The South Will Brush-back Again

Cato head honcho David Boaz draws my attention to an intruiguing theory of the hit-by-pitch phenomenon:

“I found that pitchers from the South are not more likely in general to hit batters,” [Thomas] Timmerman said in a telephone interview, “but they are much more likely to hit batters after giving up a home run, or after a teammate has gotten hit the previous half-inning.”

Timmerman speculates that this may be due to the honor culture of the south. Boaz extends the hypothesis to say that perhaps the issue is not Dixie per se but the Scotch-Irish tradition (see Michael Lind and especially Senator Jim Webb), noting that "Two of the top non-Southerners on the list, Jeff Weaver and David Wells" are from Southern California, where the white population has traditionally been heavy Scotch-Irish.

Comments

"Two of the top non-Southerners on the list, Jeff Weaver and David Wells" are from Southern California, where the white population has traditionally been heavy Scotch-Irish."

Huh. In my model of American politics, Southern California has historically been Southern, with candidates like Nixon and Reagan being Southern candidates.

But since California was never a slave state or territory, I've never understood why things played out that way. This is first theory I've heard that offers an explanation of why.

Posted by Petey | July 2, 2007 9:21 AM

As with so many aspects of the southern "honor" culture, the logic of this one completely escapes me. I have been a baseball fan for all of my life, but I have never understood why after a pitcher fails to do his job (gives up a home run), the proper response is not to try harder, but to take an action against another member of the "offender's" team that could result in serious injury. It's insane, even if not thrown at the head. It's worth noting that a pitch need not be thrown high to cause signficant damage. As a Cub fan, I can attest that Ryne Sandberg was never the same after he took one off the wrist in spring training in ~1993.

Posted by John M | July 2, 2007 9:31 AM

Apparently some professor--name escapes me--has an in-depth book looking at the Scotch-Irish which suggests that Scotch-Irish theorizing, pro and con, is mostly bullshit. The people discussed came from different parts of Ireland, with different customs, settled in different places, etc. I haven't read it, can't remember much about the amateur review I read, etc., so depreciate accordingly.

And "honor culture" should have quotation marks around it.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 2, 2007 9:32 AM

Confounding this analysis is the fact that now retaliatory beanings are often greenlighted by the manager only. That is, it's not just the pitcher making the decision.

Posted by Andrew | July 2, 2007 9:34 AM

Frankly I do wish that some position player with the appropriate size and demeanor would, if hit after hitting a home run or following a teammate who hit a home run, immediately crack the catcher across his chest or shins with his bat (or after taking his base, just gratuitously sucker punch the first baseman), and then let it be known that if the same thing ever occurs again that he will do the same thing again. I have a feeling that if enough batsmen follow suit that these types of 'errant' pitches will stop.

Posted by bubba | July 2, 2007 9:53 AM

The credit for the "honor culture" theory of Southern history belongs to University of Florida professor Bertram Wyatt Brown, not Lind or Webb. And Brown was working off anthropologists like Julian Pitt-Rivers and Erving Goffman.

The migration to Southern California was more ethnically diverse than you suggest. Lots of Scots-Irish from the South, via Missouri. But also plenty of Yankees, Germans, and Scandinavians from Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota.

Posted by AWC | July 2, 2007 9:57 AM

Wikipedia page on California in the Civil War.

Posted by croatoan | July 2, 2007 9:58 AM

Even your 19th-century maps have typos in them!

Posted by Mike J. | July 2, 2007 10:02 AM

The credit for the "honor culture" theory of Southern history belongs to University of Florida professor Bertram Wyatt Brown

Tom Sawyer disagrees with you.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 2, 2007 10:05 AM

Most of the time, it's nothing so crude as direct retaliation for a home run. Pitchers go inside to back the batter off the plate, so that the pticher can then hit the outside corner without the batter being able to reach the pitch. When these "purpose pitches" hit the batter, or come too close, the batters get mad and cycles of retaliation start.

I don't think it has much to do directly with geography or ethnicity--Weaver and Wells are two noted head cases, and it ain't becasue they're Scots-Irish from SoCal . . .

Posted by rea | July 2, 2007 10:12 AM

Huh. I have been wanting a more precise definition of "Scots-Irish" for years, and Lind gives me one. Border of Ulster.

That's my ancestral homeland. Gotta buy a gun or something.

Posted by bob mcmanus | July 2, 2007 10:24 AM

Bush beaned the Dems, including your precious Webb, on the Iraq Supplemental, and Webb rolled over like a wimp.

Some Scotch-Irish honor there.

Sounds like Tyson courage to me. Maybe Webb will bite off Bush's ear.

Posted by Armando | July 2, 2007 10:35 AM

Probably something like a third of the American ballplayers in MLB are from SoCal. I don't know if that theory helps explain very much.

Posted by JP | July 2, 2007 10:41 AM

Back when the Tigers used to be good, I remember a late August showdown between the first-place Blue Jays and the second-place Tigers. The Tigers' pitcher was Bill Gullickson, who actually won 20 games that year.

The first Jays batter was Devon White. Home run. The second batter was Roberto Alomar. Home run. The third batter was Joe Carter. Gullickson drilled him right in the shoulder.

Carter took a couple steps towards the mound, but thought better of it and took his base. Gullickson, naturally, was sent to the showers. Carter then extracted the appropriate form of revenge by stealing second and third. That was probably smarter than, say, whacking the catcher with the bat and going to jail, as one of the commenters above suggested.

Posted by Steve | July 2, 2007 10:46 AM

"That was probably smarter than, say, whacking the catcher with the bat and going to jail"

I actually saw Juan Marichal do that to John Roseboro--strangely enough because the Giant pitcher Marichal thought the catcher Roseboro was throwing too close to his head, returning pitches to Koufax on the mound. Marichal got suspended, but not prosecuted, and ended up in the Hall of Fame.

A very shocking event for the 12 year old rea to witness . . .

Posted by rea | July 2, 2007 10:58 AM

Back when the Tigers used to be good

They haven't been so bad the last couple of years . . .

Posted by rea | July 2, 2007 11:01 AM

Can we grow up and get over this absurd Southerner bashing already? Yeah, we in the south are constantly challenging one another to duels and there as never ever been a bar fight north of Virginia. This regional stereotyping is just so out-dated it's not even funny anymore.

Though they both came out of California, Petey considers Nixon and Reagan to be Southern candidates, because, (I can only assume since Petey gives no basis for this ridiculous assertion) he did not like their policies. I suppose he'll now argue that Johnson, Carter, and Clinton were all actually Northerners for some reason or another.

Get off this south-bashing kick. It is offensive and moronic. The south has problems aplenty. And we elect lots of terrible politicians--but then so does everyone else. This "honor culture" stuff is just crap. Yeah, there's an honor culture, but it applies to would-be tough young men all around the country--and the world, for that matter.

Posted by Rob Mac | July 2, 2007 11:08 AM

I'm sensitive to this, but why is there no border between Alabama and Mississippi on that map? Probably some Mississippi supremicist who thinks that Alabama is historically part of Mississippi.

I'm Scotch-Irish myself, mostly, and I know that I get upset when my team doesn't brush back a batter who's been too successful. It wouldn't be necessary if the umpires would enforce the batter's box.

Posted by Mac | July 2, 2007 11:09 AM

Wikipedia informs me that Bill Gullickson was born in Minnesota, incidentally. Think of it as a data point.

Posted by Steve | July 2, 2007 11:18 AM

I've always thought the retaliation thing was pretty stupid. What's even funnier is watching former players defend the practice on television: "The game will police itself". Good one moron. That's why it goes back and forth, b/c everyone is convinced the other guy started it. I'd say guys should just take their free walk and be happy about it. But its a long season, so I can appreciate the injury concern. Guys should take their base and be happy about it and then MLB, after careful review, should suspend pitchers and managers if they are pretty sure a pitch was intentional. Shouldn't be too hard to do. How likely is it that that particular pitch was just a random wild one?

Posted by mpowell | July 2, 2007 11:18 AM

As far as definitions of Scots-Irish go, I'll venture that one of the clear and key defining factors has to be a particular kind of Lowland Scots-derived Presbyterianism. This really did set them apart not only from the Irish-speaking Gaels of old Ulster, but also from many communities in which they settled in North America.

For instance, in the relatively religiously homogeneous world of colonial New England, where a kind of staid and highly intellectual Congregationalism was the norm, the Presbyterianism of the Scots-Irish really did stand out, one of the reasons they tended to found their own towns, often named after Ulster settlements; Colrain, MA, Derry, NH, and Londonderry, VT, come to mind.

They also brought along a more obstreperous culture than was the norm in East Anglian dominated New England, and tended to settle in the hills and on the frontier, as they did further south in the American colonies during this era. They tended to do things like assault colonial sherrifs with sticks and boiling soap when they came to collect taxes.

Interestingly enough, famous rebel Daniel Shays, though not born there, did spend much of his life in heavily Scots-Irish Pelham, MA, which some scholars have speculated influenced his direct-action radicalism.

Posted by Ben Cronin | July 2, 2007 11:26 AM

While this sort of historical analysis might be interesting in the abstract, trying to tie it to a contemporary questions such as "why are Southern pitcher more likely to purposefully hit opposing players" or the more general "why are southerners more likely to pick fights" is problematic. First of all, we have the fact that the very assertions on which the questions are based are spurious at best and ignorant and offensive at worst.

However, even if the general assertion that southerners are more violent (or more apt to pick fights or whatever) were proved true, approaching the question by looking back to the south's troubling roots in a particular region of Ireland is, in 2007, not a very useful exercise. I, myself, have always lived in the south and I do in fact have Scots Irish blood. But what then of my English ancestors hailing from west Tennessee, or my French ancestors in Louisiana (by way of Nova Scotia/Acadia), or my Austrian ancestors from Minnesota and Montana? Do they play no role? Do my Irish genes (which came to me via my paternal Great Grandfather who settled in that southern city, Philadelphia) trump them all?

The south is as mixed up and homogenized as any other region of the country. Its culture has changed a lot over the centuries. Tying some particular strain back to some particular region in a European country where many southerners "originally" (the idea is ridiculous) came from is useless.

This current intellectual fad of discussing a supposed southern "honor culture" is just a way for smug non-southern liberals to pat themselves on the back at their own civility and enlightenment. Yes, those southern rubes. Such barbarians.

Posted by Rob Mac | July 2, 2007 12:06 PM

This "Honor Code" stuff is very puzzling if you're not brought up in it. Apparently, it stems from the kind of self-delusion that allows Mafiosi to call themselves "Men of Honor."

One of the best examples of this so-called honor code in actions would be the Preston Brooks - Charles Sumner affair in 1856. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks)
In Southern opinion, Brooks was the soul of honor. What do you think?

Posted by Paul Gottlieb | July 2, 2007 1:14 PM

About 30 years ago Raymond Gastil ("Cultural Regions of the US", pp. 107-111) showed that in 1960, the higher the Southern influence, the higher the white-on-white murder rate (factoring out race) tended to be. ("Southern influence" considere migration, so that Alaska had a higher Southernness than Oregon.)

The lowest rates were all in New England and the Upper Midwest, the least Southern areas. Of the 12 highest rates, 9 were in the most Southern states (Wyoming, Alaska, and Nevada being the exceptions as moderately Southern.) The least-murderous Southern state, West Virginia, had two or three times the murder rate of any of the ten least southern states.

As for cracker-bashing, it will continue until Southerners quit making nasty remarks about the decadent coastal states. Massachusetts and New York have the country's lowest divorce rates and much lower murder rates than any Southern state.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 1:28 PM

For centuries "honor" was a military virtue specifically involving physical courage, effectiveness in fighting, and unwillingness to accept insult to yourself, your family, or any other group of which you were a committed member. This started to change around 1750 in France and England, but still is a factor in many parts of the world.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 1:35 PM

I disagree with the poster who said none of this is relevant and we should stop South-bashing.

I am sorry, but because the South-- which was not hit on 9/11, unless you count Northern Virginia-- was ignorant about distinctions among Muslim contries and thought that the best way to respond to 9/11 was to attack Iraq, we are less safe from terrorists while our soldiers continue to die over there. And because the South-- which has comparatively small numbers of illegal immigrants-- is full of racist white voters who hate hispanics and brown people and Spanish speakers, we can't get meaningful immigration reform in this country. And because of the South, which is full of people who love tough talk and phony displays of piety, we have possibly the worst President in this country's history.

I am sorry, the South-- and its tradition of oversimplification and anti-intellectualism and xenophobia and bigotry-- has plenty to answer for right now.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 2, 2007 1:47 PM

I enjoyed playing baseball until I saw my first curve ball. Our coach had arranged for a 17 year old to pitch batting practice so we'd be used to seeing better pitches than our opponents were likely to throw at us. The 2nd or 3rd pitch to me was a curve coming right at my head, and I immediately hit the dirt. The pitch broke across the plate, and I quit organized baseball that night. I realized that pitchers can't always get that thing to break, and I was going to be a sitting duck. Athletic accomplishment didn't matter to me as much as my head did.

Baseball players have to expect that every once and a while a pitch is just not going to snap back across the plate so they either stand in there or quit like I did. I'm amazed that batters get a hit around 1 at bat in 3 or 4.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 2, 2007 1:51 PM

The advent of the curveball really is a significant and traumatic moment in many would-be ballplayers' lives.

I don't know if hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in all sports as Ted Williams used to say, but it's pretty damn hard. Professional baseball players can tell breaking balls apart from fastballs by spotting the spin on the seams of the ball as it leaves the pitcher's hand 60 feet away, a half-second before it reaches the plate. Many of the best hitters have better than 20/20 vision and almost superhuman reflexes.

Posted by JP | July 2, 2007 2:47 PM

Apparently Southerners have a different physiological response to insults than northerners do:

http://www.simine.com/240/readings/Cohen_et_al_(2).pdf

Posted by joeo | July 2, 2007 4:07 PM

Northern Virginia is not in the South--it's above the Sweet Tea Line.

Back when the Tigers used to be good

The same Tigers who were in the World Series last year? Who currently have a 47-33 record, the third best in the American League (and a better record than any National League team)? #3 on ESPN's Power Rankings? #1 for the AL Wild Card? I'd say they're pretty good.

Posted by croatoan | July 2, 2007 4:09 PM

Thank you, Dilan Esper for ably making my point for me. Yes, the south is nothing but a bunch of cross-burning Klansmen bent on world domination. All by its lonesome the south drove the nation to war in Iraq. Who knew?

The truth is the entire country was driven insane by 9/11. The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to invade Iraq. The Washington and New York punditry loved the idea.

And to say that the south has comparatively small numbers of illegal immigrants is just staggeringly ignorant. And the anti-immigrant fervor of which Dilan Esper speaks does not sound like the south I know--sounds more like California circa 1994, or parts of New Mexico and Arizona today.

Yes, the south has plenty to answer for. But I would argue that the south, as a region, is as much a victim as a perpetrator of all of the bad policies Dilan Esper abhors. This moronic stereotyping of an entire region has got to end. Get off your high-horses you northern and western folk. The south is not the source of all the world's ills. Pennsylvania gave us Santorum, Maine gave us GHWB and GWB, New York gave us D'Amato and Gulianni, Massachusetts gave us Romney, Connecticut gave us Lieberman, and so on. There's blame to go around.

Posted by Rob Mac | July 2, 2007 4:17 PM

Look, we need to settle this Brooks-style. I propose a Crazy Old Man fight between mcmanus, as a representative of the Scotch Irish South, and the all-too-perfectly named Emerson, who implies he is otherwise. To be hosted by the Atlantic. Emerson starts with the cane, though, to make up for last time.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 2, 2007 4:20 PM

Rob, ever heard of the Southern Strategy? Ever looked at the election maps for 2000 and 2004? Ever look at the US Senate? (The Confederacy sends 16 or 18 brain-dead Republicans and 4 mediocre Democrats.)

There was no bashing on this thread until you started whining. But I'm always glad to oblige.

I guess I'll just mosey on down to the cemetery now and decorate the graves of the Union dead. I don't tell them what the South has done to our country. Let them rest in peace.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 4:39 PM

For me, the South begins in Central Iowa.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 4:44 PM

Rob:

It is of course true that the entire nation got caught up in post-9/11 mania. Nonetheless, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq if the South had not elected Bush in 2000-- and make no mistake, the bulk of his electoral votes came from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

I would go further, though, and point out that the entire culture of mindless militarism is centered in the South. We don't sing "we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way" in Los Angeles. I would venture to say they don't sing it in New York. I probably heard that song twice in 5 years on the radio in Southern California, and at least 100 times when I traveled in the South in the year following its release.

As for illegal immigrants, California voted for Proposition 187, but we got over it. The California electorate now would never elect Pete Wilson and would not vote for another 187. Meanwhile, it is senators like Jeff Sessions who are responsible for killing immigration reform. Because there are SO MANY illegal immigrants in Alabama!

Look, if the South wants the rest of us to stop stereotyping you, I have a tip. Stop tolerating racism. Take down the confederate flags. Stop broadcasting homophobic hate on so many religious programs on your radio stations. Stop telling us how the civil war was about northern aggression, or tariffs, or something other than slavery and the subjugation of blacks. And most importanly, stop ruining our politics by voting for reactionary, macho politicians expressing insincere and over the top religious beliefs.

At that point in time, I'll gladly say the South has changed. Hell, I'll even join you in a chorus of "Dixie". But you aren't there yet. And that's not because there aren't good people in the South-- there are plenty. That is what makes this so tragic, though-- good people shouldn't tolerate this crap.

Posted by Dilan Esper | July 2, 2007 4:44 PM

The same Tigers who were in the World Series last year?

Yes, the same Tigers. I realize tongue-in-cheek phrasings don't come across well on the Internet, but if I follow the Tigers closely enough to remember every detail from the first inning of some regular season game in 1991, do you really think I have no idea that the Tigers are good again?

Posted by Steve | July 2, 2007 4:46 PM

I live in the South, so I can definitely answer all questions. The South is fully of crazy people. I can say this dispassionately, since I don't really mind living here, but really, total insanity is the order of the day.

And Southerners can shut the fuck up about anyone else saying anything about them until right around the time where they manage to go ten minutes without insulting the rest of the country. Southerners thrive on region-based animosity. It's about time Northerners cotten on to how much Southerners hate them. Every election here consists of each candidate trying to paint the other as a secret Northern liberal. I'm tempted to start the "New York Jew" party to openly campaign to bring New York Jewish values to the South, just for the contrast.

Posted by Walt | July 2, 2007 5:12 PM

I've been hearing about damn Yankees and "The South Shall Rise Again" off and on for decades, and I return that sentiment double.

Once the Republicans are out of office, maybe some of the Southern Senators will learn to behave slightly less like jerks, and hopefully a few of them will be picked off too. But during their day in the sun they've been horrible.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 5:23 PM

There's a difference between "Southern" and "Southern conservative," which people seem to forget.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 2, 2007 5:27 PM

Individual Southerners can apply for exemptions on a case-by-case basis. There should be a quota every year, though, to keep the world of decent people from being flooded by refugees.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 6:22 PM

Re: I am sorry, but because the South-- which was not hit on 9/11, unless you count Northern Virginia-- was ignorant about distinctions among Muslim contries and thought that the best way to respond to 9/11 was to attack Iraq, we are less safe from terrorists while our soldiers continue to die over there.

Um, Virginia is definitely in the South. Even northern Virginia. No one would suggest that Mssrs Washington and Jefferson (both of northern Virginia) were anything but Southerners. And your point is rather silly: the whole damn country made the mistake you mention after 9-11, not just the South.

Re: And because the South-- which has comparatively small numbers of illegal immigrants

Um, ever been to the South? Guess what, lots and lots of illegal immigrants in Dixie too! Definitely in Texas (a former CSA state) and in Florida (which may not be culturally southern, but is geographically so)

Re: is full of racist white voters who hate hispanics and brown people and Spanish speakers, we can't get meaningful immigration reform in this country.

I grew up in metro Detroit. Lots of racists up there too. For a while the Grand Poobah of the KKK lived in the next country north of us. Come on, quit bashing the South for the sins of the whole nation.

Re: Nonetheless, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq if the South had not elected Bush in 2000-- and make no mistake, the bulk of his electoral votes came from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Let's not forget that the Mountain West went (almost) soldily for Bush in 2000, as did several Midwestern states, including Ohio and even one New England state.

Re: I would go further, though, and point out that the entire culture of mindless militarism is centered in the South.

West Point is in New York for crying out loud! And visit Colorado sometime: not only the Air Force academy is to be foudn there, but some rather noxious homophobic "ministries". Indeed, the macho honor culture you decry in the South is very well rooted in to the West as well, where Native Americans replaced Blacks as the object of racial hate. Have you somehow missed the whole Cowboy and Calvary mythos? Given that the South was tainted by slavery, and so Gone With the Wind romanticism could only prosper in a limited way, the Western Romance of our national mythology is probably far more responsible for some of the rightwing motifs you decry. George Bush is criticized as a "cowboy" after all, not as "planter".

Posted by JonF | July 2, 2007 7:06 PM

"I am sorry, the South-- and its tradition of oversimplification and anti-intellectualism and xenophobia and bigotry-- has plenty to answer for right now."

Is there any way that this statement can not be inherently hypocritical? I was raised to believe that judging people broadly based on one aspect of themselves IS xenophobia and bigotry. If I repeated the sentence above but substituted almost any other loosely linked group for the term "the South" (which in and of itself makes little sense - land doesn't make judgements, people do), I'd be torn to pieces, rightly I think, for being such a bigot. Imagine if I spoke of some african-american "tradition of anti-intellectualism"... my God, what a thing to say!

The thing that makes this conversation all the more sad, I think, is that by and large liberal Democrats (as I assume many of above posters are) are right on this issue the vast majority of the time. Its one of the key things that made me start identifying as a Dem in the first place - liberals traditionally defend minorities, resist ugly judgementalism and believe that the content of one's character is the thing that really counts. That is, apparently, unless one lives in or was raised in the wrong state, in which case, judge and insult away.

And then we scratch our heads when people in these states vote Republican against their own interests? Seriously??

I'm a midwesterner by birth (so you know I'm not some fire breathing confederate defender) who has lived a little bit of everywhere. Yes, there are regional cultural differences that linger, but they are a LOT less influentual than the above posts imply, especially when two areas of similar population density, education level etc. are compared (sorry, but you cannot fairly compare people who live in a major city center with people who live miles away from the nearest grocery store - in fact, if generalizations have to be made, they would probably be more fairly made urbanites, suburbanites and rural folk - though thats another topic altogether).

I mean, do you seriously think there is a higher conservative to liberal ratio in Austin, TX than there is in, say, Appleton, WI?

Think, people, THINK.

What is the upside to all this hatred? Does it make you feel better about yourself to say that only "the South" re-elected GWB, even though we've all seen the maps showing how many western and midwestern states went for Bush in the end? Yes, the south has its fair share of idiots - the "south shall rise again" nonsense drives me just as batty as it drives you. But those of you who go on and on about how everyone south of the Mason Dixon (or, really, anyone who doesn't live on the appropriately sophisticated cities along the east and west coasts) are nothing but slack-jawed, knuckle dragging violent racists are frankly their equivalents. Its embarassing.

But more than that - its bad for business. I'm sure anyone interested enough in politics to read this blog has seen the "purple map" and knows that House seats are definitially local. There are plenty of Democrats representing districts in the south and west, so there are clearly Southerners enlightened enough to vote for a Democrat. And given the mood in the country right now (and the general mood is everywhere, including here in the south), we've got a huge opportunity in 2008 to build a solid, lasting majority in Congress. But we can't do it without winning some currently red districts.

Please, explain to me how sitting around essentially spitting on half the country sight unseen is going to help us secure those districts?

Posted by Karli | July 2, 2007 8:59 PM

We're just responding to Rob Mac's silly whine.

The Democrats can win without the South, and they should, because anything they do to conciliate the South will make the Democrats worth, and they might not win anyway.

The South is a definable region. Many people live there identify very strongly with their region (and as Walt pointed out, people in this region actively hate us.). But if you look at that region, by non-Southern standards it's a pretty shitty region.

Note also that the stupid, demented Senators elected by Southerners are only too happy to fling shit at Massachusetts, New York, and California -- all much better places than anywhere in the South. If the South wanted to be accepted and respected, they'd stop electing shithead creeps.

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 10:34 PM

"Make the Democrats worse".

Posted by John Emerson | July 2, 2007 10:35 PM

John -

If your "south" stretches all the way from Iowa west to SoCal, I'm not seeing where you are getting all these electoral votes for the presidency. Congressional seats are local and can be picked up anywhere, and we NEED to pick up a few more this electoral cycle, because A)our odds are better now, especially in the Senate, than they are likely to be for a long time; and B)the simple majority we have now is not enough to guarantee that we get done what we need to get done. The fact of the matter is that many if not most of the seats that will be most hotly contested will be located in your "south" - and that is ignoring all the southern seats we already have (especially in urban areas). If you really think we can pull off controlling all three branches of government with authority without the aid of anyone located in your defined "south" .... well, I'd really like to see the map that corresponds with that. I don't know the details offhand, but that sounds ridiculous on its face to me.

I'm sorry to hear that you think the south is a "shitty region" - a vast, vast number of Americans, however, do not. Here's a fairly recent accounting of city population growth throughout America:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-06-30-slow-cities.htm

At a quick glance, I see a LOT of south and west - millions of people abandoning Yankee paradise for places like Florida, Texas and yes, even North Carolina. I'm curious to hear how your "theory" - I call it that generously - on the south and southerners applies to those people. I mean, it seems highly unlikely to me that those people are flinging shit at Yankeeland, as many of them were probably BORN in Yankeeland and/or have family & friends there. As for regional identification, you are doing a splendid job calling the kettle black. Same goes for the bit about hatred. You obviously actively hate the south - what kind of reaction do you expect?

As southern and western cities continue to grow like weeds - places like Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Las Vegas, I could go on and on - votes and eventually congressional seats and electoral votes will concentrate there, whether you particularly like the region or not. MANY of those votes are extremely obtainable. The "minority" vote down here is expanding like nuts, especially when you take the strength of the hispanic vote into account. The southwest especially has a strong libertarian streak. Economically, the left has always had more to offer southerners (and, well, pretty much everyone in the bottom 90%) than the GOP. And the metropolitan areas down here do a perfectly good job of creating nice little liberal havens. We may not have NYC, but believe it or not urban dwellers IME are pretty similar everywhere, regardless of the longitude of their homes.

I would never want the Decmocratic Party to twist its agenda around to lure in that boneheaded 30% or so who still support Bush. I support the party I support for a reason. But to dump districts right and left just to, what, be able to flaunt about the snobbish attitude you displayed above is a disgusting waste if I've ever seen one. In fact, as far as I am concerned, Liberals by our nature are SUPPOSED to be open-minded and inclusive. Maybe its a bit of leftover youthful naivity, but I thought that our party was always the big tent - we were the ones who stuck to our guns and insisted on equality for people who were female, or black, or gay. But accepting southerners is too much for you - even when they don't want to change the party platform and they aren't substantially different from their northern bretheren? I don't get it.

And BTW, those people and those districts DO exist. Just last year I was living in one - with a little help from the man himself, we tossed one of the dirtiest, slimiest Bushies in Congress (you mighta heard of him - a guy named DeLay) and elected a Democrat ... one who had held the office before redistricting, so no, this wasn't simply a case of having no choice. Oddly enough, the district I live in now is represented by a hellraiser against the administration just the same, though he does it from within the GOP. No doubt you've heard of Ron Paul by now. He may not be a Democrat, but he is certainly not a neocon, and I consider him as much ally as enemy right now, as I am sure many of my fellow Dems do.

My point (and yes, I have one) is that your shitty attitude is completely counterproductive. Show me one purple seat we are ever going to win by virtue of calling people "shithead creeps" or some other nonsense simply because of where they live. If you disagree with someones views, by all means, say so. I don't think I've seen anyone sensibly take issue with that. But passing judgement - and then giving up on - people for no reason other than the fact that they live in the "wrong" region is beyond childish. Its bigotry. It is everything you are accusing southerners of.

Posted by Karli | July 3, 2007 2:11 AM