11.8.05

Pride
Steve Gilliard sez:

"But there is a deeper and widely shared cultural issue here: New Yorkers hate Southerners and Southern culture. A Southern accent draws scorn from everybody. which is why I find the idea of Fred Thompson as Manhattan DA on Law and Order as likely as Pvt. Jenna Bush. The minute he opened his mouth, most New Yorkers would stop listening. Even white people here call them crackers. Bill Clinton is accepted because white Southerners hate him.



New York doesn't even have a country music station. They tried and no one listened. Yes, Garth Brooks played in Central Park, but even the cops laughed at the idea of New Yorkers actually going to such a thing. Sure, they wanted to build a NASCAR track in Staten Island, but that's Staten Island, our very own Cobb County, but with 10 times the racists. Most New Yorkers laugh at NASCAR as the sport of drunken idiots. If Scott think that disdain for white Southerners is limited to the "elite" we can visit any high school and raise the subject, Stuy, Dalton, Midwood and see what answers we get. We can ask them if any listen to country music, watch NASCAR or what they think of the South.



Target is accepted here because it is low impact, and its image is urban friendly. Home Depot provides a real service since the closing of Woolworths and Martin's Paints. But Wal Mart, while it has low prices, also says cheap. And anti-union. Which matters here.



Wal Mart can keep trying, but when they run into continued hostility, with every candidate forced to oppose them, they might understand the issue isn't big box stores but them."



It's an interesting time in America. Most people don't have a sense of, or pride in, place. But New Yorkers do - all of 'em. They live in the best damn city in the world, and they know it, and they're proud of it. They've got the best baseball team, they've got the best culture, best restaurants - everyone wants to come there. Of course they look down on the South - they look down on everywhere (there was a great back-and-forth a couple years ago about NY-DC puffery). And the South is (for better or worse) one of the only other places in this country that has a sense of pride in place - only, it's also fueled by resentment, and the idea that they're being mocked and looked down upon. 'Cause, well, they are.



Wal-Mart is about not caring, about not even having a right to have an opinion on the kind of place you'd like to live. Cynical greedy bastards.

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