Dear drennen_won,
As you may have been able to tell, your note set off something ugly in me, and I sincerely apologize for not waiting one day to respond, when I would have had a more level head.
I would say, in my own defense, that anyone who has heard me a couple of times should be able to recognize that my jabs at the South, and southerners in general, are so far over the top that they can't possibly reflect my own opinions about the region, which are complex.
Still.
For every stately southern gentlemen or belle I have ever met, and there have been a good number (check out the poetry or fiction of my pal, Pulitzer Prize winner Eddie Francisco
http://www.edfrancisco.com/joomla/, for example, or the music of another old friend, Kate Campbell
http://www.katecampbell.com/, who I have known since we were teens, although, punkers beware; she's folky) there are literally dozens of idiots I have seen publicly cursing their children at the Walmart, or blowing by me on the interstate with a back window sticker displaying Calvin pissing on the image of Jeff Gordon, or 250 pound women in the grocery store line in front of me wearing thongs that extended a full 2 inches farther above their ass-crack than did the Gwen Stefani "Wind It Up" sweatpants they were wearing. I have seen 6-year-olds outside of women's clinics, holding posters of mangled fetuses, screaming at passers-by about how pro-choicers will "fry in hell". I have heard one student, following the shooting at the local UU church, boldly proclaim that it "served those queers right". Or "raht", really. And then seen several students around him quickly nod their heads in agreement. When I pointed out my harsh disagreement with this assessment, 4 students filed a protest with my department head, complaining that I was trying to "spread liberal ideas in a math class". Thankfully, she blew it off.
I live in the same county with a state rep who shoved through a law in the Tennessee State Legislature that allowed drivers, accidentally running over animals on the road, to take the carcasses home and eat them. He's considered a strong candidate to be our next mayor, with aspirations to the governor's seat.
I live in a county where a crooked slumlord legislator with a 70% voter approval rating over a 2 day period, introduced separate legislation 1) requiring the state to issue death certificates to aborted fetuses, and 2) denying any health services to any "illegals", even those in the act of giving birth. Process servers have been trying to serve him with a summons about the vile state of his rental properties; they claim they can never find him.
So, while some individuals are outstanding, my overall sense of the goodness of these people is tenuous at best.
Even so, you didn't deserve my crack about your tobacky and your overalls. My guess is you neither dip nor clip.
You don't have to friend me or nothing, but I hope you'll accept my sincere apology, along with an attempt to buffer my negasouthativity (and you're probably doing me a favor, since Spike illustrates for us the unpleasantness that can occur when callers try to hang with one recurring theme too many times. Right, pets?)
dfk
listen, dave. i was born and raised in georgia, albeit atlanta, but my mom's from thomasville, ga and dad's from birmingham. i'm through and through, a southerner. i'm proud of that shit. i love the south. could you please stop with the self deprecating "simple southerner" bit? you're throwing us down the river. i get it, the south is dumb and full of racists. very good. tom does it from time to time. fair enough. you initiate it every call. come on, dog. let it go. you're a smart dude, your shirts have sleeves. be proud to be from tennessee. you know it's proud of you. who's that bozo from the cynics that just rips on the south? don't feed that clown's fire. big ups, dave.
You sound like a smart person. You call up and impress upon Tom how sophisticated some southerners are. Don't send him a letter; your challenges with capitalization will undermine your argument.
In the meantime, I will do what I do.
P.S. Starting a message with the word "listen" is so stereotypically redneck, I hope you didn't get your tobacky on your overalls while you were typing all of that up.