F the South

[The Great Snook]

This is one of the best rants I've read since Bush's re-election.

Don't read if you can't handle a little cussing.

Here it is

[Darkwolf]

Your link is DOA for me.

As a counter point (as I can guess where that article was going), it is interesting to look at the county-by-county voting map.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic.../countymap.htm

It seems that separating those who are the intellectually superior liberals from all of us low IQ conservatives is going to be a little more complex than just having the Pacific coast, north central, and northeastern states secede.

[ November 10, 2004, 18:23: Message edited by: Darkwolf ]

[The Great Snook]

The naughty word filter is blocking the link.

The name of the website is f***thesouth.com.

You can figure out what the ***s are.

[AMaster]

That's brilliant.

[Darkwolf]

Too bad that he/she discredited the entire piece by losing their rationality; it was otherwise a pretty good piece.

The only issue that I find interesting in there is the issue about taxes and the distribution of Federal $s. IMO the piece is misleading, as IIRC, the largest portion of spending in the states that take the most in Federal $s are for highways and aid for the food producing industries (I believe this was historically true, but could have changed). Now I am not real big on subsidizing farmers, but I am afraid that if it were to cease, most Americans would be very unhappy at the results.

Highways are a huge expenditure, and unfortunately, there simply isn't enough people living in the majority of the "bad" states to provide taxes for all the highways running through those states. Keep in mind however, these roads provide the commerce by which the two coasts trade, so unless you are ready to start moving everything by air...

[Slith]

Hmm. I'm rather offended, being a resident of the South. I know people who are similar to the people described in that article, but they're not anything like the majority. They're a vocal minority, unlike assholish Northerners who come down here and treat us like moronic neanderthals... Or treat us as if we cannot read when we visit there... One hint of a Southern accent in a New York restaurant is enough for a sneer and a sarcastic attempt to use smaller words, along with a slow sounding-out of any word with more than two syllables on the menu, bar no restaurant I went to in my multiple visits. While this is just one example, I could give countless more, I suppose, but I don't want to chronicle the minutes of my visits to the North (which would be required to mention all the rudeness and disrespect I encountered.)

[Spellbound]

uh... Slith -- I don't think it's too smart to counter rudenes with more of the same. Does it make you feel better?

They're a vocal minority, unlike assholish Northerners who come down here and treat us like moronic neanderthals

Seems like you like to generalize as well. For your information there are plenty of people who are from the North (i.e. myself) who have lived in the South for many years and treat everyone with the amount of respect they deserve -- equally.

[Llandon]

Well I found it to be a little bit offensive since I'm from the South as well. And proudly so. But it was funny. But the writer should just say "*uck everyone else who doesn't agree with me" instead of just picking on the south.

[Fiatil]

Not that it matters much, but I agree with the article, living in the south myself. They seem to be a bit more than a "vocal minority" here.

[ November 12, 2004, 05:29: Message edited by: Fiatil ]

[Slith]

Spellbound - Apologies. I was quite angered by that website... I was referring mostly to people who come around on vacation, who really are uniformly rude, not long-term residents. They tend to be just as nice as anyone else.

Fiatil - I live in the "Deep South" - our rednecks seem to be less vocal than those of the "South" west of Lousiana or north of the Mason-Dixie line (neither of which is really considered the South by most of us in the Deep South.) It's probably because there's more rednecks down here, and therefore they become a silent majority, not a vocal minority...

[dmc]

I'm sorry, but being originally from the Northeast, and having relatives now in Georgia and Florida, I literally laughed out loud, much to the amusement of several of my associates. That's funny.

[Stefanina]

While amusing, I do find it a bit insulting. My county voted for the liberals, thank you.
Besides, Florids is only part of the "Deep South" due to location. It's mostly populated by snowbirds, anyways. We native Floridians are the minority in this state these days.

[NonSequitur]

As amusing as this is, it does nothing to help this writer's cause. Ironically, it's as much "You're with us or you're against us" as anything Bush ever said. Proof that hypocrisy is alive and well all over the world, regardless of politics.

For once, Darkwolf and I are in complete agreement: any power this message had is eliminated by the number of expletives used. People like this destroy and undermine the people making similar arguments more coherently; this is a crying shame, since the generalisations made by the writer have a kernel of truth to them, the credibility of which has now been completely shot.

****ers... it's the ones like this that make the rest of us liberals/moderate Leftists look irrational. But somehow, the same basic approach still works for Coulter and Hannity. Maybe it's because they blame everyone who's not white, heterosexual, pro-Christian and pro-life instead of generalising half the country into the Idiot category.

PS: Woo hoo, new gem!

[Edit: Although the writer is evidently very unhappy with the state of the union, he/she has at least referenced just about every assertion they've made - some of which are interesting points which will be lost on a morally smug and self-assured section of the population.]

[AMaster]

Maybe I have too much faith in humanity (*cough*), but I assumed it was a joke. And if it isn't, well, it certainly isn't worth getting worked up over

[The Great Snook]

I just read about this post at another board. Someone (in a brilliant move) looked up the website and it turns out it is registered to someone in Wisconsin. Last time I checked Wisconsin wasn't in the Northeast.

[Taluntain]

Who the domain name is registered to doesn't even remotely have to be the same person who runs the site, or posts on it. Not to mention that even if it was, the domain could have been registered in one place originally, and then the owner could have moved elsewhere. So looking up the domain whois is no proof of anything.

[Faraaz]

Hehe...that was pretty funny...

But, I'm assuming he overexaggerated a few points...getting angry like that rarely ends up in a fully rational post...

[Rednik]

I love that essay.

[Falstaff]

Ahh... nothing like a calmly reasoned attempt at persuasion.

[Ankiseth Vanir]

They're a vocal minority, unlike assholish Northerners who come down here and treat us like moronic neanderthals...

This is DAMN funny! Bob Somerby JUST wrote on an article on this a few days ago! And with a little more grace than the first website posted, I might add.

THEM “RED STATE” BLUES: Red-staters love to gripe about blue-state elites—and to pocket that free blue-state money

For ourselves, we don’t believe in all this “red state” and “blue state” hooey, as we’ve discussed in detail before. But we’re tired of all the silly crying about the way “northeastern” “elites” just won’t respect their “red state” cousins. So here’s an idea for the boo-hooing redmen: Why don’t you stop taking all that free money from blue-state elites before you cry about their rude insults?

[ November 12, 2004, 05:25: Message edited by: Ankiseth Vanir ]