He's not a big name, but comedian Kevin O'Shea has a funny joke about prejudices towards the South: "I have to say, one part of the country that I do not like is the South (although I've never been there or know anyone who's from there)."
More so than the East Coast it seems that people from the West Coast have this monolithic understanding of what Southern culture is and what people from the South are like. It's very much rooted in this satisfied, liberal sense-of-self that many Californians have, as well as the fact that most people outside of the South gain most of their knowledge of the area through Social Studies in school (which tends to focus on the history of Slavery and racism in the region.) And I state this as someone who's born and raised in California, still lives there and considers himself liberal in his political viewpoint.
But as someone who has good friends from the South and as someone who's been there, the place is much more nuanced and complex than outsiders give it credit for, and it peeves me whenever I hear people who obviously have no real knowledge of the place denigrate it. (For instance: one time I was in a Borders inadvertently eavesdropping on two people and when one of them said "I'm moving to Texas", the other one said "why would you ever want to live there?!") Sure, racist and/or conservative White Trash are in the South, but if travel 25-50 miles inland from San Francisco you'll encounter plenty of racist and/or conservative White Trash there too. People are people, good or bad, and they live almost everywhere.