Seceding from sanity Them dang Southerners

[depakid]

Southern writer Walker Percy liked to poke fun at Ohioans in his novels, just to even things out a bit.

"Usually Mississippians and Georgians are getting it from everybody, and Alabamians," he once explained to an interviewer. "So, what's wrong with making smart-aleck remarks about Ohio? Nobody puts Ohio down. Why shouldn't I put Ohio down?"

Percy, the genial genius, laughed at his own remark.

Now, apparently, it's the Buckeye State's turn to poke back. In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party.

"We got too many Jim DeMints (South Carolina) and Tom Coburns (Oklahoma)," he told an interviewer with The Columbus Dispatch. "It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, 'These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?"

Down South, people are trying to figure out what "errrr, errrrr" means. Jack Bass, author of eight books about social and political change in the South, speculated in an e-mail that Voinovich really meant grrrr, grrrrr, as in "growling canines whose bark scares more than do Obama's purrs, especially with the Dow at a nine-month high."

Whatever Voinovich's sound effects were intended to convey, his meaning was clear enough: Those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party.

Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong.

Not all Southern Republicans are wing nuts. Nor does the GOP have a monopoly on ignorance or racism. And, the South, for all its sins, is also lush with beauty, grace and mystery. Nevertheless, it is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon, and becoming increasingly associated with some of the South's worst ideas.

It is not helpful (or surprising) that "birthers" -- conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is not a native son -- have assumed kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South.

In a poll commissioned by the liberal blog, Daily Kos, participants were asked: "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?"

Hefty majorities in the Northeast, Midwest and West believe Obama was born in the U.S. But in the land of cotton, where old times are not by God forgotten, only 47 percent believe Obama was born in America and 30 percent aren't sure.

Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/08/seceding_from_sanity_them_dang.html#preview

[BirminghamExaminer]

1. Is Utah part of the south now?

Being from Alabama is often embarrassing but most of the stuff I hear about my state and other southern states is true to some degree at least.

Being from Alabama, I must tell you that we don't consider Oklahoma, Texas or Florida as part of the south. I know it sounds crazy but that's the way it is here, just like we call all soft drinks coke like most people call all tissue, Kleenex.

I can't defend Alabama because there are so many bigots and right wing nuts here but there are also ordinary people here and even a few liberals.

I really wish I had a way to thank Bill Maher when he recently said that he had been to the south and that it's a mistake to discount the liberals and democrats who exist there and that he always had a good turn out of frustrated southern liberals.

[provis99]

3. you're from 'Bama? At least they've got Huntsville.

ex-Mississippian here. Alabama is about 100 years more culturally advanced than Mississippi, which has not really made it out of the 19th Century yet. Back is Mississippi we didn't even consider Arkansas and Tennessee to be part of the South, so I know the mindset in 'Bama that excludes Okla, Texas, and Fla from the pantheon of Southern states.

I think what Voinovich meant by the errr,errr sound was that these Southern Republicans sound like knuckle-dragging cavemen, who simply grunt in monosyllables. Pretty apt description of the politicians we had in Mississippi, except for Bennie Thompson, who is the only sane Mississippi politican I can think of.

[parasearchers]

2. Wish they would secede, hey wait

I live in new mexico