 am (UTC)God knows I didn't really want to vote for either guy. But I sure as hell wasn't voting for Bob Barr or Cynthia McKinney. ::twitch::
no subject
Date: 2008-11-13 02:58 am (UTC)Did you see the SNL sketch about sending NYTimes reporters to Alaska to cover Sarah Palin? And with each new hardship (no cabs, stuff not being open late, weather, physical fitness required etc.), the coddled, wimpy, elitist writers dropped like flies. Granted, I like a lot of the NYTimes but there is definitely an elitist bent to it (especially in their "trend" reporting).