I am sorry, but I am pissed. Or as the British say, pissed off.
I feel I must explain myself. I am Southern, a lifelong Democrat, and educated. To graduate level. I speak my native language with reasonable articulace. When I am amongst my own, in Virginia, my natural Southern accent returns. Otherwise, because I come from what was probably the last generation aspiring to a college education, I had the benefit of speech classes at my high school. Even then, at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the accepted view was, in order to sound educated, as well as be educated, we - of that era - had to forego our natural drawl.
The lovely Coastal high Virginian accent with its "oots" and "aboots" is dying out with the last remnants of my mother's generations. I tear up each time Douglas Wilder speaks because I know when that generation is gone, we'll be left with what is becoming more and more dominant in the South - the Valley Girl lilting inflection, as if every statement begs a question. Think Krystal Ball, who should speak Valley Girl, but Shenandoah instead of San Fernando.
In addition to my own language, I speak three others, which I studied in Virginia and abroad. As far as education and political bent is concerned, I am not an exception to the rule in the South. In fact, I am from that generation of the 1970s, wherein the working class, of which I am a part, benefitted from Lyndon Johnson's policies of expanding higher education for all who aspired.
Most of the people with whom I attended high school were and are Democrats. Fauquier County has always been the blue thorn in the red ass of Frank Wolf's Tenth Congressional District. Now it's become a two-pronged blue pincer, along with Charlottesville, squeezing Robert Hurt's buttocks. I hope it's painful.
What I'm saying is, I am not a caricature, and to quote Charles Blow yet again, there is nothing Southerners hate more than to be caricatured by Yankees, red and blue.
For all Mitt Romney tried pandering with his "y'all" drawl and his cheesey grits (emphasis on the "cheesey" part), Bill Maher proved on Friday night that a certain tranche of the Left is just as narrow-minded when it comes to anything of the South or Southern.
Observe the picture below:-
The man standing between Alexandra Pelosi and Bill Maher is Ed Helms. Helms is from Georgia and was the special fourth panelist on Maher's show Friday evening.
Helms appears midway through the this second panel clip:-
The clip begins with Maher's latest "Stupidest State" contest, last held two years ago and won by, Alabama, a Southern state. This time, Virginia figures amongst the candidates, all of which are either Southern or Southwestern states. I know the reason Maher is going to pinpoint Virginia, and that's down to the intrusive vaginal probe and personhood legislative measures, one of which was changed by ardent protest and the second of which was defeated by the same means. That isn't stupid. That's citizens exercising their First Amendment Rights. But I notice that Pennsylvania, home of Maher's bumchum Chris Matthews, isn't included in this dynamic, and the governor there is about to sign into law another invasive scan designed to shame a woman out of having an abortion. I notice that California, Maher's current home state, wasn't included either, and they have a personhood law being debated in their legislature. Or New Jersey, where Maher grew up, whose governor recently vetoed a law legalising same sex marriage.
It's just too easy to target the South.
Enter Ed Helms, sans Southern accent and Oberlin-educated, who just happens to have a hobby which Maher regularly derides: Civil War re-enactment.
Maher jumped at the opportunity to wonder why Helms wanted to associate with such losers, who were intent upon seeing the "South rise again." Please watch the segment. It is a Master Class in Liberal Narrow-Mindedness. It made me feel ashamed to be associated with the same side of the political equation as these people.
In a nutshell, Helms painstakingly explains that he, like his father, is a Civil War buff. Notice, he says "Civil War." Not "War Between the States" or "War of Northern Aggression" or any such malarkey. You see, there are those of us, in the majority, who realise that the thing ended in 1865. We lost. Get over it (Yankees). He also explained that most of the people who re-enacted battles were geeks, history buffs, interested in military tactic and authenticity, much like - as Amy Holmes remarked (and it pains me to agree with her) - Renaissance Fairs or, in the UK, English Civil War re-enactment between Cavaliers and Roundheads. Helms explained that much of this happens in the South because most of the battles occurred in the South, but re-enactments occur in all of the 50 states, even California. Hey, Yankees can be Civil War buffs too.
In fact, I was hoping Helms would go further and inform Maher that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy have active chapters in every state in the Union. Because, you know, after the War, Southerners, like a lot of other people, went West. Even to Holy Saint Progressiveland California.
But Maher abruptly stops the conversation, when Helms informs him of something that goes against his perceived reality. He simply chooses to deem such people perenniel losers and move on. He doesn't want to know.
And then we come to the New Rules section. The offending part occurs roughly around the 5:58 section.
Another overt dig at the South, assigning one day of celebration of Southern heritage called "St Cracker's Day," complete with a teeshirt worn by a nubile young girl proclaiming "Kiss Me, I'm Your Sister." Because poor white Southerners are all rifely incestuous, don't you know? Listen carefully around the six-minute mark, and amongst the laughter of the limousine liberals in the crowd, a moan of protest from Ed Helms.
Helms is a Southerner, and we're raised, for the most part, to be polite to our hosts who invite us to be their guests, no matter how ill-bred the host may prove to be. I could conjure up a caricature too, as I'm sure Ed Helms could as well, of the drunken, shanty Irish, who share their abodes with animals and often have pigs who are cleaner than they. But I know that's a caricature, and it would be too ignorant and ill-bred of me (or Ed Helms) to even assume that any part of that depiction was true.
I guess Ed and I have to assume that Bill's mamma and daddy just didn't raise him right. Or maybe he's just too narrow-minded to allow himself to believe that Southerners are anything other than objects of derision with which he is comfortable. Like the Teabaggers who choose to believe the President is a socialist Muslim, it's just too easy for Bill to believe that all Southerners are toothless, inbred neo-Confederates.
Because a narrow mind is a terrible thing to expand.
I feel I must explain myself. I am Southern, a lifelong Democrat, and educated. To graduate level. I speak my native language with reasonable articulace. When I am amongst my own, in Virginia, my natural Southern accent returns. Otherwise, because I come from what was probably the last generation aspiring to a college education, I had the benefit of speech classes at my high school. Even then, at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the accepted view was, in order to sound educated, as well as be educated, we - of that era - had to forego our natural drawl.
The lovely Coastal high Virginian accent with its "oots" and "aboots" is dying out with the last remnants of my mother's generations. I tear up each time Douglas Wilder speaks because I know when that generation is gone, we'll be left with what is becoming more and more dominant in the South - the Valley Girl lilting inflection, as if every statement begs a question. Think Krystal Ball, who should speak Valley Girl, but Shenandoah instead of San Fernando.
In addition to my own language, I speak three others, which I studied in Virginia and abroad. As far as education and political bent is concerned, I am not an exception to the rule in the South. In fact, I am from that generation of the 1970s, wherein the working class, of which I am a part, benefitted from Lyndon Johnson's policies of expanding higher education for all who aspired.
Most of the people with whom I attended high school were and are Democrats. Fauquier County has always been the blue thorn in the red ass of Frank Wolf's Tenth Congressional District. Now it's become a two-pronged blue pincer, along with Charlottesville, squeezing Robert Hurt's buttocks. I hope it's painful.
What I'm saying is, I am not a caricature, and to quote Charles Blow yet again, there is nothing Southerners hate more than to be caricatured by Yankees, red and blue.
For all Mitt Romney tried pandering with his "y'all" drawl and his cheesey grits (emphasis on the "cheesey" part), Bill Maher proved on Friday night that a certain tranche of the Left is just as narrow-minded when it comes to anything of the South or Southern.
Observe the picture below:-
The man standing between Alexandra Pelosi and Bill Maher is Ed Helms. Helms is from Georgia and was the special fourth panelist on Maher's show Friday evening.
Helms appears midway through the this second panel clip:-
The clip begins with Maher's latest "Stupidest State" contest, last held two years ago and won by, Alabama, a Southern state. This time, Virginia figures amongst the candidates, all of which are either Southern or Southwestern states. I know the reason Maher is going to pinpoint Virginia, and that's down to the intrusive vaginal probe and personhood legislative measures, one of which was changed by ardent protest and the second of which was defeated by the same means. That isn't stupid. That's citizens exercising their First Amendment Rights. But I notice that Pennsylvania, home of Maher's bumchum Chris Matthews, isn't included in this dynamic, and the governor there is about to sign into law another invasive scan designed to shame a woman out of having an abortion. I notice that California, Maher's current home state, wasn't included either, and they have a personhood law being debated in their legislature. Or New Jersey, where Maher grew up, whose governor recently vetoed a law legalising same sex marriage.
It's just too easy to target the South.
Enter Ed Helms, sans Southern accent and Oberlin-educated, who just happens to have a hobby which Maher regularly derides: Civil War re-enactment.
Maher jumped at the opportunity to wonder why Helms wanted to associate with such losers, who were intent upon seeing the "South rise again." Please watch the segment. It is a Master Class in Liberal Narrow-Mindedness. It made me feel ashamed to be associated with the same side of the political equation as these people.
In a nutshell, Helms painstakingly explains that he, like his father, is a Civil War buff. Notice, he says "Civil War." Not "War Between the States" or "War of Northern Aggression" or any such malarkey. You see, there are those of us, in the majority, who realise that the thing ended in 1865. We lost. Get over it (Yankees). He also explained that most of the people who re-enacted battles were geeks, history buffs, interested in military tactic and authenticity, much like - as Amy Holmes remarked (and it pains me to agree with her) - Renaissance Fairs or, in the UK, English Civil War re-enactment between Cavaliers and Roundheads. Helms explained that much of this happens in the South because most of the battles occurred in the South, but re-enactments occur in all of the 50 states, even California. Hey, Yankees can be Civil War buffs too.
In fact, I was hoping Helms would go further and inform Maher that the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy have active chapters in every state in the Union. Because, you know, after the War, Southerners, like a lot of other people, went West. Even to Holy Saint Progressiveland California.
But Maher abruptly stops the conversation, when Helms informs him of something that goes against his perceived reality. He simply chooses to deem such people perenniel losers and move on. He doesn't want to know.
And then we come to the New Rules section. The offending part occurs roughly around the 5:58 section.
Another overt dig at the South, assigning one day of celebration of Southern heritage called "St Cracker's Day," complete with a teeshirt worn by a nubile young girl proclaiming "Kiss Me, I'm Your Sister." Because poor white Southerners are all rifely incestuous, don't you know? Listen carefully around the six-minute mark, and amongst the laughter of the limousine liberals in the crowd, a moan of protest from Ed Helms.
Helms is a Southerner, and we're raised, for the most part, to be polite to our hosts who invite us to be their guests, no matter how ill-bred the host may prove to be. I could conjure up a caricature too, as I'm sure Ed Helms could as well, of the drunken, shanty Irish, who share their abodes with animals and often have pigs who are cleaner than they. But I know that's a caricature, and it would be too ignorant and ill-bred of me (or Ed Helms) to even assume that any part of that depiction was true.
I guess Ed and I have to assume that Bill's mamma and daddy just didn't raise him right. Or maybe he's just too narrow-minded to allow himself to believe that Southerners are anything other than objects of derision with which he is comfortable. Like the Teabaggers who choose to believe the President is a socialist Muslim, it's just too easy for Bill to believe that all Southerners are toothless, inbred neo-Confederates.
Because a narrow mind is a terrible thing to expand.
Yah... fuck the south, and all who whine about southern white folks being the "REAL" victims.
ReplyDeleteNo one's saying that they are, but thank you anyway for proving that if you go far enough to the Left, you come out on the Right ... at least in intolerance. Is there intolernance in the South? Yes, and those people are just as ignorant as you. There. You share something.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia was on the stupidest state lineup.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/real-time-with-bill-maher-blog/2012/3/16/stupidest-state-showdown.html