Ahh, SC Republicans:
In what appears to be a last ditch attempt to halt Newt Gingrich’s late momentum in South Carolina, a fake CNN Breaking News alert was emailed to state Republican activists early Thursday morning claiming that the former House Speaker pressured his ex-wife to have an abortion.
CNN did not send out the email alert.
What is in the water down there in SC. This is the state of that wingnut “YOU LIE” Republican, the state of Governor Appalachian Trail, the state where the vicious smears about McCain’s children occurred, and the state where Nikki Haley was accused of having an affair prior to her election, the state that sends nihilist teahadist DeMint to the Senate, and I am sure I am missing a ton more. Virtually all of this is Republican fratricide, so while it is disgusting, it also is a touch amusing.
You would think it would be Texas, but for my money, ground zero of the disgusting ooze that makes up the core of the modern GOP is South Carolina. Is there something in the history of South Carolina that makes them produce this sort of vicious, putrid, right-wing lunatics?
Hawes
Too small to be a Republic…
The amusing thing is that SC always predicts the GOP nominee. It’s kind of like killing a guy to get into the mob. You have to shiv somebody in the Palmetto State to get the nod.
Kyle
What is it with SC? They are a bunch of ignorant, insecure, fearful, religious nuts who buy these lies, hook, line and sinker. If these tactics didn’t work, folks wouldn’t use them.
Downpuppy
Something in their history?
Nope. I got nothin’
redshirt
Fort Sumter is a point of pride. ‘Nuff said.
Wiesman
Um, yes. Fort Sumter.
lacerda
My money is on the Gingrich campaign sending this out themselves. It’s perfect Newtian tactics.
beltane
You’re joking, right? If you look at the trajectory of this country’s history, an argument can be made that South Carolina is the wellspring of everything that is bad about the United States.
Garm
Maybe it’s the proximity to Fort Sumter.
Villago Delenda Est
…too large for an insane asylum.
Been this way for nigh on two centuries, now.
I blame John C. Calhoun. He set the tone.
noodler
Atom Bomb Dropped Here: Mars Bluff, South Carolina
A colossal Air Force oops in 1958 left a non-nuclear crater, still visible today.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/location/sc
Runners up:
Peachoid Water Tower Gaffney, South Carolina
This giant watersphere is shaped and painted to look like a peach but some think that it looks like a big butt.
South Of The Border, Dillon, South Carolina
The classic I-95 tourist trap and vacation theme world, just south of the North Carolina border.
The Moar You Know
Quite a bit, actually.
Ed Drone
“Too small for a republic, too large for an asylum.”
Yep, that’s South Carolina. “I am a good old rebel, now, that’s just what I am. … And I won’t be reconstructed, and I don’t give a damn!”
Nothing much changes, in many ways. Though as I understand it, the Democratic rebuttal to Nicky Haley’s State of the State address was given by an African-American legislator, which has to count for something. Just not for much, once they redistrict him into oblivion.
Ed
Brian R.
Their flagship university’s mascot is the gamecock.
Leading many men in the state to wear hats with the word “COCKS” on them.
Apt.
geg6
Ummmm, you missed a big one, John. There’s a reason I call it the Traitor State.
superking
@Wiesman:
Yeah, they kind of started the Civil War. Crazy is nothing new in SC.
Paul (@princejvstin)
@noodler:
South of the Border is a wannabe Wall Drug, with none of the charm.
Gus
@Wiesman: Oh, it predates Fort Sumter. Andrew Jackson threatened to send troops there to prevent “nullificaiton.” Yes, Calhoun is a good place to start.
GrammyPat
What’s in the water has been there for a looong time (e.g. Ft Sumpter references). A more recent, but older that John’s examples, is Lee Atwater. Anger and spite beget anger and spite. Coupled with ignorance and generational stupidity, you have the entire South in general and SC in particlular. I can be brutally honest about hillbillies and red-necks because I ARE one.
Mike Goetz
“There was nobody quite like Yancey, and yet he was somehow typical: one of the men tossed up by the tormented decade of the 1850s (John Brown was another) who could help bring catastrophe on but who could not do anything more than that. The mildness of his manner was deceptive; he had once had a great fight with his wife’s uncle, and, in self-defense, killed the man (a thing which proper Charlestonians still remembered), and while in Congress he had fought a famous although bloodless duel with a fellow Southerner. In his youth he had briefly brushed elbows with the crusading anti-slavery spirit which he now hated above all other things.”
–Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury
Yes, there is plenty in South Carolina’s history to explain the current conditions.
Epicurus
Please alert the CNN newsroom. During lunch, I saw two of their talking heads arguing that there have not been any “dirty tricks” this go-round. Yeah, riiiight.
schrodinger's cat
I was just browsing through NYT archives about the Civil War, where they are collecting stuff that appeared in the newspaper about 150 years ago, during the lead up to the war and the war itself. The most fascinating thing I found was the census report, I forget the exact year. In this report, the number of slaves in S. Carolina were greater than the so called “free men”. I am not sure about the women, slave and otherwise.
Schlemizel
Not that I don’t enjoy bashing the treasonous bastards but I think there is something a little deeper at work on top of the knowns in SC.
When one party owns the state completely & that party demands purity there is no real difference between candidates. So, when you are running against someone with whom you have no policy disagreements really your only choice is slime. And it had better be the genuine article not some pale substitute.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gus:
The irony here is (and this is so typical of these types) that during the War of 1812, when New England made noises about secession, “War Hawk” John C. Calhoun dismissed such a notion out of hand.
Of course, when his ox was being gored, that ox being the “peculiar institution”, all the sudden nullification and secession were perfectly legitimate.
Danny
Speaking of Joe Wilson, it seems the Palmetto State Armory has finally stopped selling their “You Lie” engraved AR-15 lower receiver, replacing it with a tasteful “Don’t tread on me” engraved one. Moving things forward…
Meanwhile, in Georgia.
Frapalinger
“Is there something in the history of South Carolina that makes them produce this sort of vicious, putrid, right-wing lunatics?”
Uh, well, yeah! John, this was the leading secessionist state. It had a tradition of fire-breathing rhetoric dating back decades before that. Of all the Southern States, it was the most invested in slavery, with slaves making up a larger share of its population than any other. It was a violent, repressive/ oppressive place that didn’t really become free until the 1970’s. Unlike other former confederate states, there were no unionist uprisings or volunteers for the union army from SC. These are the most racist people in the south. I dare say they are more racist than the white people around here in the Philadelphia ex-urbs. The greatest mistake in this nation’s history was not dismantling the major holdings of the planter class in the south and redistributing them to the freed slaves. We did it on a small scale during the war, but, contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of freed slaves didn’t get 40 acres and a mule. The failure to break the power of the former slave owners led to jim crow and made the south the one party conservative frankenstein it is today.
Heliopause
Don’t forget the horse fucker.
Linda Featheringill
@GrammyPat:
Me, too.
But there are rednecks and hillbillies who are goodhearted. Whether they vote Republican I don’t know.
Linda Featheringill
I’d like to repeat my chant:
Maybe the Dems in SC could use a little help. FSM knows they have a hard row to hoe. I’m not sure what we could do.
David Koch
My favorite was when Huckabee’s campaign sent out Christmas cards on Romney stationary promoting polygamy.
kth
Even the liberal Ezra Klein argues that much of the SC craziness is due to it being a last ditch for challengers, and/or a “firewall” for the leader. There’s probably some truth to this, though it’s hard to see things playing out in quite the same way if the next state after New Hampshire were New Mexico, or even North Carolina (with its Research Triangle) for that matter.
Anonymous P. Hancock
Don’ forget SC favorite son and noted conservativeHerman Cain. Vote Herman Cain!
g
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Calhoun
Librarian
They helped to start not only the Civil War, but also the Revolution. The SC colonial political elite were among the most anti-British and anti-tax of the colonies; the SC legislature was militantly anti-Stamp Act and sent a strong delegation to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, including Christopher Gadsden, the designer of the Gadsden flag. Also, since the beginning, SC was one of the most elite-dominated of the colonies; its slaveowning aristocracy controlled its politics from the start in the 17th century until the Civil War. So, I would say so.
David Koch
No republican has ever won the nomination without winning South Carolina.
Let the new narrative begin. They’re just not that into you, Mittens.
jrg
@Paul (@princejvstin):
Ben Bernanke used to work at South of the Border.
Spaghetti Lee
@Ed Drone:
I think more the plan of the Southern Republicans is to make White Democrats extinct, so the rubes will for good and always associate “Democrat” with “NiCLANG!” in their mind, and thus vote GOP.
g
The precursor to Gingrich:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks
“Brooks is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner with a metal-tipped gutta-percha cane on the floor of the United States Senate. Brooks’ attack, assisted by fellow Southerner Rep Laurence Keitt, was delivered as revenge (or “punishment”, in Brooks’ words) in response to a virulent abolitionist speech by Sumner in which he mocked Brooks’ relative, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, and likened Southern slaveholders to pimps. Sumner, who was known for his scathing abolitionist speeches, was severely injured by the attack, suffering head trauma that would cause him chronic pain and symptoms consistent with what would now be called traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and spent three years convalescing before returning to his Senate seat. Brooks and Keitt were not prosecuted or censured for the attack, and both were overwhelmingly re-elected by their South Carolina constituents.”
chrismealy
I think in South Carolina slaves outnumbered whites, so their ideology was extra-racist and openly antidemocratic. They’re basically feudalists.
Corey Robin explains:
http://coreyrobin.com/2012/01/03/still-batshit-crazy-after-all-these-years-a-reply-to-ta-nehisi-coates/
jibeaux
I have my own theory about the lesser Carolina: it’s actually another universe. Now, hear me out. You know that flag they have, with the white palmetto tree and the crescent on the blue background? Ever heard anyone from SC describe that crescent as the “South Carolina moon”? The hell, the moon does NOT LOOK LIKE THAT. Not the non-SC moon, anyway.
kvenlander
Cole, stop trolling your earnest readers. “Is there something in the history” – heh.
Villago Delenda Est
@g:
That portrait of him captures the wild eyes and the obstinacy of the man magnificently.
CaptainFwiffo
Who will be the first wingnut to claim that this proves CNN has a liberal bias, and then when informed that the email did not come from CNN, goes for “fake but accurate” and claims that it proves CNN is liberal because the idea that CNN would send the email seemed plausible to him?
g
Brooks was widely cheered across the South, particularly in his home state of South Carolina, where his attack on Sumner was seen as a legitimate and socially justifiable act, upholding the honor of his family name (and the South as a whole) in the face of intolerable insults from a social inferior (and the North as a whole). South Carolinians sent Brooks dozens of brand new canes, with one bearing the phrase, “Good job.”
Shades of the Republican debate crowds. Perhaps Stephen Colbert should send Gingrich a metal-tipped gutta-percha cane.
Culture of Truth
Forget it, John. It’s Southcarolinatown
Frapalinger
@Linda Featheringill:
The terms “redneck” and “hillbilly” originally applied to the back country Yeoman class in South. These people lived in areas where the soil couldn’t support cash crops, so slavery wasn’t widely practiced. The people in these areas usually grew cereal crops and raised livestock as opposed to cotton, rice, sugar, or tobacco like the planters. Thus, they didn’t make the big money like the planters, but, since they weren’t competing with the planters, they actually made more money than non-planters who lived in cotton producing regions of the south. This group of people did not support secession, joined the union army in large numbers, led anti-confederate uprisings, were active in reconstruction governments, were backbone of the southern labor movement, and always opposed the dixiecrats. They were given their pejorative moniker from the planters. Interestingly, there weren’t any hillbillies in SC, the whole state was a cash crop belt.
The term redneck now basically means dumb-ass white ruralish and especially southern conservative, but its not what it originally meant.
burnspbesq
@Brian R.:
Leading to endless hilarity when South Carolina plays Southern California. The headlines write themselves.
kindness
Hey John, You forgot to mention how well Stephan Colbert is doing in the polling, and not only in SC.
PeakVT
Did someone mention Texas Republicans? We might have a few more of them wandering Washington next year.
Pococurante
WTF did we do… do you really follow our politics? :P
13th Generation
And please don’t ever conflate the 2 Carolinas. We’ve got our own set of problems up here, but compared to SC, NC might as well be NY.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The thing about Texas is that while we have a lot of the crazy, our density is pretty low, and the state compensates by having Republicans like T. Boon Pickens, who will adapt any Democratic idea if he thinks he can make money off of it. It’ll never let Liberals be in charge of the state, but there’s a major business wing that runs the state. That’s the entire purpose of Dallas, and a massive trench was dug in the 1800s just so Houston could have a port.
g
@Villago Delenda Est:
This is the one that really gets me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_C_Calhoun_by_Mathew_Brady,_March_1849-crop.jpg
butler
Well I see I’ve been beaten multiple times to the “Too small for a republic…” quote.
I heard a story about historian David Hackett Fisher. He teaches a course in US history at Brandeis, and one of the recurring jokes in his lectures when discussing reforms is that he asks the class “And what state was the last to adopt this reform” to which the correct answer is almost always “South Carolina”.
Tony J
South Carolina, where the American Civil War started, and where it never really ended.
Four candidates are still in the race, why not ditch the primary vote and go with something a little more in tune with tradition? Duels, at dawn, with all the combatants (except Mittens) still drunk from the night before. Winners of each to decide the issue with pistols on the Capitol steps.
Imagine the TV rights.
Emma
@Danny: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ of the line of David. The gob, it is smacked. An American Jew calling for the assassination of the American President by the Israelis.
The gob, it is smacked.
PaulW
I blame John C. Calhoun…
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
Works in Oregon, too.
“Beavers unimpressed by Trojans.”
Tony T
My friend from North Carolina once told me
“There’s only one thing wrong with South Carolina, it’s too big to be an asylum.”
MikeBoyScout
But wait! There’s more!
Soon you and yours will be able to fly on a non-union built commercial plane, assembled by those smart folks in South Carolina.
Gus diZerega
The South as a whole was culturally and religiously poisoned by slavery. At the time of the revolution the best of them thought it was on its way out, although impossible simply to abolish. Their descendents, men like John C. Calhoun and Alexander Stephens, explicitly repudiated our founding principles and Christianity was transformed into the state sanction apologist for slavery. (Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy is an eye opener) Its politics have been vicious and violent ever since s it has never honestly confronted what the Confederacy really was. They live a lie, and base their self image on it.
Pococurante
@PeakVT: Exactly. Bear in mind the Texas judges drew the maps the favored minorities. The east coast elite SC struck it down…
Villago Delenda Est
@g:
Wow, he looks like he just got dressed after coming off Doctor FrankenSTEENs slab, doesn’t he?
Emma
And yes, I repeated myself. And there were no edit buttons, Again.
jibeaux
@13th Generation: Don’t forget to vote against Amendment 1 come May! I’m convinced part of the sales pitch should be “Vote No On Amendment One. Because We’re Not South Fucking Carolina. Do You Want A Goddam Amendment Requiring Minibottles Too?” But maybe that’s just me.
eemom
has no one mentioned Strom Thurmond? Sheesh.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
Even in 1861, Fort Sumter was a symptom. Remember that SC was the instigator of the Nullifcation Crisis in 1832 and the home state of John Calhoun. They had, IIRC, the highest percentage of slaves of any state and an economy that was the most completely dependent on slavery. That was why they were always the leader in fighting for the interests of slave holders.
burnspbesq
@PeakVT:
I posted a link to the opinion a couple of threads down. It’s not nearly as bad as those idiots at FDL have portrayed it.
burnspbesq
ETA:
All the supremes actually said is that the District Court in San Antonio can’t ignore the Legislature’s maps simply because they are bogged down in the Section 5 pre-clearance process.
And all Thomas did was reiterate his idiotic view that Section 5 is unconstitutional.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
No one has mentioned Ivory Latta, either. There are so many to choose from.
Seanly
Getting fired from my job in Columbia, SC was probably one of the better things to happen to me. I just wish it hadn’t taken 7 months to find another job. Now the wife & I are in beaitiful Boise, ID. It’s still a conservative state, but the people are friendly, the area is beautiful and we’re enjoying life again.
The SC conservatives are the worst kind of God botherers and huge, huge hypocrits. Actually, hypocrisy is one of the big hallmarks of a lot of SC residents.
jl
@Gus diZerega:
“South… poisoned by slavery” I don’t like those kind of regional generalizations. Creates hard feelings and can create misunderstanding.
Take TX for example. Believe it or don’t, the state does have an important progressive heritage (which often included the most reactionary racism, but often did not). One of the reasons TX is able to say anything good at all about the way it survived the 2008/9 financial panic was that progressive provisions in its government and regulatory structure made its financial system and industrial infrastructure more robust than those of other states. Particularly state banking and mortgage finance regulations. Useful to know, since it shows you that people like Perry are ignorant, as well as dishonest, when they make their claims.
But… I this morning I do believe what you say for South Caroline. I heard a report on news radio this morning on SC gov’s state of the state speech. The excerpts were a vicious and dishonest anti union diatribe.
The parallels in the language about non union workers and slaves were striking. How the companies could be trusted to ‘take care’ of the workers. How union thug disinformation riling up their happy workers was the only thing that caused worker dissatisfaction. The companies knew best about what was good for the workers, etc.
Really chilling stuff.
The name ‘Nicki Haley’ will send a chill down my spine from now on.
burnspbesq
So many evil South Carolinians, that is.
Linda Featheringill
@Emma:
Link?
g
@Emma:
That’s appalling. And he tries to weasel out of it – “I wrote it to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from readers.”
Emma
@Linda Featheringill: Daany @24 has it. I’m still hoping it’s a bad parody or something.
slag
@kindness: I’m wondering which of the parties will be first to sue Stephen Colbert on some nonsense technicality. Really hoping it’s the Republicans!
Sly
Though Goldwater laid some of the foundation, the GOP began a rapid process of Southernization under Nixon. The white working class of the South was formerly one of many constituencies of the Democratic Party, but now it is the chief constituency of the GOP. When you lie down with dogs….
And South Carolina, at least culturally, is the capital of the Southern conservatism in its most radical form. This is the state of Robert Hayne, John C. Calhoun, Preston Brooks, and Benjamin Tillman. This was the first state to heed the calls to treason in 1860, the only state to secede through a unanimous vote, and the first state to spill the blood of American soldiers to protect their “way of life.”
It should come as a surprise to no one that a party that privileges “traditional” white Southern culture has, as its bellwether, the heart of the Confederacy.
YoohooCthulhu
Don’t forget Preston Brooks, the congressman who famously came into the Senate to beat Sen Charles Sumner within an inch of his life for speaking against slavery and particular slaveowners. SC’s been crazy since the beginning.
jl
On other hand I see interesting, and good, news for the soul of the US as a whole, including I hope and expect, a lot of the South.
Newt’s recent antics are driving up his national disapproval ratings as fast as they are driving up his polling position in the GOP primary.
See ‘Holy Crap’ post today at Talkingpointsmemo blog.
Villago Delenda Est
As the always delightful Dennis G has pointed out in the past, if you look at the historical record, the Civil War was about slavery, and this is what the instigators in South Carolina said at the time.
Not about “state’s rights”. Slavery.
After they got their asses handed to them, they of course searched for a new less politically explosive rationale for the late unpleasantness. That would be “state’s rights”.
Which lives to this day in the rhetoric of guys like Ron Paul.
redshirt
@Sly: And yet this template – Southern, Republican, Confederate Flag flying Yahoo – is now sold to us as the default American patriot style.
It’s insane.
SenyorDave
@CaptainFwiffo: How about Howard Kurtz? He’s an apologetic asshole for the GOP. Just saw him on CNN agreeing that airing Gingrich’s ex-wife was a low blow only 36 hours before the election.
The idea of Kurtz as a media critic is a joke.
jl
@Sly: “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, was his affectionate nick name, as I remember. Give as sense of his one and only approach to politics and governance.
wrb
@Frapalinger:
I was puzzled when I recently learned that a hillbilly ancestor served in a UNION Tennessee cavalry. Who woodda thunk there was such a unit?
This explanation helps.
The guy entered as an officer and was discharged a private, so there must be a tale there.
Upper West
@Ed Drone: Thanks — a great song, Ed (the horror of its content aside): “For this fair land of freedom, I do not give a damn/ I’m glad I ‘fit against it/ I only wish we’d won/ And I don’t want no pardon/ For anything I done.” “I followed ole Marse Robert for four years near about . . .”
Back in my coffeehouse days in the ’70s I used to do it in a medley with the great “The Night the Drove Old Dixie Down.” (with “ironic detachment” for both, of course.) Too bad that great art often romanticizes horrible causes (see also, Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind).
I also recorded “I’m a Good Old Rebel” on Volume I of my records: “Winners and Losers: Campaign Songs from the Critical Elections in American History.”
grape_crush
Is there something in the history of South Carolina that makes them produce this sort of vicious, putrid, right-wing lunatics?
Lee Atwater probably best represents the modern era of political chicanery in SC…but it goes back even further than that:
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, they fought very hard – even taking cases to the USSC to prevent states from having the right to determine the laws on slavery inside their own states. The only right they wanted was their right to own humans for profit & they demanded the support of all states no matter how the residents of those states felt about it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Upper West:
Written by a Canadian. Who captured the zeitgeist so well that it seems like an authentic period piece.
Amir Khalid
@Danny:
@Emma:
This gob, it is smacked twice as hard. Andrew Adler’s option 3, in full, is for Bibi to have Mossad whack Obama and then lean on the new President Biden to do as Israel says, or else — presumably in support of either option 1, attack Hezbollah and Hamas, or option 2, attack Iran.
The first two options are already insane. The third is insane too, and treasonous as well. It’s not nice to advocate that foreign agents murder one’s own president. It’s even more not nice to expect one’s president to take orders from a foreign government.
jackmac
And don’t forget. This is the Party of Family Values!
Villago Delenda Est
LOL. Banner ad for Myrtle Beach, SC, on the top of my page.
jl
Too bad for these people, the White Southern Cultural template is dying out in every way, except in issues of regional manners and cuisine, and superficial issues of lifestyle
I’ll probably get flamed for making an insensitive and politically incorrect analogy, but after watching some of the debate last night, what the white bigot rump of the US is doing is akin to the Native American ghost dance and other magic rituals Native Americans used as a last irrational hope to keep the Europeans at bay.
Except the Native Americans had more justification, and were less die hard, and more mature and flexible in their adaptation to change, less murderous and hateful, when the magic failed.
Sometimes we are asked to understand the irrational bigotry, hatred, and threats, the lawlessness, etc.
I suddenly decided understanding stuff like that should be limited. A way of life is gone. So effing what. That is the fate of all ways of life. It was the fate of the way of life I grew up with in rural Central and Bay Area California. I dealt with it. Other people need to grow up and deal with it too.
barkleyg
This great article from James Fallows explains that there is something different in the water(Koolaid) that they drink in South Carolina. Read the words of South Carolinians!
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/on-race-dog-whistles-and-the-old-confederacy/251497/
lou
Wasn’t S. Carolina the ones that threw wrenches into the whole Constitutional convention process and were the most adamant about keeping slavery? Weren’t they the ones behind the 3/5ths rule of counting slaves?
There is the nullification thing, the congressman almost beating another to death, Fort Sumter. The whole history of the state from the very beginning was downright evil. There was even a rumor that Charleston was founded by devil worshippers!
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Further to my comment #89:
No wonder Adler was scared ahitless when the Gawker guy spoke to him.
Rheinhard
Also see my favorite musical, 1776. Some of the lines from Ned Rutledge (Continental Congress delegate from SC) are priceless and relevatory:
“We support independence, yes. For South Carolina! That is our home, gentlemen, that is our COUNTRY. As such we don’t wish it to belong to anyone; not to England, nor to you.” (to Northern state delegates)
gaz
I can’t think of anything nice to say about South Carolina.
okay, maybe one:
It would pretty if it were turned to glass.
Schlemizel
The Bottle Rockets – “Wave That Flag” (you can find it on youtube)
Look here comes another one, four-wheel drive
Look there in the window man, sakes alive
That good ol’ boys a waving the stars and bars
It’s a red white and blue flag, but it ain’t ours
Wave that flag, wave it high,
Do you know what it means, do you know why?
Being a rebel ain’t no big deal
But if somebody owned your ass how would you feel?
I’m a different kind but I’m a rebel too
Like to do my own thing man, how ‘bout you?
You can whistle Dixie all day long
If the tables turned wouldn’t you hate that song?
Wave that flag, wave it high,
Do you know what it means, do you know why?
Being a rebel ain’t no big deal
But if somebody owned your ass how would you feel?
Amir Khalid
Where has the edit button disappeared to?
gaz
@gaz: Where’s my edit? FYWP!
*ahem*
that statement of mine should read
It would be pretty if it were turned to glass.
Danny
@Emma:
No, it’s actually hat tip Jonah Goldberg (warning: NRO link).
Napoleon
@wrb:
The eastern 1/3 of the state was very heavily Union supporters. The only reason the Union didn’t essentially “annex” it like they did by peeling off West Virginia from Virginia is because of geography and where rail lines were it would not have been all that easy to invade and hold it early in the war.
Roger Moore
@Frapalinger:
Part of the problem, though, is that opposition to the white elite didn’t and doesn’t necessarily make poor rural whites friendly to blacks. To the contrary, appealing to the economic interests of poor racist Southern whites was an important part of the New Deal coalition, and part of the reason that many New Deal programs were slanted against black dominated sectors of the economy (e.g. Social Security initially excluded a number of black dominated jobs). Appealing to poor racist whites’ prejudice over their economic interests is a huge part of the Republican platform today.
kdaug
@jl:
Yup.
MikeJ
OT:
Hurah! Power! Light! Heat! I haz them again!
My neighborhood is still beyond “chains required” and on to “cheins (and sled) required.” But I can now get on the interwebs to annoy all of you.
eric
all of this raises the question, why the hell did the jews go to charlseton? thanks in advance for answering
Mardam
Two words. Fort Sumpter.
Oh yes, two more. Preston Brooks.
My apologies to any who have already mentioned these.
Rheinhard
@lou: Yes, you should also watch 1776 for that – it makes that quite explicit. Rutledge’s song explaining the hypocrisy of the North in originally demanding the exclusion of slavery from the new nation when most of the slaver trading shippers carrying the slaves to the South were based in Boston is one of the finest spectacles of the amoral poisoning of people’s souls I’ve ever seen.
tarheel belle
you ask:
it is more of a chicken and egg thing.
it has been there for centuries, too. the rest of y’all are just now noticing.
IM
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know, but I blame South Carolina!
Emma
@Danny: Gawd. To be in agreement with Jonas… my headache is starting to turn into a migraine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
No idea, but complaints have been coming in all day.
Napoleon
@lou:
People who were against slavery (ie, northerners) came up with that. Southerners wanted them counted as a full person, the north did not on the theory if the south didn’t let them vote and didn’t treat them like citizens then why should they count for voting apportionment purposes. The fraction was a compromise.
By the way, all the BS you hear about why we have an electoral college is just that. The reason it is there is because it is the only way the south could parley black bodies into southern white votes for President.
The Answer
Behold the way: the Picture Rule.
Anyone who wishes to be elected to high office must stand nude in bright light and be photographed.
No wigs, Newt.
It would change more than the face of American politics. Think about it.
scav
@MikeJ: OT: Congrats! Huzzah! Drink something warming and flip switches up and down and chortle at the response!
Dr. Squid
@Napoleon: Yes. There’s a reason that Andrew Johnson was rewarded the veep in 1864, and there’s a reason that the Congressional district around Knoxville has been Republican since 1867.
IM
To much thinking about South Carolina.
I am listening to John Brown’s Body to compensate
kdaug
@jl:
Wait… so you’re saying I can’t club a woman on the head and drag her back to my cave?
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I was a bit worried Snowpocalypse had eted you. Thanks to this mess I haven’t worked all week. Federal Building’s been closed the last three days and I called in Tuesday because my side street already had 4 inches on it when I left for work. This could happen every year as far as I’m concerned. :)
Frankensteinbeck
Guys, I grew UP in South Carolina.
…you are one hundred percent accurate. Carry on.
Danny
@Emma:
If it makes you feel better: I’m suspect he is painfully aware what he, Andy McCarthy, Rubin, Limbaugh et al would have made of it had the shoe been on the other foot and he wants to get out ahead of it. And comes at a very inconvenient time, one day after AIPAC & friends tried to put the “anti-semite” pox on Center for American Progress.
gaz
@Yutsano: This is why we can’t have nice things. =)
Liberal Sandlapper
Ah, yes. It’s bash South Carolina time at Balloon Juice again. Where it would be heretical for anyone to actually KNOW anything about the state before exposing their complete ignorance. LOOK! It was the FIRST state to secede! LOOK! Fort Sumter!
Far be it from “liberals” to generalize about any particular class of people or citizens of a particular state or region, based on the actions of the most vocal and predominant subset of the population. NOO!! Not gonna happen!
Go fuck yourselves.
gaz
@Liberal Sandlapper: You could move. Otherwise, get used to it.
pseudonymous in nc
My thought, as a semi-distant observer, is that GOP (and previously, Dixiecrat) politics in Lesser Carolina have always been factional — basically, one-party rule, but with lots of cliques and regional/clannish interest groups– and that factionalism breeds more backstabbing than standard partisanship.
jibeaux
@Liberal Sandlapper:
Dude, you can always move. There’s 49 more of them, and Puerto Rico is lovely.
pseudonymous in nc
@Liberal Sandlapper:
One of South Carolina’s native sons was responsible for the line “too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” Which means that throughout its existence, there have been people who understood its structural craziness, but were unable to change it by themselves. We celebrate those people.
j
@Downpuppy: Nope, it’s something in their present.
http://christianexodus.org/
A bunch of religious zealots started moving there about a decade ago with the idea of copying the wingnut formula of taking over local school districts and then moving up the political ladder until they eventually control enough of the government to secede from the US and start their own Christian Theocracy.
Thar be loonies in those parts.
Ed Drone
@Upper West:
The Folklore Society of Greater Washington (FSGW) used to present “Songs of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War” at Ford’s Theater, back in the early 70s. My solo piece always got a good response — it was “Good Old Rebel,” of course.
The chilling part of each year’s show, though, was Hazel Dickens singing “Booth Killed Lincoln” while standing just below the flag-draped box where it happened. “Of all the actors on the stage / I loved Wilkes Booth the best.” What a killer last line (no pun intended).
And I didn’t appear as “Ed Drone,” since that ain’t my name.
Bubblegum Tate
@Frapalinger:
Well, I learned something today.
Mike in NC
Supposedly as General Sherman’s troops were approaching the border of South Carolina, one of the senior officers on horseback waved his sword and exhorted the men with, “Boys, this is where treason began, and by God this is where it will end!“
Woodrowfan
@wrb:
There were Union units from all the Confederate states, although one state provided only a few black units (yep, SC). You can see a list here, http://www.civilwararchive.com/regim.htm although I think it’s missing a few units.
South Carolina was founded by sugar plantation owners from the English sugar colonies who wanted a slave agriculture and the high society associated with it, but without all the pesky slave revolts you had in the Caribbean.
honus
@Wiesman: There’s a great line in Mary Doria Russell’s book about Doc Holliday. After gutting an onboxious gambler from South Carolina Doc says “I bow to no man in my love for the South, sir, but the cause was lost before you ignorant Carolina crackers fired the first shot at Sumter.”
She also has Doc write home to his cousin after spending time in Texas: “At the risk of engaging in unscientific generalization I must report that ninety per cent of Texans give the other ten percent a bad name.”
pseudonymous in nc
@Napoleon:
Eastern TN and western NC (i.e. Appalachia) couldn’t support agricultural slavery, so they were “redneck” country, a la @Frapalinger. But because they never had slaves, they also never had to integrate freed slaves and their descendants, so those areas became KKK and “sundown town” territory after the Civil War.
hitchhiker
There were African slaves in the what became the USA for more than 300 years, and now we’ve had about half that time with no slaves. The south clings with all its strength to the fiction that it wasn’t so bad, and they’ve gotten away with it, at least in their own minds.
I’ve been listening to Robert Caro’s book about LBJ, the first third of which is really about the senate, the senate, the senate, and especially how the southern Democrats — in the minority — cleverly used the filibuster to prevent civil rights laws from being enacted while claiming victim status as the oppressed trying to shake off the big bad federal government.
It’s horrifying. And familiar. And they seem to have very sincerely believed that they were doing something noble. Plus la change, etc.
joe brown
South Carolina is the Asshole of America™
Villago Delenda Est
@Liberal Sandlapper:
Hey, fucktard. We didn’t make up South Carolina’s history. South Carolina did that. Get the fuck out of that place if you don’t want to be associated with it.
Upper West
@Ed Drone: Ford’s Theater — That is pretty incredible. I once sang “John Brown’s Body” at his grave up near Lake Placid. (Just an audience of one, though).
Below is a link to my rendition of “Rebel”: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/oh-im-a-good-old-rebel/id279917693?i=279917717
jl
OK, in response to a complaint above, I will put in a good word for one aspect of SC’s history, that I just remembered.
There was a significant Federalist faction in South Carolina during the Revolutionary era, some of them progressive planters, who were serious about ending slavery and enfranchising ex slaves.
I don’t remember any names, except John Laurens, who was Alexander Hamilton’s buddy (or, perhaps, same say, male love interest). They hatched a plan to force Southern States to end slavery, which Washington hushed up in fear it would destroy the unity of support of independence.
wrb
@Woodrowfan: @Napoleon:
Thank you. I hadn’t guessed.
This dude (“Jesse James” Clemons) Was in the 7th Tenn Union Cav, D company.
There is a picture of him in granny’s photo album. A long hair. Looks like a wild fucker.
The Dangerman
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the old South. You know… morons.
/Wilder
geg6
@Liberal Sandlapper:
Dude, I live in Pittsburgh. There are just as many, if not more, jokes and slams aimed at my city as at your state. Unfortunately for you, you live in a state that has a long history of assholes and assholery. Man up and take it or move.
Upper West
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, a Southern Canadian, anyway (Toronto).
Sly
@Liberal Sandlapper:
Every region of the United States has its own political folkways and cultural baggage, resulting from immigration, migration, diffusion, syncretism, and all the various ways in which cultures both change and harden over time. The culture in which a person finds himself or herself will impact their decision-making processes, especially when it comes to politics, in ways both subtle and profound. This isn’t meant to be looked at as a generalization.
The unspoken truth about the United States is that we have no national political culture. What we have are many cultures that collaborate and compete. Two of the earliest of those many cultures pertain to South; the Yeoman of the western Appalachian and the feudal aristocracy of the eastern South. Both of these cultures have combined and combated in ways to produce the modern heart of Southern conservatism; the obsession over everyone knowing “their place” and not attempting to rise above their station, the use of race as a clear demising wall for differences in social status and political power, the importance of church ritual as a measure of in-group authenticity, etc.
One of the key changes in this culture that occurred early on is that it’s former political center, Virginia, had moved to South Carolina. The rise of South Carolina as the defender of this culture, through the likes of John C. Calhoun and Preston Brooks and, yes, the fact that it was the first to secede, speaks to this change.
But we’re not supposed to talk about this culture because it lead to the most widespread uprising of murderous treason in the history of the Republic and let bygones be bygones or whatever. Just allow this culture its own deluded fantasy of simultaneous supremacy and victimhood, let it rewrite its legacy to be more palatable to a more sophisticated modern audience, and there will be no problem with flying the flag of that same treason above state houses. And if anyone dares question the propriety of this arrangement, well, then there’s just something wrong with them, isn’t there?
If you want us to talk about the fucked-upedness of Northern conservative culture, or Midwestern conservative culture, or Western conservative culture, we can do that to. But those cultures are not responsible for literally tearing the nation apart and do not so dominate one political party as does Southern conservative culture.
jackmac
@Liberal Sandlapper: North Carolina’s nearby. They seem to be relatively sane up there. Why is South Carolina so goofy?
TEABOW
lest we forget: Fort Sumter
DanielX
Slogan of that well known humanitarian William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops as they continued their little hike into South Carolina in 1864:
“Here is where treason began, and by God here is where it will end.”
As they got out the matches…
DanielX
@jackmac:
I once read a quote that the problem with South Carolina was (roughly speaking) snakes, Baptists, heat, flies, Baptists, annoying plants, Baptists, mosquitos…and Baptists.
I blame Obama.
elenn
I think this goes WAY back, even long before the Revolutionary War. Just some bullet points I remember from my son’s Georgia History class last year.
• Founded by rich lords who bought 10,000+ acre parcels. These lords were previously involved with slave-related business in Barbados.
• Actually took 20-60,000 of the local indigenous Indians as slaves and sold them abroad, using that money to buy more black slaves
• Because of this enslavement, they were at constant war with the Indians and almost collapsed as a colony.
• Now, to help as canon fodder, add in some very discontented Scottish Highlanders fresh from the Jacobite Rebellion. The Highlanders were the upper end of poor, with just enough money to emigrate.
• And stir in a group of German settlers who’d been forced to relocated twice because of their inability to get along with their countrymen.
It’s a wonder it exists at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_period_of_South_Carolina
Woodrowfan
@wrb:
You’re welcome. I just learned of that site myself a few days ago.
The Union units from Southern states sometimes make reading descriptions of battles a tad confusing. “Let’s see, is this the USA 1st Tennessee or the CSA 1st Tennessee on the left flank?”
Gus diZerega
@jl: JL I am well aware many good people live in the once Confederate South. I was born in Southwest Virginia and raised with a Southern oriented family. The food is great and the people are friendly when they recognize you as one of them, or at least as family. Otherwise… One drunk relative, a Republican, allowed how as things were better when Blacks were slaves.
In other words, it’s complex. Like everywhere else. That said, generalizations are fair when they fit the broad sweep of facts. Who does Texas send to Washington? I know about the good Texans, but when did they really run things? Sam Houston supported staying in the Union and the lure of power and money and more slaves overrode his wisdom. Still does in many ways.
brantl
If you send more than 100 years trying to justify slavery, and keep re-fighting the war that you lost, that would’ve allowed it, your brain gets kinked up. No?
Svensker
@Danny:
Oh my God.
Maus
I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t come from Gingrich himself, to distract from the rest of the negative qualities he actually possesses.
Kathy in St. Louis
@Liberal Sandlapper: All that I know is that they actually booed the golden rule the other night. If there is a lot more underneath such ignorance that we need to consider, please, feel free to let us know.
They are their own worst advertisement.
Frapalinger
@wrb:
How about! Eastern Tennessee was solidly pro-union during the war and had one of the largest body of soldiers in the union army of any southern state. as to why he entered an officer and left a private? sounds wild, but there’s a few possible explanations. He may have been an officer in an guerilla resistance unit in eastern tennessee before joining the union army, he may have actually been conscripted into the confederate army as an officer and then deserted to join the union (this was common), or it could just be some politics. After the war, until the 1930’s, while the rest of tennessee was dominated by the dixicrats, eastern tennessee voted republican.
Afraid to use a nickname
@wrb:
Tennessee is called the Volunteer State because more men volunteered for the Union Army from TN than would have been drafted if TN had remained in the Union. There were courthouses in the mountains of North Georgia that flew the stars and stripes the entire period of the civil war. Many, if not most, hillbillies aka mountaineers remained loyal to their nation.
Western Virginia, then the mountainous part of Virginia, actually seceded from their treasonous eastern half to create the new state of West Virgnia in 1863.
South Carolina makes me uneasy from a distance, and sickly up close.
Both SC and Georgia were actually a penal colony for the British in the 1600-1700s. Genes do breed forward. There are people who inherit their disfunction, and SC and GA are prime candidates for such an inheritance.
The treason in defence of slavery, followed by the KKK terrorism, followed by the current Republican regime, all seems to come from the same poisoned well of hate.
PanurgeATL
@jl:
Ways of life (depending on your definition) don’t have to die out as long as someone wants to live them. The problem is the insistence that others be impressed (in the naval sense) into living them as well.
smedley
@DanielX: Those of you interested in Civil War History my fond this article on W. T. Sherman informative and enlightening. He was born in Ohio but spend many years in the south. A director/supervisor of the Louisiana military academy, a defender of the south against abolitionists etc. A far more complex man than the one the BJ commentariat thinks they know.
Well worth the read as is the whole New York Times series on DisUnion.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/shermans-southern-sympathies/
bob h
If you go back to the days of the Revolution, you will find people from South Carolina fucking things up and making life difficult for the new nation.
Nancy Irving
SC was one of only two states (MS the other) that had antebellum slave populations greater than the free white population. This engendered a paranoid fear among whites of being “overrun” that has endured to this day, even though the black population is now much smaller. It’s why they are even more crazy than the rest of the old Confederacy states.
Cheap Jim
Given the high level of Iodine in the soil, they may be suffering from mild hyperthyroidism, one of the symptoms of which is irritability.
lovable liberal
@Afraid to use a nickname: