Over at TPM, readers from North Carolina are foaming at the mouth about another reader’s suggestion that South Carolina and North Carolina are about the same. FWIW, I think the North Carolinians are right that the states are quite different, but nevertheless, I always find it interesting how passionate southerners (or at least southeasterners) are about this stuff.
When I lived in Georgia, I twice had conversations where I confused something that happened with Georgia with something had happened in Alabama. I was told “Do not ever compare us with Alabama or with South Carolina”. I then asked how about other southern states and in each case was immediately given an overall ranking of “Virginia is the best, then North Carolina, then Georgia, then South Carolina, then Alabama and north Florida, and the rest of it you don’t even want to know about”. This wasn’t off the top of their heads, this was something that they had given a lot of thought to and were happy to explain at length (the explanations were quite similar to the TPM reader explanations). Another friend of mine from Georgia who moved to New York State told me that she felt proud that she could tell people that she now lived in New York State.
There’s nothing like this up north. Sure, people make cracks about New Jersey being polluted, New Yorkers being rude, and people from Massachusetts being assholes, but that’s about as far it goes.
Legalize
Don’t get me started on those bastards in Erie County.
celticdragonchick
Having lived in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina (Greensboro since 2005), I will say that North Carolina is by far the nicest of the lot.
Brian
Wait, Alabama’s above the ‘you don’t want to know’ group? Speaking as someone who lives there, I demand a recount! (Mainly ’cause if other states are worse than here, I fear.)
Bhaal
Having lived in the West almost all of my (admittedly long) adult life, I can only think of one state that’s somewhat consistently disparaged: Texas.
I’ve lived in AZ, CA and TX; while Texas sometimes takes a dim view of CA (‘fruits and nuts’) (and who’s citizens are overtly proud to be called ‘Texans’), I’ve never really experienced anything like this ‘southern feud’ in the West.
2 cents and all…
Mortimer
Michigan and Ohio might beg to differ…
Mnemosyne
I dunno — things can get pretty heated between Illinois and Wisconsin sometimes. Not that I expect anything better from a bunch of cheeseheads.
However, it is true that in the Midwest at least, the rivalries tend to be state-to-state and regional. I’ve never seen anyone try to make that kind of ranking between, say, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio.
Pangloss
What about Northern California’s hatred of Southern California?
beltane
I see the difference between Mississippi and Alabama as being akin to the difference between Sweden and Norway except even less so.
DougJ
@Brian:
I think they meant Mississippi and Arkansas.
kindness
And the good citizens of CT are idiots because they elect Joe Lieberman.
Third Eye Open
if they turned at least 30 of the states into perpetual wilderness areas things would be much better. As it is now, the SE is hot, humid and chock-full of truck-nutz toting reprobates and slow thinkers. Faulkner and O’Connor notwithstanding…
Mnemosyne
@Bhaal:
Oregon and Washington both hate California (or at least they used to), but that has a lot to do with all of the Californians who moved up there in the 1990s who drove up real estate prices and acted like jerks. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Californian say anything disparaging about those two states, though.
I’ve been saying bad things about Arizona lately but, let’s face it, they deserve it right now.
arguingwithsignposts
FWIW, I’ve lived in SC and Va., and spent some time traveling in Ga. and NC. They all have pockets of crazy. Greenville in SC is a pretty progressive area surrounded by Bob Jones-style nutjobs. Asheville and Raleigh-Durham are pretty progressive in NC, surrounded by confederate-style nutjobs.
Parts of Atlanta and Athens are pretty progressive in Ga., surrounded by all sorts of nutjobs. Blacksburg, Roanoke and Richmond (maybe others, but those are the places I’ve been) are fairly progressive, surrounded by NASCAR neo-confederate nutjobs.
Can’t say much about Alabama or Florida, but Mississippi (my dad lived there for a number of years, as did a close friend of mine) can bring the crazy, as can Louisiana, and don’t get me started on backwoods Texas.
tl; dr: There’s plenty of crazy to go around in the South, enough that nobody can rank above anybody else.
ETA: I can’t believe Kentucky, Tennessee and WV didn’t come up in these conversations.
verberne
South Carolina produced Strom Thurmond, whereas North Carolina produced Jesse Helms. There is a difference in what type of Senator, each State produces.
DougJ
@Pangloss:
That has even more intensity to it, but it’s pretty simplistic: it’s just “LA sucks”. The southern state ranking stuff is more complicated.
El Tiburon
As a life-long Texas I’ve always been around what I’ll call “mild racism” if there is such a thing. The n-word was not uncommon and the term ‘wetback’ was very common until a few years ago.
But the level of racism I think tends to hockey-stick it northward as you head east from Texas, or at least eastward towards the Louisiana border.
I had never seen anything KKK until traveling a back road in Arkansas. Some redneck had his KKK stand on the side of the road selling all kinds of crap. It was quite a shock to the system.
Texas has its Louis Golhmerts of the world and our share of truly horrible racial incidents, but the crazy from South Carolina, et al is an entirely different story.
It also helps I live in Austin, a blue-sea of tranquility in a red ocean of crazy.
Mnemosyne
@Pangloss:
I think every state has internal resentments. Hence the tensions in Illinois between Chicago and the downstaters (ie the whole rest of the state).
Rosalita
@kindness:
SOME of them, not all, thank you
Ryan
@Mortimer:
Hey now, forget that Detroit exists and Michigan is one of the better states. Any way we can cede it to Ohio?
cleek
i’m an NC transplant (from NY). and after a few years down here, as i grew to like it, i started noticing the virulent ignorant anti-South attitudes exhibited by northerners. and i gotta say, it’s pretty fucking appalling. and it’s especially appalling when it comes from liberals who should really know better than to deal in antiquated stereotypes and prejudices. it’s one reason i don’t read Sadly, No as much as i once did, FWIW.
NC really is a great state.
stuckinred
@Mnemosyne: yep, and Atlanta and the rest of Georgia.
Dr. Squid
At least 20 years ago, people from Alabama looked down their noses at Mississippi. They also thought South Carolina’s slow-talking accent was really hilarious.
stormhit
@Ryan:
Detroit jokes. Those are fresh.
Scbarr
I was born in Georgia, have lived in NW Florida, and now live in NC. Every word you’ve written is absolutely true. Believe it or not, there is a scale by which rednecks judge themselves. FWIW, half if Pennsylvania has relocated here to NC. Also.
Asshole
Having lived in various parts of the Northeast for most of my life, I can say that the people I’ve met in every state contiguous with New Jersey loathe New Jersey. In New England, I’ve noticed that people from Vermont and Maine both loathe New Hampshire, and that New Hampshire people loathe Vermont. People in Vermont also hate “Massholes,” New Yorkers, and people from New Jersey.
There’s a lot of inter-state hatred in the Northeast, if you take the time to inquire about it.
Pangloss
@DougJ: I thought most of the NoCal dislike for SoCal was on the basis of two things: water and politics. SoCal produced Howard Jarvis, Ronald Reagan, and Darrell Issa while NoCal has produced Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Willie Brown, etc.
schrodinger's cat
What about Maryland? Is it a part of the South? I always get confused.
Guster
You’re all from away to me.
Culture of Truth
Which is funny, because we all know they are all the same.
Ha, I kid, I kid…
Violet
@DougJ:
You forgot Louisiana. Definitely in the “you don’t want to know” group.
That ranking seems like it would be similar to a ranking of income, education rates, child and infant mortality rates, etc. among the various states. Even southerners prefer places that rank higher in the good things and lower in the bad things. And Mississippi is low on all those lists.
manwith7talents
I’ve had a similar experience with midwesterners who insisted that Chicago wasn’t in the midwest. Quite a trick, that.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
Like I said, all of those states have certain parts that are great. But I’ve been in parts of rural NC that are just as bad as parts of rural SC or Ga. Remember where they found that nutjob abortion clinic bomber, what was his name? Oh, yeah. Eric Rudolph. OTOH, NC did give us Merlefest, which I highly recommend if you get the chance and you dig bluegrass.
ETA: I grew up in Texas, and lived for five years in SC and a year and a half in Va., and I have some virulent anti-south attitudes (STFU Lindsay Graham, Jim DeMint, James Inhofe, David Vitter, Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, etc., etc., ad infinitum), so I guess that makes me a self-hating anti-southite. :)
CT Voter
Maybe that’s because there’s more freight attached to the label “southerner” than there is “northerner”. If you want to make sure people know your state isn’t one of “those” states, you might be passionate about it as well.
I lived in Mississippi for 7 years, and the saying there was “Thank God for ___________________” and _____________ was usually Louisiana or Arkansas.
Mnemosyne
@manwith7talents:
I remember during the 2008 election where Republicans kept referring to Barack Obama as a “coastal elite.”
Uh, fellas, Lake Michigan doesn’t have a “coast.”
HumboldtBlue
What about those of us who hate all of you no matter where the fuck you are from? You’re not as cute, smart, funny, hip or cool as us, none of you pigs-in-a-blanket, so just shut the hell up. When we want to hear from you from we’ll send up the Wasilla-signal, capice?
Randy P
Well, I think there’s something like that among city residents, if asked to rank say Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, etc. without specifying the criteria for the ranking.
And for some reason Philadelphians seem to be down on our own city. I’m not a native to the area (or, technically, a resident of the actual city) so maybe that’s why I’m willing to rank it up there close to New York.
@El Tiburon: I’ve heard that central Pennsylvania is quite the hotbed of KKK groups, actually. I don’t travel out that way so I’ve missed it. But about a week ago here in Delaware County I saw a group of pickup trucks gathered in the Home Depot parking lot, some kind of rally, and one was proudly flying a giant confederate flag on a large vertical flagpole.
Jay B.
Not really. The South and the Republican Party routinely hate on the Northeast and California. Calls us all kinds of names and implies a whole lot more (rhymes with Shaggot!), hell, Former MA Gov. Mitt Romney ran against the state he governed as part of his campaign. But, and here’s the difference: No one gives a flying shit because most of us are busy working and trying to unfuck this country up.
Southerners, on the other hand, like Republicans in general, have a long, well-tended list of petty grievances which showcase the thin-skinned, easily-bruised egos of the folks who live there. Every thing is a slight, real or imagined, and it’s worse intra-South with the SEC schools — mediocre diploma mills at best — fighting for “supremacy” over the other idiot rednecks.
Edit: See @cleek‘s pitch-perfect parody of the form. Hint: No one cares.
Foxhunter
@cleek:
Thank you for expressing my sentiments in a much more rational manner than I ever could, on this particular topic, anyway.
Frustrating to say the least.
Cleek FTW.
Jules
Like we say in Arkansas, “Thank God for Mississippi”….
beltane
@Asshole: You are right about that. In Vermont, “Massholes” are regarded with near universal contempt, mostly on account of their driving skills, but it is nothing compared to the utter disgust New Yorkers feel for their neighbors across the Hudson. When I was a teenager in NYC, some of my male friends used to make it a practice to urinate on cars with New Jersey plates, just because.
Jules
@Jay B.:
This.
verberne
Also, more people from the North East U.S.A. and from the Mid-West have moved to North Carolina versus to South Carolina. That has changed the politics of North Carolina to a small degree. However useless Richard Burr is as a Senator from NC, he is no match for Jim DeMint of SC.
Taterstick
Well, I have lived in the south my whole life, with the exception of one year in Northern California. I was born in and have spent most of my life in South Carolina, lived in Georgia for several years and have family in NC and have spent a great deal of time in that neck of the woods.
I am not sure where folks in North Carolina get off being so condescending to Sandlappers, but it is par for the course around here. We all used to say that we were thankful for Mississippi, or otherwise we would be last in everything.
The more rural the area you go into down here – and I mean GA, NC, SC, TN, FL, Al, MS – you name it – the more backward and redneck it gets. The more urban areas – Raleigh, Asheville, Charleston, Greenville (city only!) – are less backward overall.
I saw a mention upthread that Greenville is more “progressive,” and I can assure you that it is “progressive” only when compared to what it was in 1865. The Greenville area has to be the biggest fan base for Sarah Palin that exists and every Republican candidate here is working hard to prove just how backassward conservative he can be. This is the most redneck area in the country, north of Sothern Georgia.
But, before everybody starts piling on about how bad the south is, please step back and look at your history books. You folks above the Mason Dixon line are hardly pure and all.
RobNYNY1957
I used to win bets 9 out of 10 times here in NYC with lawyers at my firm with this question: Is Wisconsin east or west of the Mississippi River? Even most of the ones who confused Wisconsin with Michigan thought it was west of the Mississippi.
I admit I have to scratch my head over the square states out west, and the little New England states that are so small that their names are always out in the Atlantic Ocean on maps.
Crae
@Asshole: I’m sorry but I have lived in the northeast for over 60 years and have never heard this. I’ve lived in VT since 1972 and have never heard anyone disparage NH – and People are joking around when they call people “Massholes”. It’s not serious. Hate? Give me a break.
Punchy
Exactly. The fact that Illinoisians absolutely fucking hate the whiskey-tango bastards in Indiana has nothing to do with this.
Or, how much Wiskyians hate FIBs and Minnesotans, Ohioians despise Kentuckyians, and Iowans detest Nebraska. Even worse, Kansas and Missouri with a wicked hatred (dating back to the Civil War and slave states, etc.)
Randy P
@schrodinger’s cat: I lived there 17 years and I never figured that out. Here’s what I know.
1. Sent troops to both the Union and Confederate sides.
2. Is south of the Mason-Dixon line.
3. Lincoln was worried enough about the question that he put it under martial law to keep it under Union control.
4. Baltimore was rife with Confederate sympathizers and spies. When I went to the Baltimore Civil War museum shortly after it opened, I was struck by how pro-southern the plaques were.
Other than the Baltimore museum, I never got that still-mad-about-the-civil-war feeling that I get sometimes in the states farther south. But then I never traveled much in southern MD, which I gather is a different planet than the parts around Baltimore and farther north.
Right Wing Extreme
Now, now. The denizens of NJ have a vast inferiority complex to those that live in NY.
FlipYrWhig
I’m a relatively recent transplant to the Peninsula in Virginia. VA has a fair amount of trash-talk between Northern VA and rest-of-VA. I haven’t heard any trash talk between VA and other states.
Will
I grew up in North Carolina 20 miles from the South Carolina border. There’s a massive difference between the two states. Going across the border is like going back two decades.
North Carolina is a Southern state, with all that entails, but South Carolina is practically the Third World. Outside of a few nice enclaves – Charleston, Columbia’s suburbs, Greenville-Spartanburg, some of the coastal towns and islands – the state is horrifically impoverished and backwards socially and technology. There’s a reason that so much crazy comes from there.
N.C. is just a more cosmopolitan and wealthy place. The Research Triangle – Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill – and the Triad – Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point – are both technology and education centers. Charlotte sucks, but it sucks in an urban setting that’s one of the world’s banking centers. Wilmington’s a conservative but prosperous beach community that’s basically become Florida North – lots of New Jersey and New York now live in coastal N.C.
Western North Carolina is a liberal mecca. You can find vegan restaurants in even the smallest towns. Some of this has to do with the fact that as much as a third of the economy comes from marijuana production.
Which is, in a nutshell, why North Carolinians get all het up about being lumped in with South Carolina’s nuttiness. We’re not perfect, but we’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to join the 21st century. South Carolina spent the same period fighting to remain in the 19th.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Here in Misery, Arkansas is the state all the jokes are made about.
Of course Misery shouldn’t exist. North of the Missouri river, it’s pretty much southern Iowa and south of the river it’s Northern Arkansas.
The natives here never like that characterization. Of course the natives repeatedly sent John Ashcroft to the Senate.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Pangloss:
As someone who’s lived in both places, I can attest that the hatred pales compared to Coastal California’s hatred of the inland areas ;-)
The Northern/Southern California argument tends to center around “you steal our water!”. The Coastal-Inland argument tends to be “you guys are rednecks”
arguingwithsignposts
@Taterstick:
That was me, and I probably should have qualified that to say more in the city limits of Greenville. I know Greenville had a pretty active LBGT community a few years ago. That said, five miles outside of town, there’s a confederate memorabilia shop, not to mention the campus of Bob Jones University and some crackpot fundamentalist churches, so, um, yeah.
schrodinger's cat
@Randy P: I lived in Maryland for about 4 years, just outside of DC, the county I lived in was a deep shade of blue, but I haven’t been to rural MD much, so I don’t know how “southern” they are. Also was surprised to find how segregated DC itself was prior to the civil rights era.
justawriter
“I’m from North Dakota.”
“Oh really? What state is that in?”
(true conversation)
No one thinks ill of my home state because so few people think of it at all.
Calouste
@beltane:
Obviously you have never met Norwegians. They got their independence from Sweden in 1905 and are still trying to define themselves as an independent country. You can’t be a proper Norwegian without owning at least three pieces of clothing with a Norwegian flag on it.
Mike G
Any non-Americans in the house?
Perhaps someone can discuss BC versus Ontario versus Quebec, Sydney versus Melbourne or what northern England thinks of Londoners.
TCG
You will hear the best “Southern Jokes” right before a college football game with a team from another state, i.e.,
What does an Arkansas Tornado have in common with an Arkansas Divorce?
Someone is sure to lose a trailer.
Etc., Etc.,
paradise50
And don’t forget that all people from “back East” think every state and everyone in the “West” are totally worthless. My friend from New York, who later died the exact same way as Jon Belusi (highballing with a prostitute in a hotel room)…this friend, once he learned I was from Denver said to me, “oh that means you’re a dumb lame Western hump.”
Dr. Squid
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
That’s kid of difficult to do seeing as Ashcroft only served one term.
Will
And to be fair, North Carolina is a more urban state than its Southern neighbor.
Fifth-eight percent of the population live in urban areas, and the majority of the remainder live within a half-hours drive of an urban area. Even in the deep rural areas one to two hours away from the urban centers, a huge percentage of the population are commuters living in recently developed suburbs.
South Carolina remains an extremely rural place. It’s simply not developed to the extent that North Carolina and Georgia have.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Randy P:
As a DC native who’s spent a ton of time in the environs:
1) Southern MD is as white trash, hickish as you can get…just like Central PA, vast swaths of the South, etc. Every Club Fed secretary in the 80s came from Southern MD. They’d commute horrendous miles each way. Of course out of high school, the first thing they did when they got their job was buy a Transcamaro. And people wonder where stereotypes come from.
2) Western MD is as white trash, hickish as you can get…just like Central PA, vast swaths of the South, Southern MD, etc. Except there, there ain’t no place to work so instead everybody has to enlist. That’s where the Lynddie Englands of our great country are born and bred.
Mark
@cleek
Depending on who you meet from the South, you could end being more anti-South than those who are ignorant.
For example:
Percentage of Southerners who believe Obama was born in the United States: 47%
McCain/Palin vote:
TX = 55%, OK = 65%, LA = 59%, AR = 59%, MS = 56%, AL = 60%, GA = 52%, SC = 54%, TN = 57%, NC = 49%, WV = 56%, VA = 46%, FL = 48%.
McCain/Palin vote = 54% in the south vs 39% in the NE and on the west coast. I believe that makes the South 38% crazier than the coasts.
Number of Southerners who have told me that I wouldn’t like African-Americans if I had to live near them like they did: 2.
Number of Northerners who said same: 0.
I could go on. For days. People don’t think the South is crazy because it’s the most open-minded and egalitarian part of the country.
schrodinger's cat
True story, once at a conference in Atlanta, someone asked me whether Maine was a part of Canada, when I told them that’s where I was from.
geg6
Hell, I trash my own state and its inhabitants on a daily, perhaps even hourly, basis. Pennsylbama (or Pennsyltucky, if you prefer) is eminently trashable! Thankfully, I live in one of the civilized areas, near a major urban area, which helps.
That said, you couldn’t pay me enough money to live below the Mason Dixon Line (well, maybe Maryland or Delaware, but no further!). There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to move south, no way, especially South Carolina (which I will never step foot in ever again). However, I will stick up for parts of Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina. There are wonderful progressive, non-insane pockets filled with people who think like me and I wish them all well, living as they do in the world that hasn’t moved beyond 1964.
licensed to kill time
@RobNYNY1957:
Obligatory New Yorker cover ;-)
MikeJ
@Taterstick:
Back during confederate history month, there was somebody here who was saying that the sundown towns in the north equalized and proved the north was just as bad as the south. He of course didn’t notice that while the Gov of VA had declared Confederate history month, there was no state in the north declaring a “sundown town history month.”
There’s been awful shit done on every square inch of the American continent. Which parts feel shame and regret over those things and which parts celebrate atrocities as part of their “heritage”?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Dr. Squid:
It just seemed like repeatedly. Maybe I strung that and his governor terms together. Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Polish the Guillotines
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: This. Although, I’d revise it somewhat. There’s serious central valley hatred of the coast, and mostly coastal indifference to the central valley.
Culture of Truth
There may be virulent anti-south attitudes up North, but as an observer of politics I would say the east and west coast, big city, Northern-bashing by Southern politicians never stops. Nobody gets all mad about it because they don’t care what some southerners think about them.
I have issues with Baltimore
NC native, UNC graduate. I attended quite a few “Glad He’s Dead” parties back home in NC when Helms finally kicked. And it’s not just because he wanted to build a fence around Chapel Hill. Yeah, we’ve got crazies, but we’re nowhere near the likes of SC.
Also, too: South Of The Border. If you’ve ever lived in NC or SC, I don’t need to say anything more. It’s the most perfect metaphor for the relationship between the two states.
GVG
I think you are incorrect. It’s everywhere. Everytime the news makes some area or state sound bad someone (multiple someones) will talk about walling them off or letting them leave. Everytime. Conneticut, Arizona, Texas….disdain for others really comes out. It becomes more real when its your state. For instance lots of people worked hard for Obama here and Florida DID go for Obama but some people here are still equating us with JUST racists. Jerks get in the news it seems. Nice normal people don’t. Guess who is more numerous?
There is a broad non south tendency to disparage the south that gets REALLY old. However I’ve observed that other regions also get some broad brush rudeness too.
Dr. Squid
That’s because it’s a lot harder to find a Northerner willing to live near black people.
Violet
@I have issues with Baltimore:
Is that thing still going? That’s the craziest place.
geg6
@Randy P:
This is why we call it Pennsylbama (or Pennsyltucky, take your pick). Pittsburgh in the southwest, Philly in the southeast, and fucking crazy crackers all through the middle, like a T.
PaulW
Here’s a ranking of Southern states by a boy who was born in Georgia, spent a few years of youth in Virginia, lived almost my whole life in all three zones of Florida (Central, North and South), got relatives in Alabama and Kentucky, and who made dozens of trips up and down I-95 between here and D.C.
So here’s the ranking:
1) screw the states! We’re AMERICANS GODDAMMIT
50) South Carolina. Lessee, last time we stopped in a gas station in South Carolina the men’s room had a floor covered in crap. Family made sure to gas in Georgia or North Carolina after that.
Any questions? There better not be.
/signed by a DAMN PROUD ‘MERRIKIN.
Brachiator
I know people from Manhattan who totally disdain the BBQ (people from Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens), and do their best to pretend that the rest of the country does not exist.
This is kind of half-hearted and more San Francisco vs Los Angeles. And even here it’s one-sided (people in Southern California are too laid-back to care)
Now, UCLA vs USC alumni, now there’s some grounds for serious feuding.
BGinCHI
Reminds me of the old Indiana joke:
“Why doesn’t Indiana float into Lake Michigan?”
“Because Kentucky sucks.”
Phoebe
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: What you say about Misery [puppy mill capital of the US!] is true except for St. Louis. The big screaming exception. Iowa looks down on us, but screw them, they don’t have an old, beautiful city. And we voted for the dead guy over Ashcroft. Don’t forget that. Of course it ended up making him AG, but that wasn’t our plan.
asiangrrlMN
@Punchy: Yep yep. We Minnesotans know that we are superior to the Cheeseheads–we’re just too Midwestern polite to boast about it. However, I do think the Midwest rivalries (at least the MN ones) are more based on sports and are friendly in nature.
Mark
@Dr. Squid – or, quite possibly, there is more anti-black racism in the south…
jl
From my view in California, which I admit in some ways a true mess, I have not seen much intrastate regional hatred action here for quite some time, and I deal with family and friends in all parts of the state.
The regional interests in the water wars have gotten so complex that it is not a north versus south issue any more.
Not sure snooty coastal cosmopolitians hate the Central Valley so much as just pity the people who live there.
I love the parts of the south there I have had a chance to spend some time with my southern branch, which is VA and WV MD area. Sorry to see them lose that famous graciousness in tearing each other up.
A humble westerner’s perspective on all this: a lot of them dinky little states back east there, north and south, are just too small, or you got a bunch of little dinky ones stuck up against a bigger one. That’s the problem, IMHO.
If South Carolina were just North Carolina’s Central Valley, we would not have this interstate unpleasantness.
MikeJ
@Phoebe: At one time there some sanity to be found in Ho-hum-bia, but only because of have three schools in one town. The locals were as crazy as elsewhere, but there were some good kids.
scarshapedstar
This thread makes me want to puke. Virginia is ‘the best’?! I guess if you enjoy chicken-fried steak and Christian Country radio stations, it’s paradise.
Personally, I prefer crawfish, jambalaya, oysters, Mardi Gras, the Saints (hell, Catholicism in general), and beaches with sand as opposed to that rocky Atlantic shit that looks like my driveway. (Okay, this point may no longer be salient.)
Oh, and to everyone living east of the Pearl River (i.e. South Utah):
I CAN BUY JACK DANIELS AT THE GAS STATION. EVEN ON A SUNDAY.
Halteclere
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
My grandfather, who didn’t move his family to Missouri until he was in middle age, didn’t waste any time picking up the local vernacular. When shooting pool, any ball in an area that was off-limits was said to be “in Arkansas”.
4tehlulz
Apparently, you are not familiar with the bitter New England vs. Manhattan Clam Chowder wars.
Chowder is serious business, and anyone who suggests tomatoes needs to go back to New YAAAAWK where they came from.
geg6
@scarshapedstar:
I’m guessing you think that is a good thing. Personally, I have never felt the need.
Hmmm, I’m thinking your beaches look like the asphalt in my driveway. I’ll take the rocks, thanks (though you haven’t seen many east coast beaches if you think they all look like Maine’s). ;-)
Jerry 101
Living in Illinois, I routinely disparage our neighbors.
Illinois itself being the gold standard, I’d rank our neighbors (from most tolerable to least)…
1. Missouri
2. Wisconsin
.
.
.
3. Kentucky
4. Indiana
5. IOWA (Idiots Out Walking Around).
Iowa just…sucks. It adds absolutely nothing of value to anything. It’s pretty much a waste of space.
mr. whipple
@Mark:
As crazy as I find those numbers, they bring me some level of comfort insofar as if I ever find myself in, say, Enid, OK, at least 1 out of 3 people I meet will probably be not-insane.
How they manage, though, would be fascinating to find out.
KXB
In the Midwest, it is a bit of surprise how living in Chicago skews perception. Chicago is always comparing itself to NYC, not to its more immediate neighbors Milwaukee & Indianapolis. Indianapolis does get envious glances from Chicagoans when they look at the cost of living comparison, but to get anywhere else in the country, Indianapolis does not offer the connections that Chicago does.
The Southern connection for Chicago is that most of its black residents can trace their roots to the South, when their grandparents and great parents did the great trek north. Black people in Chicago still have a trace of a Southern accent, which black people in DC and NYC don’t have.
twiffer
@Asshole: most of it divides along red sox/yankees lines too.
everyone hates jesery cause people there DON’T KNOW HOW TO FUCKING DRIVE.
Sarcastro
well, maybe Maryland or Delaware, but no further!
Oh great, the border states: southern efficiency matched with northern charm.
licensed to kill time
Tribalism is hard-wired into the human brain. Never underestimate the human capacity to divide ourselves into “us” and “them”.
Southern Beale
I dunno I live in Tennessee, don’t think I’ve heard anything like this here. Of course we all say “thank God for Mississippi” and there might be some angst with Arkansas, especially out west near the border, but for the most part I don’t know that we too much of a ‘tude in relation to other southern states.
However, I do think people in the south in general have a giant chip on their shoulder about being made fun of by New York and Los Angeles “elites” — Hollywood and all. And even thought I’ve lived here over 20 years my usual response to this is that if y’all would stop acting like assholes maybe Hollywood would stop treating you like assholes.
Mary
@Mnemosyne:
Not to mention the North Side/South Side divide, which gets really ugly what with the racism and classism inherent.
Stroszek
Tennessee and Kentucky are a lot better than SC, MS, and AL. They both have some reasonable research areas and even their hillbillies can be persuaded to vote Democratic (see: Bill Clinton, Steve Beshear, Harold Ford, etc.)
mr. whipple
@asiangrrlMN:
Agreed. We may mock Michigan, for instance, but it’s done with a smile.
arguingwithsignposts
@KXB:
I absolutely love Chicago, and St. Louis. Most of the real rivalry around here is whether one is a Cubs, Cards, or Sox fan. Perhaps I haven’t spent enough time in Indy, but it seems too sanitized for my tastes.
twiffer
@4tehlulz: there is no war. there is chowder, then there are those lunatics who try to pass off tomato soup as chowder cause they threw in some clams.
most conflicts have grey areas. chowder is not one of them. martinis would be another (hint: martini is not synonoumus with cocktail).
geg6
@mr. whipple:
I kind of tend to think it’s the same way with the Northeast. Except for New Jersey. New Jersey just sucks, no matter where you’re from. ;-)
PaulW
@licensed to kill time:
I resent you and yours trying to classify me and mine. Have at thee (charges with a broomstick)!
Catsy
I sent this in to TPM, but I can’t believe nobody has raised the one fact that should set to rest–unequivocally–whether or not North and South Carolina are comparable in any way other than sharing a name and geographic proximity.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. North Carolina was the last. South Carolina was the founding state of the the Confederacy–and they’re proud of it.
Case closed.
Randy P
@4tehlulz: I love them both, but I’m likely to throw out a “real clam chowder is red” comment in a thread like this just to see the sparks fly. I didn’t grow up in the NYC area. On the other hand, my wife did and she has deep emotional connections to manhattan clam chowder on the beach in winter.
Mnemosyne
@Jerry 101:
I think you will appreciate this t-shirt as much as I do.
I’ve lived in California longer than I did in Illinois (22 years vs. 19 years) but that mispronunciation makes me wince every time.
Bill Section 147
I think it has some to do with the Civil War (actually cultural identity building with the lead up to the War). As the idea that Southern States were going to have to go to war to protect States Rights grew (using the local expression) and States began developing militia groups with that goal in mind the need to create a distinct and important militant identity which was State-based became ingrained.
Southerner like Robert E. Lee knew before they took the oath that if push came to shove Virginia was more important than America.
As the case for divorce was built up the villainy of other States and the righteousness of ‘my’ State became necessary themes on the road to making war palatable. If your grandfather risked his life to make the Union and your Uncle died in 1812 fighting for it, it would be very difficult to fight against it unless you had been raised knowing one day you may be defending the honor of your State against that Union.
The Federal Government has been trying to force California to enjoy pollution at the levels that will make industry happy and we have fought them. I have never heard a Californian talk of killing anyone for our State’s Rights. Sure a few want to kill revenue agents and are pissed at the IRS but war and secession (even from Southern California) are not seriously spoken of.
As a Californian I have often been disparaged in my travels but mostly in joking and usually in a way that makes me feel the joker is a touch envious. I lived in North Carolina for a year-and-a-half and liked it quite a bit. I was in Chapel Hill so it wasn’t like ‘deep’ south. A woman I worked with was from South Carolina and she laughed because when she would go home for a visit her Grandmother would get on her for talking like a damned Yankee.
But it seemed to be a contest to rank the States as you mentioned and the idea that other States somehow had it in for you and that the Federal Government was always looking for the opportunity to take over seemed to come up often.
Most of the State hate outside of the South seems to be more Buckeyes v. Wolverines and Packers v. the Bears than the “I will kill you if you say anything bad about Texas,” variety.
mr. whipple
@Stroszek:
True enough, but that always puzzled me when it comes to Presidential politics. Northerners will vote for a Dem for POTUS like Clinton without thinking twice about it, yet it seems to be twice as hard for people from the South to vote for a Northerner for President. Why is that?
Mark
@mr. whipple –
I once visited a then-girlfriend’s relatives in Park City, UT. It’s not exactly a bastion of liberalism (too wealthy), but it’s the least Mormon place in the state aside from tribal lands.
These people had moved there from San Francisco, had NPR on in their place the entire time and generally walked and talked like stereotypical coastal liberals. And they told me how much they liked Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett. They didn’t call them extremist hypocrites. They didn’t consider them a plague on the rest of the country.
So that’s what you gotta do if you want to be part of the 34% who voted for Obama in Utah or the 26% who voted for Kerry. And you have to somehow be ok knowing that your neighbors are whackjobs.
Mary
@4tehlulz:
Wait, seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person who claimed to prefer Manhattan Clam Chowder to New England, and I grew up a heck of a lot closer to Manhattan than New England.
Seriously…who eats Manhattan Clam Chowder?
John Cole
Ask some people from Oregon, Washington, or Colorado about California folks.
WV isn’t considered part of the “south” except by people far above the Mason Dixon line.
Bubblegum Tate
@celticdragonchick:
UNCG class of ’98 right here. I really enjoyed Greensboro–a lot more than I thought I was going to, in fact. It’s a cool little city.
@Will:
That’s a good way of putting it. There most certainly is a difference between North and South Carolina, and North Carolinians have every right to be offended at being lumped in with the crazies to their south.
@I have issues with Baltimore:
Oh man, that freakin’ place. I was convinced from the billboards that it was either a joke (i.e. not real) or real, but some sort of spoof or something. Nope. It’s so tragically real and sans irony.
And finally, I remember the Southern States Pecking Order as being much the same as DougJ describes it. I found that hierarchy fascinating. Nowadays, I rep for the good (i.e. upper) half of California in the ongoing NorCal vs. SoCal debate. SoCal can bite my ass.
licensed to kill time
@PaulW:
Just what I’d expect from one of them ! (charges back at thee with stickbroom)
Mnemosyne
@Mary:
As someone who grew up on the North Shore, you ain’t kidding. We have intra-city rivalries like that in Los Angeles — just listen to people talk about “Westsiders” sometime.
(I miss the Westside sometimes, but where I am now isn’t so horrible.)
frosty
@Randy P: I haven’t seen any evidence of KKK here, but I’d say there are more confederate flags in York County than in Baltimore County. All bets are off if you go west from Baltimore to Carroll, though.
stuckinred
I bet ya’ll will get tired of me posting this. Raised in LA (Watts riots) and Chicago (more riots than you can count) and I still know that MLK said “People from Mississippi need to come to Chicago to learn how to hate”.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
We had a long proxy war in Kentucky with Ohio over who owned the Ohio river. We won that war in Kentucky, and proved it by counting the pampers and milk cartoons floating downstream with origins from our watershed. I was born in Ohio, but mostly raised in Kentucky, so it was heads I win and tails you lose for me.
BGinCHI
When I lived in VA people used to refer to satellite dishes as “the West Virginia state flower.”
Chat Noir
@arguingwithsignposts:
Same here. My husband is from St. Louis and he’s taught me some local terms (for example, a “hoosier” is someone who is low rent/trashy/ignorant). He is proud of the fact that he voted for Mel Carnahan (who died a few weeks before the election) for governor in 2000 instead of that nutball Ashcroft.
4tehlulz
@twiffer: My appletini (with optional pomegranate liquor and pineapple chunks CUZ I’M HARDCORE) scoffs at your clinging to the traditional martini.
scarshapedstar
I’m of the opinion that running a state like a Bible Camp is an unmitigated bad thing. See also, Establishment Clause.
stuckinred
@Chat Noir: How ya like East St Louis?
Gus
@Punchy: I like to think the Wisconsin-Minnesota rivalry is all in good fun. I love Wisconsin, always seem to have a good time there, and it’s a beautiful state with a lot of good breweries.
Stroszek
@Mark: The better way to measure the concentration of crazy-racist hillbillies is to look at white support for McCain/Palin. In that case, the rankings are as follows:
Alabama – 88%
Mississippi – 88%
Louisiana – 84%
Georgia – 76%
South Carolina – 73%
North Carolina – 64%
Kentucky – 63%
Tennessee – 63%
Virginia – 60%
That looks about right to me.
Incertus (Brian)
@CT Voter: I lived in Mississippi for 7 years, and the saying there was “Thank God for _______________” and _________ was usually Louisiana or Arkansas.
I grew up in Louisiana, and we felt the same way about Mississippi, and South Carolina on occasion. But especially Mississippi.
Drive By Wisdom
You liberals always pick a winner:
He is starting to make Clinton look like honest Abe.
dmsilev
Staying inside one state for a moment, I always thought that Chicago’s attitude towards downstate (and towards other states) is perfectly encapsulated in the way that the city reversed the course of a river for the express purpose of shipping Chicago’s shit to downstate and ultimately to Missouri.
dms
Incertus (Brian)
@mr. whipple: Northerners will vote for a Dem for POTUS like Clinton without thinking twice about it, yet it seems to be twice as hard for people from the South to vote for a Northerner for President. Why is that?
Because we fucking suck. Too many of us still buy into the Lost Cause, War of Northern Aggression bullshit, even if it’s subconsciously.
frosty
@Randy P: I think your last line sums up Maryland. Didn’t secede (not necessarily their choice), didn’t lose, didn’t go through reconstruction, and doesn’t have the baggage of the Confederacy.
Favorite Maryland Civil War stories: When war broke out, the Union Army occupied Federal Hill and turned the guns that had faced the British in the War of 1812 around so they were aimed at Baltimore.
First battle of the Civil War was the Battle of Pratt Street when the good citizens of Mobtown attacked the Sixth Massachusetts marching from President St. depot to the B&O at Mt. Clare.
The state song “Maryland My Maryland” has a verse which begins “The despot’s heel is at thy door.” The despot being referred to is Abraham Lincoln.
KG
Born and raised in Southern California. Don’t really get the interstate hostilities. Probably because so many people from inside and outside the rest of the country come here looking for their big break. Even the intrastate stuff isn’t too bad lately – I blame the recent increase in area codes for the problem, it was much easier to bash the Inland Empire when you could refer to it all as the 909.
BGinCHI
@dmsilev:
Correct, we trade you shit for tourists. And every time I have to yell at someone who can’t drive I consider it a fair trade.
Roger Moore
@4tehlulz:
Fixt. I’m from out West, so I don’t have a pony in the race, but I do have taste buds. Anyone who suggests putting tomatoes in their chowder deserves to be ignored.
NickM
@schrodinger’s cat: A perfect opportunity to reacquaint them with the story of the Maine 20th.
frosty
@FlipYrWhig: Early in my years of working for Arlington County, I attended a meeting in Richmond. When we introduced ourselves, one gent spoke up and said “Oh, you’re from Occupied Virginia.”
KXB
@arguingwithsignposts:
As far as the Cubs/Cardinals go – that does seem to be a phenomenon in southern Illinois. And given the past couple of seasons, there are probably more Cardinals banners in southern Illinois than Cubbie blue.
Indianapolis has all the charm of Orlando, without the nicer weather.
Tiparillo
@Mnemosyne:
The only bad thing I ever heard a Californian say about OR or WA was about the terrible drivers.
Having moved from CA to OR in the last 5 years, I think the reflexive hatred of CA isn’t as common as I feared. Or maybe that’s just in the People’s Republic of PDX.
Stroszek
@Drive By Wisdom: Yes, I’m sure you’re proud that Republican politicians never resort to encouraging platitudes unless they know they can back it up. This is why Osama bin Laden was brought to justice dead or alive, we were greeted as liberators in Iraq and the fundamentals of the economy remained strong after the Lehman collapse.
stuckinred
@KG: My brother was raised in Hawthorne, college and law school in Sacto and he HATES Northern California with a passion. (disclaimer, this is sports based).
stuckinred
@KXB: It sure was strong in Champaign-Urbana except for the occasional orphan Sox fan.
PTirebiter
@Bhaal:
Maybe it’s all the western movies , but a lot people seem to think of Texas as being a part of the West. I’ve been here for a little over twenty years now and Texas is most assuredly Southern. Confederate memorials are unapologetically present everywhere and in every region.
And nothing says the south like slaves and cotton fields.
Seanly
@Third Eye Open:
You, sir, have slighted my intelligence. I depend compensation. Pistols at noon.
I’ve lived in the following long list of shitty places:
Amherst, Mass (up to age 4, don’t remember much)
Little Rock, Ark
Murraysville, PA
back to LR
Chapel Hill, NC for last year of HS
Bethlehem, PA for college
Randolph, NJ for 1st job
Clemson, SC for grad school
back to Bethlehem for failed PhD attempt
Harrisburg, PA for work
Columbia, SC for better work
Harrisburg might actually be the most hick. SC was better when I was in grad school 17 years ago – now it’s kinda crazy Republican.
Cola has the worst drivers (with the exception of stop signs, central PA wins for paying no heed to stop signs).
One of the big items in the South is the overblown & generally unwarranted pride & provincialism that almost all areas exhibit. Any facades about ethical behavior and conflicts of interest wilt in favor of the Good Ole Boys Network – but they talk a good game about be stand-up citizens, unlike such-n-such up in DeeCee or New York CITY.
Wife & I want to get out to West Coast in next few years. Maybe Portland so we can still afford a house…
KXB
@stuckinred:
The first time I ever drove down to Urbana/Champaign (1996) was to drop off my cousin when he was a freshman, and probably the first thing I said when we stepped out of the car was, “My God! The whole place smells like cows!”
licensed to kill time
@Drive By Wisdom:
You may drive by Wisdom but you do stop at Non Sequitur, I see.
Remfin
@MikeJ: Since I’m the only one who even mentioned sundown towns, you are full of shit since I never claimed any such thing. You are substituting your own warped idea of what I was saying and attributing ignorance to me when I knew perfectly well what was going on.
My point was that the “Confederate Party” could be found anywhere, and that it was not some kind of phenomenon limited only to the South. When we talk about the aftermath of the Confederacy and the horrible racist behavior that continued to be perpetuated against African-Americans it is silly to pretend there were not problems in the North (or the West). Just because these people don’t have their hands directly on the lever of power doesn’t mean they are not a force.
Lots of those posts had to do with purely Southern issues, but many of them also had to do with national issues that only happened because of support across the country. I suggested a broadening of the topic to show that the problem was racism itself, and not the specific geographic location it occurred in. I don’t know if the series of posts ended up feeling like the problem was simply geography, but the comment section sure did.
Hiram Taine
Q: What does a thirteen year old Alabama girl say after sex?
A: Get off me daddy, you’re crushin’ mah cigarettes..
Heh, I live in Georgia, thank the FSM for Alabama.
Everything bad you’ve heard about GA, it’s true but AL is worse..
Rosalita
@twiffer:
What you said… you don’t even need to spot the plate, just watch them
Catsy
@Roger Moore:
Hear, hear.
I don’t dislike tomatoes, but they have no business being anywhere near my clam chowder.
It’s not between NE clam chowder and Manhattan clam chowder. It’s between white chowder and “that other crap”.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It’s very annoising, isn’t it.
stuckinred
@KXB: That was the south farms and most likely sheep, hogs and cattle. After the soybeans harvest the smell in the small towns is overpowering. And here in Georgia you can catch a whif of pulp mills down yonder.
Mnemosyne
@KG:
I am not joking when I tell you that they changed it to 951 in large part because the area (especially Riverside) was tired of being referred to as the 909. I think that was the only area code change in the history of Southern California that was actually welcomed.
(Says the person who spent two weeks arguing with AT&T so she could keep her 310 cell phone number and not have to get a — hock! ptui! — 818 number.)
KXB
@Rosalita:
A couple of years ago, driving in Waukegan, IL, a woman slammed into me as she was making a left turn, thinking she had a left-turn arrow. She did not. Thankfully, neither of us were hurt, but as we were exchanging insurance info, I had to chuckle to myself, “Ha! New Jersey license, I should have known.” Even as a kid on Long Island, the reputation of NJ drivers was terrible.
Mark
@Stroszek
I was going to say that older white voters would skew even more Republican, but the exit polls from 2008 (FWTW) suggest that support is uniform across all ages of white people.
91% of white Alabamans aged 45-64 voted for McCain. That’s only as crazy as, say, 9 out of 10 doctors telling you it’s a good idea to smoke more.
arguingwithsignposts
@Stroszek:
Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell would like to have a word with you, as would the Scopes Monkey Trial and the Southern Baptist Convention headquarters (right there in Downtown Nashvegas!).
That said, I love Nashville, Knoxville and Louisville. Lexington is passably interesting. The entire Blue Ridge/Appalachian mountain areas are beautiful to drive through and experience.
stuckinred
@Roger Moore: Oskeewowow!
Doctor Gonzo
@KXB: As somebody who went to UIUC for about a week in 1996, that was my impression as well. And also why I left: “I’m paying out of state tuition to go to a school completely surrounded by corn fields why exactly?”
jl
The last California intrastate hate act I personally witnessed was when I met some one who had recently been transferred from LA to Fresno for her job. She was not sure it was going to work out and thinking of going back, or at least leaving the Central Valley.
When she found out that I grew up in the great Central Valley, she pre-apologized and told me not to take it personally, but asked if a lot of people living there were mentally retarded.
I said that it was a cultural thing.
The most common marketing theme I see for Central Valley locales is that some place, say, Turlock, is close to someplace else cool. Ninety minutes to SF, or x hours the wine country, Tahoe, to Yosemite or Sequoia, or something. Not much else is mentioned in the way of attractions.
HyperIon
@Taterstick: I saw a mention upthread that Greenville is more “progressive,” and I can assure you that it is “progressive” only when compared to what it was in 1865. The Greenville area has to be the biggest fan base for Sarah Palin that exists and every Republican candidate here is working hard to prove just how backassward conservative he can be. This is the most redneck area in the country, north of Southern Georgia.
I was sentenced to one year in Greenvile (as I always refer to it). Ugh. Drove by Bob Jones U with the razor wire fence everyday. That place made Furman University look like a liberal hotbed but, take my word for it, FU is also f’ed up big time. Just like most institutions in that part of the state/south.
In Greenvile, black people and white people still do not mix. They don’t even talk to each other. Most of the white people have a corn pone accent and feel quite comfortable dissing queers, pointy headed intellectuals, and uppity women–all the while praisin’ Jesus.
It was a fabulous place to LEAVE.
Mike E
Damn, late again to the party.
Lived in Charlotte from ’89 to 97′, my daughter was born there. A good friend who knows his geography normally would always call it “Charlotte, SC.” I’d correct him each time, but to no avail.
Now I live in Raleigh, and I have to say he was right–it is Charlotte, SC. Add Sue Myrick and you can call it Hell.
stuckinred
@KXB: Jack Benny was from there!
Tip Top
I’ve spent a good deal of time with well-to-do Mississippians–mostly from the Jackson area, some transplanted to Memphis–and the superior attitude they had about Mississippi to Alabama and other Southern states was hard to comprehend. I’ve been to both states–their urban, rural, and very poor rural and urban sections–and MS has nothing to brag about. And people from Jackson are tools.
asiangrrlMN
@Catsy: Agreed. No tomatoes in my clam chowder, thankyouverymuch. That defeats the very purpose!
@licensed to kill time: Very nice riposte.
ETA: I don’t feel like digressing for once.
stuckinred
@Mike E: Driving by the Peach Butt on 85 makes you miss the state line.
arguingwithsignposts
With all the chowder bashing going on in a southern thread, I’m surprised nobody has brought up the well-known tomato-vinegar-mustard BBQ wars.
Now that’s some serious shit there.
(tomato fan, myself)
burnspbesq
North Carolinians can bring the hate. Try walking into a Waffle House wearing a Duke sweatshirt and carrying the Sunday New York Times during an ACC Tournament when the Heels and the Wolfpack both lost on Friday.
Loneoak
@Mortimer:
We did almost go to war over Toledo, if that puts our mutual hatred into context. Overall, I’d say Michigan won that fight when we got the Upper Peninsula in compensation.
Randy P
I apologize if this offends any southerners, but many years ago the movie “Deliverance” actually taught me something about the South. I was surprised by the fact that the main characters (all supposed to be Georgia natives as I recall) were kind of nervous about the “hicks” and “crackers” they thought they might run into in the woods (with good reason, as all “Deliverance” fans know).
That started me realizing that maybe there wasn’t just one stereotypical group in the south and that the truth is a little more complicated.
@Catsy: OK, there have been so many of these now that my basic contrariness is causing me to defend MCC. Done right, it’s quite good. And I’ve had it the way my wife grew up loving it, at the snack bar on Jones Beach (Long Island) on a freezing cold day in the middle of winter. Then it is very good indeed.
Did you people never have red clam sauce on linguini? Geeze.
MikeJ
@Catsy:
Growing up in TN, I was always taught they were last. Turns out:
Tennessee (May 7, 1861; ratified by voters June 8, 1861)
North Carolina (May 20, 1861)
That yes, the public rubber stamp of what the lege did was after NC, but the lege had already voted for it before NC.
We were also taught TN was first back, which is true, but probably because they lost so early in the war and were already under US rule for most of the war.
KXB
@Doctor Gonzo:
The school itself is quite good, and deserves its reputation. It’s engineering programs are still top-notch As an undergrad at Univ. of Chicago, we would be jealous of the UIUC kids who got to have a normal undergrad experience.
suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
True. But can I just remind everyone that no one elected Brewer to be Governor, and Napolitano would never have permitted this insanity.
And Pearce is from Mesa, which, if you know the Phoenix area, is the red-headed stepchild of the metropolis. West Mesa was settled by Mormons and to this day remains this weird enclave in which the Mormon population is orders of magnitude higher than even the neighboring suburbs. Like, there’s a Mormon meeting house every square mile in Mesa, but you cross the canal into Chandler, and good luck finding one. I grew up in Mesa after living on Long Island (actually went to school with Pearce’s son), and, believe me, it’s a weird, weird place.
Calouste
@Mike G:
The attitude of Northern England towards London can be described as envy more than hatred. Sue, there is hatred, but that’s more because most things happen in London. Imagine NYC, LA and DC rolled up into a 40 million people city, and you have approximately what London is in relation to the rest of England.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
What the hell is wrong with 818? There were tons of people in the San Gabriel Valley who were fighting to keep 818 here instead of the San Fernando Valley. Of course a lot of that is that 818 is much better than 626 according to Cantonese numerology, but still.
Stroszek
@arguingwithsignposts: The difference is that Bunning and McConnell actually face(d) competitive challenges from Democrats. I’ll take that over sexennial coronations for DeMint and Sessions. As for Corker and Alexander, they’re not really any worse than Dick Lugar or Judd Gregg.
Davis X. Machina
All of this is predicated on actually believing that there’s Something on the other end of the Kittery bridge.
Which is preposterous.
Donald G
@FlipYrWhig:
Trashtalking other states would imply that we Virginians legitimize the existence of other states. As far as we are concerned, as descendants of the oldest (and best) colony and heirs to Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, of George Wythe and John Marshall, of James Madison and of James Monroe, the country is Virginia and Virginia is the country.
It’s not something we generally speak of, though, but if you hang around long enough, especially in the corridor from Norfolk to Williamsburg to Richmond, you’ll pick up on it. It’s not as combative and in your face as the sense of superiority of New Yorkers (by which I’m talking about the inhabitants of NYC and environs), but it’s there.
According to my wife, the two most chauvinistic (in the sense of state pride) peoples in the country are Virginians and Texans, and it is telling that many of the Anglo founders of the Texan Republic were former Virginians. Texans are like our evil twins.
J.W. Hamner
We make fun of nearly all the other New England states… heck, we even make fun of the Western half of our own state. The only state up here I can’t muster any animosity for is Rhode Island.
This is probably largely driven by college hockey fandom.
wilson
As a life-long North Carolinian, I was going to get very angry about my favorite blogger DougJ was saying Virginia was more progressive than NC, until I reread and discovered that wasn’t what he was saying at all and I was totally just reinforcing his point. Good work!
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want your cell number to identify you as being from the Valley. ;-)
I’ve lived in OC for all but two years since 1986, but my motto is still “201 fa life.”
Dr. Squid
@HyperIon:
Once knew a guy from way out western Kentucky who went to college in South Carolina. His girlfriend was an early childhood education major from near Greenville and even he was surprised at the number of kids there who would say, “My mommy won’t let me listen to that – it has a rock beat.” In 1989.
Jeffro
@geg6:
Delaware: the only state EAST of the Mason-Dixon line!
Stroszek
@MikeJ: Tennessee wasn’t a uniform “plantation state” like the coastal south. East Tennessee remained a Union stronghold throughout the war.
When I lived in Knoxville, I almost got into a fight when I explained to some dumbass that the confederate flag had jackshit to do with the “heritage” of someone from the Smokey Mountains.
arguingwithsignposts
And yet nobody has mentioned the crazy that is Oklahoma, either, I guess because it wasn’t a state during the civil war. Is Oklahoma a part of the south? I always considered it so growing up in Texas (which is a part of the south, no matter what Texans may say).
ETA: It might do to stipulate what we’re talking about wrt “the south.” Is it based on membership in the confederacy? Plantation economy? What?
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: “Perhaps I haven’t spent enough time in Indy, but it seems too sanitized for my tastes.” Even less there there than Oakland.
Catsy
@twiffer:
That goes double for Virginia. I grew up there and didn’t transplant to the PNW until I was a teenager, but about 15 years later I drove back to VA to visit my mother. First time I’d ever driven in VA, and it did not leave me eager to go back.
It’s not so much that nobody signals before a turn or lane change–it’s that signaling is seen as a sign of weakness.
Although the yuppies here in Bellevue really seem to be trying to give VA a run for their money. It’s like all the SoCal drivers migrated up here and settled on the Eastside.
Jeffro
@Mary: Love ’em both…
…I think I have some Swiss ancestors.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@burnspbesq:
I think this is pretty much nationwide
MikeJ
@Stroszek:
And the part that was plantation was piss poor at fighting, thank god.
Memphis wanted slavery because it was built on selling cotton from MS and AR, but it was safely back in Union hands in 1862.
CT Voter
@Incertus (Brian): Mississippi is to Louisianans as Arkansas is to Mississippians.
You need ranks even at the bottom of the barrel…
Donald G
@scarshapedstar:
Chicken fried steak?!? As a Virginian born and bred, I never encountered chicken fried steak until I went to Texas for university, and I prefer my country music old-school (pre-1985) and largely secular, thank you very much, but then I’m largely a sixties rock and psychedelia man.
chopper
@Brachiator:
lol @ staten island not even being mentioned.
seriously, there’s pecking orders like this everywhere. as a brooklynite i make fun of jersey all the time, but also consider staten island to be fly-over (or rather drive-through) country.
lamh32
I love it when white people discuss who’s least racist.
Ask any group of minority, and we’ll tell ya, there is equal opportunity racism among all ya.
Still, I lived all my life in LA. New Orleans to be exact, and we never like to drive over night through Mississippi or Alabama (see Selma, re: MLK killing)
arguingwithsignposts
@Donald G:
I’m going to have to agree with Donald G. here. Virginians don’t know shit from chicken fried steak or white gravy.
(see that, that’s the Texan coming out in me) ;)
ETA: But they can do some sweet bluegrass, much of which is anchored in old hymns and the like.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Donald G:
Me too, and I grew up just a stone’s throw or two from Billy Ray Cyrus’s back yard.
KXB
@stuckinred:
I understand he got mixed reactions from Jewish folk, who thought his TV persona reinforced some stereotypes.
scav
Don’t know if it’s universal, but I have noticed a strong make fun of the immediate neighbors bent. N/S rivalries often involve the “southern tier” joke (the swap improving the IQ in both states) while E/W clashes seem to go for interstate based humor (best thing coming out of XX? the I-#). May be a midwest thing. All I remember from CA was hating TX and that went double for the Cowboys.
Ken
Well, all I can say is I’m so glad I’m not a gamma.
Cackalacka
@burnspbesq:
The Pack lost on a Saturday this year.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
Chicken fried squirrel is much better imo, but others may differ.
JL
I worked with a guy who was born and raised in ‘Bama. I was very surprised when he told me that, as he didn’t betray a bit of accent. When I mentioned I’d always considered it foreign territory, he replied, “You don’t have a clue how right you are”.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Just to prove morons can come from anywhere.
via/Political Wire
arguingwithsignposts
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Squirrel’s too tough for my tastes. And chicken fried chicken in an iron skillet beats others, hands down.
Funny story which I believe I’ve mentioned before: When I was growing up, my step-father and his family were some backwoods Texas folk. We’d eat all kinds of “country cookin'” as they called it: fried chicken, butter beans, black-eyed peas, cream corn, collard greens, other stuff like that. No biggy.
When I moved to DFW for grad school, a guy took me to a place where they served authentic “soul food.” I guess he thought he was going to expand my horizons. When we began walking down the buffet line, I looked and told him, “shit, I’ve been eating this stuff all my life.”
Donald G
@Bubblegum Tate:
Re: South of the Border:
My favorite take on it is from comics blogger Chris Sims:
lamh32
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I was just gonna post that too. This dude’s from Iowa. like I said before, “equal opportunity racism”
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
LOL, this is true for Ky too.
James in WA
@Mnemosyne:
At least where I live (~20ish miles south of the border), most people complain about the Canadians, if anyone. Which is amusing because people don’t stop to ponder that the reason they are complaining (long lines in stores, higher price of gas due to canadians fueling up cheaply at the last big stop before the Peace Arch, traffic jams on I-5) is also the reason why we haven’t felt as much of a downturn from the poor economy — because the Canadians all come south to spend their dollars.
Just my partner, a lifelong SoCal sun-loving girl who sometimes seems to think that it’s my personal fault when the weather overcast and raining in northwestern Washington.
Douche Baggins
@Tip Top: John Grisham sets some of his stories in Biloxi, and to read ’em you’d think all the darkies got moved to Louisiana (except where necessary to provide the plot some, uh, color, so to speak).
Console
Lawl @ the south of the border reference above. Perfect.
Gus
@Randy P: If they didn’t call it chowder, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. I actually find it quite delicious, but dammit, it’s not chowder! :)@Donald G: You’re a man after my own heart, music-wise.
Kerry Reid
One of my best friends lives in Chevy Chase, MD, but grew up in Arlington, VA. (We met in Ho-Humbia, MO — the I-70 rivalries got pretty intense between KC and St. Louis, but that was a sports thing mostly.) Anyway, when they moved back to the DC area after several years in Santa Fe, she said she would have been fine with either VA or MD, but her Chevy Chase-raised husband insisted that he would NOT live in VA. She claims he starts humming “Dueling Banjos” whenever they have to go over the bridge to VA.
Also, she told me that a magazine in New Mexico had a regular feature, “One of our Fifty is Missing,” to which residents of New Mexico could send stories about idiots who didn’t realize New Mexico was a state. When my parents and I went on a trip to Santa Fe, my mom said she got switched three times to car rental company’s international desk before she could make them understand that she was staying in the U.S. and not going to Mexico.
khead
No hatred between Tennessee and other southern states? Must not be a football fan. Mention “Albert Means” to a Bama fan and see what happens.
Maybe I missed it but I can’t believe no one mentioned SEC football. There’s more than enough hatred between southern states on a good October Saturday to validate Doug’s theory.
Love this thread.
gizmo
I live in upstate New York, and I can say with complete confidence that New Jersey produces the worst drivers in the world.
Spaghetti Lee
To the fellow Illinoisan who put Iowa at the bottom of his “worst neighbors” list, if we’re judging by how happy a liberal would be living there, I would think Iowa would be closer to the top. More than Indiana and Missouri, and certainly more than Kentucky.
Spaghetti Lee
And as far as Steve King goes, the Iowans I’ve met disown that part of the state as a sort of East Nebraska. My roommate is from Iowa City, and he’s described it as one of the most liberal, educated places in the midwest.
Rosalita
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Eeuw, so sorry about the neighborhood…
Pangloss
@KG: I could not concentrate on what you wrote there, what with the Beach Boys music playing so loud in my head.
El Cid
What’s wrong with chicken fried steak, if prepared right and consumed infrequently? Fuck, even Alton Brown fixed it. It’s just breaded, pan-fried steak — as if the American South is the only place in the world which coats less expensive cuts of meat in breading and pan fries it and serves it with sauce or gravy. Bottom round ain’t exactly a finer cut of beef. Schnitzel? Milanesa?
jibeaux
@arguingwithsignposts:
Cleek’s got Merlefest pictures on his blog, or he did at one time. I love Merlefest, but I need something less crowded…I’m getting into “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” territory. And I want to thank cleek for his nice words about my home state.
North Carolinians don’t like being lumped in with SC because we’re a lot better, of course. Plus South Carolinians refer to their university as “Carolina”. No. We are the oldest public university in the country. You make hats that say “COCKS”. You can use the “Carolina” name only with the qualifier.
You can draw your own conclusions about SC, but I will just relate the following anecdotes from a visit to Charleston some years ago. 1) the former slave market that is now a touristy mall-like thing had a shop specializing in Confederate paraphernalia. 2) on a tour of an antebellum house, the tour guide singled out the black couple on the tour, who were from Canada, and said “and our black guests will be interested to know that right over there is where the slave quarters were…..”
I’ve lived in NC my entire life, and I wanted to sink directly through the floor for sharing half a name with these people.
Also too: we have never amended our Constitution to require the use of minibottles in mixed drinks as a temperance measure.
Incertus (Brian)
@khead: I got to experience SEC football up close when I was in grad school at the University of Arkansas. I was at a game against Alabama, and the seething that came out of the bleachers made me feel like I was Winston Smith, swept up in a three-hour long 2-minutes hate. I never went to another SEC game, even though tickets were free.
mr. whipple
@El Cid:
What’s wrong with CFS, period?
Rosalita
@El Cid:
I’m with you, the first time I had it was here in CT
Donald G
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
General, is it my imagination, or are you now in New Mexico in the vicinity of Gila? My wife goes down there periodically to visit an uncle and the people he’s involved with has some out of the mainstream politics (in a radical hippie-dippie way) and I’m wondering if you know people in common.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Donald G: Nope. I now live near Silver City in the Gila Forest foothills.
arguingwithsignposts
@jibeaux:
That always struck me as weird when I was going to grad school at USC (East). Come spring time, all these young co-eds walking around with “cocks” plastered on their mini-shorts.
face/palm.
tballou
I live in SC and freely admit our numerous failings. We definitely have the worst state, except for all the other ones!
All kidding aside, America has become so homogenized that it can be pretty hard to tell the difference from one place to the next. I live in one of the reddest and whitest counties in SC, but even here a Dem will still carry about 40% of the vote. We have just as many crazy rednecks and wonderful humanitarians as pretty much anywhere else in the country.
arguingwithsignposts
@mr. whipple:
Speaking as a person who frequently judges a restaurant based on the quality of their chicken fried steak (if I’ve never been to a diner/restaurant before, that’s usually the first thing I’ll order – obviously not at ethnic food restaurants), you might take my word on it that there are plenty of ways to fuck up chicken fried steak.
tkogrumpy
@Taterstick: As a former Masshole I’ll say amen to that, Taterstick
khead
Someone hit the college football note earlier – my bad there. But it’s the best example of that seething hatred I can find.
Except maybe for old school NASCAR.
Paulk
@geg6:
I lived in North Florida for almost a decade, but have family in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina and have visited just about every other Southern state. Ranking them would require knowing what exactly I’m ranking them for. Southernness? Non-crappiness? South Carolina is probably the nicest of the “whole other world” Southern states, followed closely by Alabama. But then I don’t consider Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina (or North Florida) to be as deep in the weeds. Perhaps that’s just my perspective and experience. It’s not that other states are less “Southern” or have fewer nutjobs. It’s just that there are some states that still seem to be fighting for the Lost Cause. (Okay, so Georgia is borderline.)
Without a doubt, Mississippi is the poorest and most sad state I’ve ever had the opportunity to grace. As a visitor, it was awful and just depressing. It’s probably no surprise that these states are the ones most resistant to urbanization—it’s both cause and effect. I often think about “The Emerging Democratic Majority” when I look at the lagging political structures there. But that’s another discussion.
DonkeyKong
My girlfriend and I drove out of a shithole we were staying at in Wilkesboro North Carolina to Boone. As we drove in we begain chanting “Ah smell librul!”
Drove back to Atlanta through mountain country while listing to “Confederates in the Attic” on the ipod.
Western North Carolina is simply beautiful.
South Carolina not so much.
Kerry Reid
@Spaghetti Lee:
I agree with this. Even if Mike Royko did say that Chicago should secede from the rest of Illinois (during a battle over CTA funding in Springfield), because without the rest of Illinois, Chicago is still one of the world’s great cities, but without Chicago “Illinois is just another Iowa.”
And remember that the Klan was quite active in Indiana. Missouri at least has some beautiful scenery and though I mock St. Louis (Wilson Mizener, the land-scam operator in Florida, once said “I hate work like the lord hates St. Louis), it’s done with love, because there actually are some very cool things there.
So I’d put Indiana WAY below Iowa. Hey, when’s the last time you heard of anyone attending the Indiana Writer’s Workshop?
Funny true story: a friend of mine was in a production of “The Music Man” and during the “Iowa Stubborn” number, a fellow got up in the audience and started screaming about how it was a bunch of bull, Iowans weren’t stubborn, etc.
Protesting at “The Music Man.” That is so many kinds of awesome.
Sab
Having grown up in Rochester, NY, this all reminds me of New York’s own intra-state conflict between NYC and rest of NYS. Speaking as a western NYer, I suspect that too many NYC peeps think that everything beyond Westchester (i.e., “upstate” to these people) is nothing but wilderness, farms, and uncivilized hicks. Of course, NYC types also think that going to Lake George is roughing it in the Adirondacks.
Perhaps one could make the point that the state gov’t favors NYC too much at the expense of the rest of the state, but I really don’t care to deal with that topic right now. NYS has a pretty good deal worked out: NYC sends tax revenue and prisoners to the rest of the state, and the rest of the state controls NYC’s water supply.
Now, since I’ve moved to southeast PA, let me tell you about Pennsyltucky, Philly, and Pittsburgh…
Sam Hutcheson
I could explain the demographics of southern states, how the coasts are still tied to old plantation money descended from English gentry and how the redneck interior, progressing deeper red as you move through GA into AL and MS, until you get to Pearl and The River come from Scot-Irish workers/indentured servants. I could explain it, but people who want to say “there’s nothing like that in the North” wile ESPN trumpets the Yankees/Red Sox like the end of the world probably wouldn’t be interested.
Or you could just Google “Border Wars” in college football, but then you might have to face the fact that people are people and tribes are tribes, even outside of the Old South.
numbskull
@Jay B.:
How could anyone possibly take offense to such an even-handed, fair, and precise statement?
Mike E
@arguingwithsignposts: I haven’t met a BBQ that I didn’t like. An Eastern Q sammich with slaw and Texas Pete, damn….
Brett
Utah is an odd one, in that I’ve lived here almost all my life but rarely hear insults about the surrounding states. I’ve only heard good things about
Casino LandNevada andIllegal fireworksWyoming.On the other hand, I’ve heard plenty of bashing between cities. Many of the people in the area where I grew up thought that West Valley City was Gangland, and Magna was Hickville.
El Cid
States that had the highest concentration of slaves per entire population tend to still have the highest poverty and other negative socio-economic indicators today.
For example, in 1860, North Carolina had roughly 1 slave for every 2 white citizens.
South Carolina, on the other hand, had 1.4 slaves for each 1 white citizen. Mississippi had about the same ratio.
Georgia had in the same year an estimated 1 slave for every 1.6 white citizens. Alabama and Louisiana were roughly in the same ratios as Georgia.
Of course in the actual plantation / high labor agriculture areas, these ratios became much, much higher on the slave side. In North Carolina slavery was primarily in the eastern flatlands, and in South Carolina much more of the state was of similar ecology and agriculture to North Carolina’s east.
I think a lot of times opinions within white Southern culture (and often times others) about where are the worst areas of the South often follow the classic lines of where the highest slave concentrations were. Not just because of the high number of slaves, but because these have been the least modernized and industrialized areas with the most dramatic inequalities.
Donald G
@Donald G: @General Egali Tarian Stuck:
My wife was recently down in Silver to support friends in a poetry slam competition. I’ve been down that way a few times myself. Bits of that area remind me of West Virginia, but a lot sunnier.
The other Wilson
Residing as we do in perfect North Carolina, it is tempting to look down our fortunate noses at those miserable wretches forced by bad circumstances to abide in other states.
That we do not lord our superiority over others less blessed is all the more reason to appreciate and applaud our well-bred manners.
Bubblegum Tate
@jibeaux:
I still don’t understand why they made that rule. And that’s even after trying my best to use fucked-up, bass-ackward South Carolina logic.
stuckinred
@khead: Woof!
El Cid
@numbskull: As a native Southerner, I think if you limit this to Southern conservative whites, it’s not too far off.
Martin
@Sab:
Speaking as a former NYCer, we only speak the truth on that issue. You eat dinner before 9PM and you’re all too poor or unimportant to have other people drive you where you want to go. It’s sad, really.
wengler
Oklahoma kind of gets a bad rap in the McCain/Palin voting. It had the same voting patterns as other southern states among white people, but it didn’t have enough black people to balance it out.
El Cid
@mr. whipple: Nothing in particular, it just shares a lot of issues with other very rich, breaded, fried, fatty, high calorie and high sodium foods. Any cuisine you look at has those, but you don’t want to eat them all the time. The heavy concentration of those formerly needed high calorie, high fat dishes for hard agricultural and mill workers now may be one of the cultural factors making the South the fattest, unhealthiest part of the nation. Not exclusively, but overall the worst in that measure.
I love a huge, butter-slathered, fatty rib-eye with mashed potatoes followed by something like cheesecake, but hopefully I don’t eat that often unless suddenly I’m employed on a 18 hour a day ditch digging crew, which in this economy isn’t beyond prediction.
FlipYrWhig
@Donald G:
That’s where I’m living. I’ll watch for the pattern you describe. I’m still a bit taken aback by our one neighbor family that has the NRA license plate and the literal confederate flag sticker on the pickup truck, used by kids of indeterminate age who, after it rains, do something like a peel-out involving spinning the tires but staying in the driveway. No one else is remotely that redneck around here. Many more cranky white well-off retirees.
wengler
That reminds me of some of the probing commentary of the last election from Chris Matthews and others. Remember Obama having a white people problem?
It turns out he did…among white people in the south and west…because he is black.
It turns out white people in the upper midwest and northeast have no problem voting for a black guy over a crazy person.
Ed Drone
@justawriter:
State-of-Mainer: Wheah are you from, my dear?
Iowan: I’m from Iowa
S-o-M’r: Oh, out heah, we pronounce that, ‘Ohiah’!
(true conversation)
Ed
Brian J
@KXB:
Where did you live on Long Island?
I’ve lived there all my life, except when I went to college in upstate New York. I was astonished at how bad the drivers were there. They drove way, way too slowly. It’s nuts to be sitting still almost a full minute after the light turns green when there are only a few cars in front of you.
UnwieldyList
I was only there once, but Maine really struck me as unusual in that I frequently heard reference to “the other 49 states.” Normally you’d only hear or read something like that in a news story that used demographic profiles or something. Must have something to do with the fact that Maine’s the only state in the lower 48 that shares a border with just one other state.
El Cid
@wengler: When data from polls are available regionally, such as when DKos was using R2K and occasional Gallup data, you can see that the lower approval and higher disapproval rates for Obama nationwide are HUUUUUUGELY distorted by the very low approval (astonishingly, 27 for most of the first year and now like 43 in the South after health care passed) and high disapproval in the South.
Uriel
@stuckinred:
Still is. I have to admit that as long as I’ve lived here, this stuff has always baffled me- I mean, even if by some twist of fate the both cards and the cubs ended up at the world series and somehow managed in an unprecedented occurrence were both be declared the champs, it’s not like it would change a single thing in CU.
But, dear god, do they care…
EnfantTerrible
Born and raised in Minnesota (I now live in California), it always seemed to me that the rivalry between Minnesotans and Wisconsinans (?) was friendly but intense, like the two brothers who mail each other the same fruitcake every Christmas. As to the other neighboring states, Minnesotans tended to look down their noses at Iowans, and regarded people from North and South Dakota as hopeless.
I mean – ***James Lileks*** is from Fargo, fergawdsakes!
SiubhanDuinne
@justawriter:
(Haven’t read all 241 comments yet, so apologies if someone else did this):
DONNA
Hang on… I’m sorry, hang on a second. Did you just say you were sending me to Bismarck?
JOSH
Yeah.
DONNA
North Dakota?
JOSH
It’s just overnight.
DONNA
Am I being punished?
JOSH [VO]
Just the opposite, my friend.
DONNA
I’m being promoted?
JOSH
[comes into kitchen] I wouldn’t go that far, you’re speaking for the White House.
The DNC’s having a platform meeting and North Dakota wants to have a plank eliminating
the word ‘north’ from their name. We take no state for granted; we want to show North
Dakota we care and so the White House is going to be represented…
DONNA
You want to show North Dakota you care and so you’re sending me?
JOSH
[pours himself coffee] It’s really the very most we’re willing to do. I’ll write a
statement and you’ll read it.
DONNA
Okay.
JOSH [VO]
What are you doing at the office?
DONNA
I’ve got to put your stuff together for Congressman Pamento.
JOSH
Pintero?
DONNA
Yes.
JOSH
I forgot I had that meeting.
DONNA
How does a person get to Bismarck?
JOSH
The Iditarod, Donna. They have an airport; it’s the capital.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bubblegum Tate:
As long as we’re slagging on SC’s mini-bottles, we might as well bring up the fact that in VA, the GOVERNMENT sells the hard liquor (I realize other states do this as well, but that is just stupid, especially from the “less government” crowd), and they have a stupid ass 1-term governor rule. So, they’ve got that crazy going for them.
ETA: on a totally different note, Boone, NC is home to the community college with the coolest name: Isothermal Community College, home to one of the coolest public radio stations: WNCW.
And SC has the coolest state flag. That Palmetto and Moon rocks.
Spaghetti Lee
I mean, even if by some twist of fate the both cards and the cubs ended up at the world series
That would be a very strange twist of fate.
Donald G
@FlipYrWhig:
I grew up Southside, across the river in Chesapeake over in Western Branch, between the Churchland neighborhood of Portsmouth and the rural expanse of northern Suffolk. My local culture was a weird mix of suburban (with pretensions), urban, rural, redneck, military and shipyard workers. My family blends dairy farmers and shipyard workers … the shipyard workers now predominate and can largely be described as redneck. My middle brother is largely a redneck stereotype. On the other hand, I and my baby brother have been described as like unto Frasier and Niles Crane.
As to my earlier point, the locals are (or, at least, were 35 years ago) inundated with Colonial and Civil War history from very early age. Fourth grade in Chesapeake schools was taken up with Virginia History and seventh and eighth grades with US History with large portions spent on the Colonial and Civil War and Reconstruction periods, with the typical southern Civil War revisionism in such a way as to minimize Southern white folks’ of guilt (think descriptions of Japanese textbooks on World War Two as opposed to German textbooks on the same period).
The stressing of the “good parts” helps create a sense of Virginian exceptionalism, which enables us to overlook the closing of Norfolk schools in 1960 in an attempt to prevent desegregation six years after Brown vs. Board of Education or the social forces which empower the Falwell and Robertsons and their heirs, Bob McDonnell or the current AG.
Uriel
@KXB:
In our defense, that is not a year round thing, or even a city wide phenomenon. For instance, a good part of the year, much of Champaign smells like the Kraft Food plant. Along the Boneyard, the summer months bring the wafting perfume of dead fish, which is odd, considering there are no fish in it. And of course, large parts of campus have an ever present, lingering undercurrent of stale beer.
We are a veritable smorgasbord of unpleasant scents here- makes quitting smoking a somewhat bitter-sweet experience.
Mr Furious
I just spent two years in North Carolina, working for a publisher based in Charleston. Living in Asheville, working on a magazine based there, and one in Greenville, SC.
With my job, I got to cover a pretty good cross-section of the western parts of both states. Wow.
Those two cities are only a little more than an hour apart, with the state line about halfway between. Crossing the border into SC is like entering another fucking country.
Gigantic rebel flags start popping up everywhere, and Greenville (home of Bob Jones University) and Asheville (pretty liberal, artsy) couldn’t be more different.
Based on my experience, people in North Carolina have every right to be defensive.
Lawnguylander
I am too consumed by hating people from Manhasset to give a fuck about people from NJ or any other state. Our 2nd graders did beat their 2nd graders in lacrosse yesterday though so they’re probably a little less smug today.
JBerardi
FWIW, Massachusetts > Rhode Island > Maine > Vermont > New Hampshire > Connecticut.
Seriously, fuck Connecticut.
Incertus (Brian)
@arguingwithsignposts:
At Arkansas, they say HOGS. Take that as you will.
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) It’s just shitty people ripping on other shitty people for being shitty.
Kinda like 2 short people arguing over which one is taller. lmao
Mr Furious
@arguingwithsignposts: Isothermal is in Spindale on the South Carolina line, Boone (home of Appalachian State) is on the Virginia line. Boone is in the mountains and is absolutely gorgeous.
WNCW is pretty cool. I did a photo shoot there, sat in on some in-studio performances.
Martin
@Spaghetti Lee: I think that’s called The Rapture, actually, where all good baseball fans get beamed up to heaven with those left behind to suffer through God’s wrath. I’m looking forward to that day, as only Yankees fans would remain on earth. The Cards/Cubs game would for all time end each inning in a tie, never allowing the Yankees fans to leave.
Mnemosyne
I had several friends go to U of I in lovely Champaign-Urbana (or as we witty college students called it, “Shampoo-Urinal”). I used to have a t-shirt I bought down there, with appropriate stick figure illustrations:
Campus
Corn
Cows
U gotta love the drive.
Mr Furious
@DonkeyKong:
Absolutely. I will miss the mountains and the perfect weather desperately, as I sweat my ass off all summer, and freeze it in the winter in flat, flat Michigan.
Donald G
@arguingwithsignposts:
Technically, it’s not a 1-term governor rule however stupid-asses it might otherwise be. There are no limits to the number of terms one can serve as governor. The governor just can’t succeed himself. He just has to wait four years before he’s eligible to serve again; for example, see two-term Governor Mills Godwin who, as a Democrat ,served as governor from 1966-70, and, as a Republican, from 1974-78 .
KXB
@Brian J:
I grew up in Franklin Square, a few miles east of Belmont Racetrack. That section of Nassau is now known as “Queens East.” Maybe growing up I did not notice traffic and congestion, since I wasn’t driving. But when I go back to visit, it does not seem as green as it used to growing up. One thing that gets to me is that the streets are narrower than compared to the Midwest, which by itself is fine. But when everyone got an SUV, there was suddenly less room to maneuver.
Secondly, since most of the single-family homes in that area were built after the Korean War, they seem downright tiny now. So, you have a lot of families building additions, or newcomers just do teardowns. I can’t blame them.
Ahasuerus
This issue seems to be yet another facet of what was eloquently summed up in that seminal “Who are you better than?” post.
scav
@Ed Drone: Idaho City, Ohio. Yeah, tell us about it. Course, I did first hear it as the Rioters Workshop. Not quite that liberal.
Don K
@Randy P:
Philadelphians have always been down on Philly. I recall back in the 60’s some group or other put up billboards saying, “Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.”
I grew up in the Philadelphia area, but on the Jersey side of the river, and now live in the Detroit burbs, so I guess I’m thrice cursed.
stuckinred
@Mnemosyne: Aite ease up on that shit, you are talking about my home.
Roger Moore
@suzanne:
OTOH, they did elect the state legislature, which has been trying to pass this insanity (only to be blocked by sane governors) for quite a while. So it’s hard to give Arizonans too much credit. Of course as a California resident I have to be very careful about razzing other states about their political institutions.
Barry
@Mike G: “what northern England thinks of Londoners. ”
Jeeez, Mike – you’ll get seriously hurt in an Edinburgh pub if you call Scotland ‘Northern England’ :)
qwerty42
@arguingwithsignposts:
In Savannah, there is a sauce with mustard tang and a bit of tomato-y sweetness. It is very good.
Donald G
@John Cole:
West Virginia is a special case, though. I have previously long considered it a Southern state even though I’ve never lived above the Mason-Dixon line, but, truthfully, though, West Virginia is neither fish nor fowl… West Virginia is its own thing, unique unto itself.
The mountain ridges that separate the Southern portions of West Virginia from Virginia, whether from Bluefield on I-77 or on I-64 between White Sulfur Springs and Covington, VA or US 460 at Glen Lyn seem to be tangible boundaries, more so than the often illusory boundaries between say southeastern eastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina where the boundary seems more a line drawn on a map.
While elements of West Virginia partake of larger Southern culture, the terrain and relative isolation, particularly in the Southern portions of the state, give it its own twist.
For people who haven’t been there, it’s often very difficult to get into the hills and hollers unless you live there and know where you’re going and what you’re doing. In the Southern part of the state, everywhere you look there’s often a very impressive mountain cutting off your view of the sky or of great distance. Trees tower overhead and often block much of the night sky.
If you don’t have cable, satellite or internet access, it is very easy to be cut off from the world outside your particular locality. West Virginians in my experience, which admittedly was limited to the the southern part of the state, don’t tend to travel much, whether through lack of money, or a lack of kith and kin to visit out of the immediate area, or just because traveling is such a pain in the ass, especially during the winter months.
I think the often harsh terrain and relative isolation has created its own culture which, while it shares some things in common with the South, has its own twist. It’s not Northern, nor is it midwestern; it’s, for want of a better term, Appalachian.
John, how would you categorize the Northern and Eastern Panhandles relative to the Southern coalfields? I never made it out that way. I made it to Charleston and Huntington, and on a couple of occasions into Kentucky en route to Chicago and, finally, to New Mexico.
Cheryll Woods-Flowers
This is all so hilarious! Each person posting is trying to “out Anti-South each other and those from the South trying to prove that their state and or community is better or “less southern” than others. The fact is that every state has its own warts, shortcomings, etc. The good news is that you can choose where you want to live and so if you don’t want to live in the South, then you don’t have to! I live in Mount Pleasant, SC where at one time we had almost 4,000 new people moving into our incorporated area. Most people her would have been quite happy to tell them that if they did not like it here that Delta was ready when they were. I happily, and proudly note that I am a lifetime resident of the Charleston, SC area, as was my mother and my grandmother and that there is not enough money in the world to make me leave.
Jay B.
@numbskull:
The same way “San Francisco Democrats” get out of bed every day and don’t bitch about how terrible it is that they are made fun of by Republicans. Everyone gets their share. I grew up in Massachusetts, lived in Texas, New York and LA. Every single place had their “rivalries”, in between cities, sports teams, politics, neighborhoods, Christ, I grew up in “Lesbianville, USA” and that’s been used as a point of derision, and pride. Republicans hate New York, they hate Los Angeles, they hate Massachusetts and they usually hate Austin. I could give a shit. They want to own “real America”? They can go fuck themselves.
So Southerners feel picked on? Who fucking cares? Join the club.
tkogrumpy
@licensed to kill time: Threadwinner!
stuckinred
@qwerty42: Johnny Harris
mrmike
@Mary:
Italians. From NY. We have big pots of it at the ICC.
stuckinred
@mrmike: cioppino?
burnspbesq
@Cackalacka:
True. I was referring to the first ACC Tournament I attended, 2000 in Charlotte.
burnspbesq
@gizmo:
“I live in upstate New York, and I can say with complete confidence that New Jersey produces the worst drivers in the world.”
You must never have tried to drive in Paris.
tkogrumpy
@Davis X. Machina: Amen.
stuckinred
@burnspbesq: Or Korea
mrmike
@stuckinred:
Ayup. Poor man’s cioppino. My nonna called it Cacciucco(sp?) IIRC. That’s really what Manhattan Clam Chowder is. Cream soups don’t really work well in huge pots at summer picnics which are a big ICC thing.
P.S. It is chowder. Just like macque-choux and cioppino and half a dozen other regional soups are.
divF
Two jokes, and a true story for this thread.
(1) “Philadephia isn’t dull, it just seems dull because it is next to exciting Camden, NJ” (late 60’s – early 70’s vintage).
(2) “Iowa: less boring than Nebraska, better weather than Minnesota” (apochryphal bumper sticker from the mid-1980’s).
The chowder wars are even more factionalized than Manhattan vs. New York. My wife once took her 90-year-old grandmother out to lunch (she was from Little Deer Isle, Maine). Grandma ordered clam chowder (white, of course). My wife noticed she wasn’t touching it, and asked why. Her response was:
“This was made with cream. Chowdah is made with milk.”
stuckinred
@mrmike: Bella
Nadnerb
@cleek: As another transplant to NC (the blue state of Mecklenburg) from NY (DougJ’s area), I’ve got to say I agree, somewhat.
Anyone starting a conversation with “Back in NY, we used to…” is going to get ripped by locals here.
And to locals get ripped every time they start out with “It was so much better when this area wasn’t overrun by Northerners…”
Of course, the Charlotte Observer loves to implode their comments section every couple of weeks by printing articles rife with stereotypes.
LD50
@Pangloss: Many southern Californians share it.
Munira
@Mike G:
I live in Quebec (I’m originally from the States) and Quebec is basically not quite in and not quite out as far as the rest of Canada is concerned. A lot of time and money is spent trying to pretend we’re a sovereign country and the rest of Canada, especially west of Ontario, gets tired of putting up with it. I’ve definitely run into some prejudice against the French in English Canada, and I just kept telling people that French Canadians are super nice people.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mr Furious: Ack. I used to listen to WNCW when I lived near Greenville, NC. I had a student who was from Boone, and was as close to a DFH as you can get at a fundamentalist Christian school.
And, FWIW, the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains as you approach the SC/NC border are really nice. There’s an SC state park on the road from Greenville to Asheville (after you leave Traveler’s Rest going north) that is worth the trek back to it, it’s a few miles off the highway. And Chimney Rock and the little town (whose name I forget) next to it is also worth a visit (in NC).
I really used to love driving I-40 from Asheville to Knoxville. Some great driving and awesome mountain terrain there. You couldn’t pay me to live in western NC, though. Once you leave Asheville, it’s pretty barren until you get into Tennessee.
arguingwithsignposts
@Donald G:
Potato-Potahto. Either way, a governor is a lame duck the minute he/she sets foot in the office. That is stupid, and leads to people like Bob McDonnell getting elected. I’d venture to guess Kaine could have won a second term. But he was already looking for a new job halfway into his term, hence head of the DNC.
Bob
I’d be surprised if people from Indiana, Illinois, or Ohio talked too much shit about Michigan, since a significant portion of their populations own or vacation at cottages ‘up north’. I imagine the same is true in Wisconsin with people from Illinois.
And getting the UP for northern Ohio was like the Yankees getting Babe Ruth from the Red Sox. However, old folks and college kids do appreciate the straight road you provide us for getting to Florida. Except for the cops.
And some people do refer to the Great Lakes as the ‘third coast’.
arguingwithsignposts
@Cheryll Woods-Flowers:
I love the “well if you don’t like it, you can leave” statement.
While it’s nice to believe that we all have job mobility to move wherever we want to, that is not always the case. Sure, I guess someone could just pick up their family and move to another city with no job, no friends, no family, and no prospects and just get by, but that’s not reality for a great number of people.
FlipYrWhig
The web ad running for me at the top of the site is for Lynyrd Skynyrd, the “God and Guns” tour, with special guest Bret Michaels, which is apparently stopping in Virginia Beach. That proves something about Virginia culture.
Phoebe
@MikeJ: I suppose you’re right. Columbia’s ok. Jefferson City used to be sweet in a sleepy town kind of way, too. Now it’s a depressed hellhole. I don’t hate it but I do feel very sorry for it. And Kansas City might be ok, too. Their train station is magnificent. But I’ve lived in small towns in MO and I am not going to defend that $#!+.
Xenos
@Remfin:
Lots of Northerners grew rich through the cotton business, selling insurance to slaveowners, and through other ancillary parts of the business of slave-owning. Then there are the Rockefellers, the Delanos, the Railroad barons, the coal-mine owners, and so on and so on. The prep schools and universities of quaint New England are filled with dormitories and libraries named for endowments that are as blood-soaked as an overseer’s whip.
At least some Yankees have enough sense to be ashamed of this past, and not to boast of it. We have tried, with limited success, to oppose racism, and with more limited success, to ameliorate the excesses of predatory capitalism. This is not moral triumphalism, but a matter of enlightened self interest.
stuckinred
@arguingwithsignposts: Highway 11 from Wallhalla to I-26 is a great drive when you are coming from Georgia.
cleek
@Taterstick:
the most rednecky rednecks i ever met were in southern NY (Addison). and they were my own family.
they grew their own pot, made their own wine, grew their own food, made pipe bombs & cannons that they powered with their own homemade gunpowder, let their cars sit in the woods until grass grew up through the floorboards, trees grew on the roof of the house, mice ran wild through the walls.
veralynn
@Will-agree with everything you said about NC. I will add my history to the mix.
I am a AF brat, which means I have lived in every part of this wonderful nation, exception: the NE. My father retired to a little town about 45 minutes from the NC/SC border. I can tell you that there are nut jobs in the country (I live near them and are related to some of them) and there are nut jobs in the city. I have lived here since 1978, minus 1992-1995. 1992-1993 I lived in Northern Virginia and from 1993-1995 I lived in south metro Atlanta. I have to say, Northern Virginia is despised by the rest of Virginia. It is akin to how most southerners feel about northerners. Will is correct in that NC has progressed into the 21st century more than SC. I also think that those people in the north who find this heartening, it isn’t the kind of progressiveness that you are used to, but for NC? It’s a damn good thing. I hadn’t realized the difference before.
Nylund
Decent humble people don’t need to argue about who is the best. Its only those that are in competition for the worst that feel the need to fight and claw their way out of the cellar.
It reminds me a bit of how here in North Texas, you get a lot of “at least we’re not Oklahoma” stuff. I haven’t been to OK that much, but my last couple trips (camping at Turner Falls and a AAA baseball game in OK City) were both very pleasant. Heck, as cheesy, corporate, and touristy as it is, “Bricktown” in OK City was more interesting than most any neighborhood in Dallas.
(And I won’t even start about how Texans DEMANDED that I must admit how truly awesome it must be to live here coming from such hellholes as SF, NYC, and Toronto). To even dare suggest otherwise to the locals would result in enemies for life.
But yeah, overall, there is something I’ve seen in the South where they are OBSESSED with “our state/city is better than yours!” To me, its always been obvious that is a protection mechanism to defend the fact that deep down, they now how truly lacking their home areas are.
blacksheep
Somebody once said that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east, and it’s all Alabama in between.
water balloon
@sab: It’s not just the rest of the state vs the city. You ignore Long Island, 3 million strong, who also consider upstate NY wilderness. Mainly because it really is very sparsely populated, comparatively speaking. As to whether state policy favors the city, I’ve been through all of NY, and the northern and western parts of the state definitely get their fair share of public works projects.
d. b. cooper
Georgia keeps getting worse. Every single day.
Barry
@El Cid: “I love a huge, butter-slathered, fatty rib-eye with mashed potatoes followed by something like cheesecake, but hopefully I don’t eat that often unless suddenly I’m employed on a 18 hour a day ditch digging crew, which in this economy isn’t beyond prediction. ”
Nah – 18 hours on a ditch-digging crew would probably earn two bowls of beans, and a lighter than usual whipping, the way things are going.
veralynn
and after 303 comments, forgive me for not remembering who said it, re: NC being the last to ratify the constitution. I humbly remind you that Charlotte-Mecklenburg was the first to declare secession from King George.
just google MecDec or May 20th Society
Matt
Well…I have some southern friends from Tennessee, who told me that Virginia is no longer southern, we’re a mid-Atlantic state like Maryland and Delaware. And that a lot of us have mid-Atlantic accents, whatever the hell that is.
Mr Furious
@arguingwithsignposts: Yep. Those foothills are where things start to get nice. Once you escape Travelers Rest and head towards Lake Jocassee / Caesar’s Head / Table Rock it’s beautiful. At that point, for all intents and purposes, you’re in NC.
I prefer to keep going north from there mostly because the climb in elevation brings a dramatic improvement in the weather all year round. Bit of snow in the winter, cooler summers.
When I took the job down there two years ago, I had a choice of Greenville or Asheville as my main office, and place to live. That decision took about 0.2 seconds.
Mr Furious
And that stretch of 1-40 is indeed a nice drive. My wife and kids are still down there with the house, so I’ve made that run several times the last few weeks.
jron
this whole thread reminds me of when I moved to Chicago from Alabama.
Wisconsin girl asks where I’m from, then tells me, “oh, I don’t like southerners at all; they’re so prejudiced.”
Donald G
@arguingwithsignposts:
Surely, Tim Kaine’s term was essentially Mark Warner’s second term, just as Doug Wilder was Gerry Baliles’s second term and Chuck Robb’s third term. Or John Dalton’s term Mills Godwin’s second term as a Republican.
Really, can a state governor of either truly be a lame duck? The Commonwealth’s business gets done and if the people like job he has done, more often than not, the voters choose his replacement from the same party as your so-called instant “lame duck”. And then, when there’s a presidential election, the following year we elect a governor from the opposing party.
Virginia’s governor isn’t deciding war and peace or national policy, here, so I don’t know what being an alleged lame duck has to do with anything. He’s either effective or ineffective on his own merits.
Outside of George Allen, Jr., Bob McDonnell is the biggest idiot Republican governor the Commonwealth has had in my lifetime. He might end up a big enough idiot to break the “opposing governor trend” in the election of 2013, assuming, of course, Barack Obama wins re-election.
arguingwithsignposts
As my final comment on this thread, I should add something, since I’ve slagged on most every state in the deep south. As you can see from the map over at my blog (shameless blog whore), I’ve visited extensively throughout the south, with the exception of Florida. And I have to say that I’ve found something of value, and some beautiful people in every single state I’ve been in.
To wit:
The majesty of Palo Duro Canyon and the gulf coast of Galveston in Texas.
The swamplands and the gothic beauty of New Orleans in Louisiana.
The beaches of Mississippi and the bucolic old southern charm of downtown Oxford.
The upper part of Alabama as you gain elevation (I’ve never been to the Alabama coast, although I’ve heard it’s nice).
The college town charm of Athens and the drive from Atlanta up to upstate South Carolina.
The foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina, and the merging of the three rivers in Columbia (again, never got to go to the beach.
The western part of Virginia, especially along Hwy 11 (Lee Highway), and the awesome mountains that lead you through the center of the state.
Western North Carolina and the DFH oasis that is Asheville.
Eastern Tennessee, Nashville’s music scene, and a lot of Smoky Mountains in between.
Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains and the now-defunct Dogpatch USA amusement park.
Hell, even Oklahoma’s state parks.
Louisville and eastern Kentucky’s mountainous areas.
I won’t get into the wonders of the other states on my map, just suffice to say that there are some beautiful places in this country and in Canada.
And in each and every state, I’ve met some awesome people. Sure, there are assholes around (some places more than others). But there’s beauty as well, in people and in places, if you just look.
Donald G
@Matt:
Our geography, social studies and history curricula in 1975 insisted we in Virginia were a mid-Atlantic state and not a Southern state. I can’t remember if their definition of mid-Atlantic stretched down into North Carolina or not.
jron
@Taterstick: Taterstick upthread made the comment about NC’s cities, and SC’s lack.
In fact, that’s mostly what ranks all the states, not just the southern ones. Mississippi is always last because its most thriving cities are Memphis, New Orleans and Mobile, all just outside its borders. New York comes out on top because it’s got NYC, which is strong enough to drive CT and a good part of NJ. Georgia without Atlanta would be hard to take: even Athens would be like a smaller version of Auburn without its bigger neighbor.
States without successful cities just tend to struggle with backward leadership and an ongoing dearth of both general funds and educated voters. it’s a vicious circle. and it’s right there in the self-rankings of the states.
Will
Vermont and New Hampshire are the notable exceptions.
jaleh
I’m pretty new here. Just want to let you all know this is a pretty civilized environment. DKOS is getting pretty difficult to take.
DougJ
@cleek:
Where in NC?
And I think you’re missing the point.
theturtlemoves
@EnfantTerrible: We used to attempt to mock other states growing up in South Dakota, but it is kind of hard to pull off successfully. The main rivalries in SoDak were East River vs. West River, the river being the Missouri. West has the Black Hills and Badlands and is therefore much more scenic, but hideously redneck Republican. East had bigger cities and almost some Democrats, but they’re all Blue Dogs and don’t really count. And mixed into all of it you had the flat out poorest counties in the nation on the reservations. If you think areas of the south are dirt poor, visit Pine Ridge or Rosebud sometime.
Honus
@jibeaux: I guess William and Mary, founded 102 years before UNC, doesn’t count, since it had a crown grant and was a university before there were any states.
Honus
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: most of the Ohio River belongs to West Virginia, including all of it between the two states. You can have the kentucky part.
AlladinsLamp
Ask any Georgian why God created Alabama and he/she will tell you, “To keep Mississippi farther away.”
Yuk, yuk, yuk.
Mr Furious
@DougJ: I think cleek is in the Raleigh-Durham area, but I’m not sure… Not in WNC where I was.
Honus
@Donald G: also, all South Carolinians can STFU until they elect black governor, like we did in Virginia over 20 years ago. I guess all you yankees can, too.
Cacti
Having lived in NC for about 11 years, and about 30 minutes from the SC state line during that time, I can tell you that NC is markedly less redneck, and a nicer place all in all.
kay
@Drive By Wisdom:
arguingwithsignposts
One more, via Crooks and Liars: The tea party crazies are really ramping it up in Alabama this election year.
Cacti
If I had to rank the southeastern states for livability, I’d go
1. North Carolina
2. Virginia
3-t. Tennessee, Florida
5. Georgia
6. Kentucky
7. Louisiana
8. South Carolina
9. Arkansas
10. Alabama
11. Mississippi
Any omissions are because I haven’t spent enough time there to form an opinion.
DougJ
@Mr Furious:
People in that area may be isolated from this. Ask an intelligent, educated person living in a slightly less yuppified area, and I’m sure they’ll have much more intricate opinion about southern states than anyone here has about northern states.
I doubt anyone from the south would dispute what I am saying here.
handy
@Honus:
Hey I live in CA and our governor is a foreigner.
OK I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t just type that and slink away hoping no one noticed.
PaulW
Is there a state that NOBODY makes fun of?
Oh, right. State of Denial. Got it.
arguingwithsignposts
@PaulW:
Hawaii?
PaulW
@Cacti:
It still depends a lot on the quality of urban and suburban locales (rural areas across the states seem to be the same from Florida up to Tennessee… except Tennessee and North Carolina have steeper terrain, but I digress).
My friends in Florida had a saying: people move from New York to live in Florida, and Floridians flee to North Carolina (which tended to be true for half of said friends, actually).
I’m not so sure Alabama would rank lower than Louisiana, considering there are still areas left damaged in Katrina’s wake (yes, 5 years later). Alabama may have crazier politicians than LA’s (who are craftier but corrupt), but if Roy Moore got his ass handed to him in a primary I have to think the Far Right isn’t THAT prevalent in that state…
Mr Furious
@arguingwithsignposts:
He said state, not exotic foreign country.
Mr Furious
@Cacti:
I’d rank ’em thusly:
1. (Western) North Carolina
2. (Western) Virginia
3. Tennessee
4. Kentucky
5. Florida
6.
GeorgiaSavannah7.
South CarolinaCharleston8.
AlabamaBirminghamDon’t think I could make it work in the others…
Chuck Butcher
Heh, I live in NE OR, all the rest of you live someplace else – entirely.
Steeplejack
@arguingwithsignposts:
Chimney Rock is awesome. I have climbed it several times and even wrote an article on it (and Table Rock) for Brown’s Guide to Georgia back in the ’80s. Great view from the top of the latter.
Panurge
@FlipYrWhig:
There’s a tale to tell in that, particularly WRT former hair-metal glam-dude Bret Michaels. It’s a story from the rock’n’roll front of the culture wars that doesn’t get commented on as much; maybe it’s kinda like Finland in WWII, who wound up on the wrong side simply by happenstance. In short: Punk comes along. Punk is understood to be “left-wing” (though eventually it’s also how extreme-right politics would also enter rock for the first time). Arena-rockers don’t like punk. What looks like an iron-clad new consensus of hip is forged in punk’s wake, very pointedly leaving arena-rock out. Arena-rock fans, not knowing what else to do, start voting Republican as a revanchist gesture. And that’s (1) a big part of how political identity is formed in this country now, and (2) how Bret Michaels can be associated with a tour called “God And Guns”, as if Poison ever particularly cared about either.
I don’t know about Skynyrd; maybe it’s just a completely different take on former hippies bending over for the Ruling Oligarchy to show how “mature” they are. Or more likely it’s more of the same as BM: The other side was able to reach politically unaware ’70s rockers first, while the punk-infused Left ignored those stoopid arena-rockers who betrayed rock’n’roll with their big, stoopid music and rock-star attitudes, etc., etc, etc.
Germane Jackson
North Carolina is one of the best states to live in in the country, let alone the south, and I say that having lived everywhere. It kicks the shit out of California.
rikyrah
there’s the South, and then there’s Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
‘Nuff said.
Remember November
@kindness:
Historically, the Ct. indians paddled across the water to wage warfare on the more peaceful Long Island tribes, as they had better land for growing crops (Ct. still a wasteland). LI wineries have thrived over the decades more recently.
Also, the bloody deer swim across the Sound and have taken up residence here. So historically, LI’ers have a disdain for Ct.
Conn. roads are a mixed up mash up of routes- causing a permanent state of logjam traffic as you go from Bridgeport to Hartford etc.
Also, Joe Lieberman, Glenn Beck, Martha Stewart and Linda McMahon call Ct. home.
nuff said.
cleek
@DougJ:
Apex: the peak of good living.
the point? well, i guess i was riffing on your point.
and, sure, north-easterners think other states are worse than their own. any NYer who doesn’t secretly think NY is a better state than PA, MA, CT, or the entire country of Canada isn’t much of a NYer, IMO. and NYers within driving distance of VT know that VT is better: better mountains, better skiing, cuter, saner, prettier (no roadside billboards!), etc.. also, NYC isn’t really NY, and neither is upstate – depending on who you ask.
/generalizations
twiffer
@4tehlulz: it’s not tradition. it’s definition.
calling a cocktail a martini simply because it’s in a martini glass is the same as calling a glass of milk a beer cause it’s in a pint glass.
twiffer
@Remember November: LI is a terminal moraine. basically all the good soil from new england that got scraped off. nearly the whole of new england is best at growing rocks. oh, and apples.
hey, we did produce katherine hepburn though. and mark twain spent much of his life here. so there’s that.
Gene108
I grew up in NC. It’s 100 years ahead of SC. Saying the two are the same is an insult to North Carolina. That’s like saying Joe Montana’s just the same as Ryan Leaf because they both played most of their pro careers in California. Montana (North Carolina) was waaaay better than Leaf (South Carolina).
John Bird
Well, dude, it does matter. We share half the name of our neighbor to the south. But we’re blue and getting bluer; they’re red and God knows what the trend is down there beyond trying to get the Confederate flag on their state house every other year.
HyperIon
@arguingwithsignposts: on a totally different note, Boone, NC is home to the community college with the coolest name: Isothermal Community College, home to one of the coolest public radio stations: WNCW.
in my year in SC i too discovered this VERY cool station. but isn’t it in spindale? i drove to spindale from Greenvile a couple of times to participate in their fund-raising.
they used to have neat on air people: wanda lou saying “good morning to you!” and they played the BEST country music i have ever heard (real country, not C&W).
beatty
@burnspbesq: or montreal…or boston
Karen
@schrodinger’s cat:
We’re south of the Mason-Dixon line that Maryland was on the Yankee side of the Civil War I think.