It’s a well-known fact amongst those Americans who have spent any considerable amount of time in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region that there is a very strong and heartfelt disdain for all things Southern held by almost all Northeasterners. Even amongst the decidedly working class society that comprises much of the Philly area, there exists a notion that all Southerners are merely a step removed from the Beverly Hillbillies. With enough prodding, you could get any resident of the South to pluck out the first few stanzas of Dueling Banjos on a genuine banjo, or so the thinking goes, and everything you’ve ever seen on The Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, or Hee-Haw can be considered authoritative and well-nigh biographical for much of the South.
Maybe that’s why crap like this doesn’t surprise me. It’s a “reprinting” of a Kerry/Edwards document entitled “The 2004 GOP Convention: Four Days Filled With Lies, Mischaracterizations, Distortions, And Half-Truths” that was posted, then removed, then reposted, and now seems to be in a permanent state of “missing in action” on the Kerry/Edwards website. Take particular note of point #106 (reprinted here):
106. Miller: “…Against the Trident missile, against, against, against. This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Speeutbawlls?”[Miller Remarks, 9/1/04]
(emphasis mine)
I’m not surprised because I see this anti-Southern bigotry expressed so often, I’ve almost become desensitized to it.
It’s fine if you wish to poke fun at the mannerisms of a large portion of the voting public, it’s your electoral grave you’re digging, but the unmitigated gall that this shows and the contempt that it expresses is almost beyond what I could even imagine a Northeastern liberal Brahmin statesman dreaming up. Is there no sense of irony in the Kerry camp? Did they not choose John Edwards for his “awww-shucks” good ol’ boy manerisms, at least in part, in the hopes of sapping some of Bush’s down-home appeal? Why, then, have they chosen to childishly lampoon a United States Senator in a manner befitting a group of third graders on a playground?
I fully expect, nay, demand that the Kerry/Edwards campaign will begin spelling all press releases and speech transcripts phonetically in the interests of fairness. I look forward to seeing Edwards call the President “Jorj Buwish” in print, talking about “theeyus mayun, Jawn Kerry”, not to mention seeing “Iiiii’mmm Johnn Kerry, and Iiiii’mm reporting for duty!”.
It’s enough to make a Northeastern-conservative-married-to-a-Texan sick.
