But I am not content to continue avoiding this question. I am ready to cast my lot. Twenty years, two thousand comedy club appearances, forty-one states, three years in New York, approximately 250 pounds of mustard-based barbecue, and some seven thousand gallons of tea (sweet and un) later, the answer is clear:
I am a Southerner. A reluctant one perhaps, but a Southerner nonetheless.
And I will stay one whether the South likes it or not.
I could tell you that I was a Southerner by coercion, that like Othello I wanted to deny my birth. But I am not a Southerner by fiat. In fact, most decent Southerners won’t claim me. They find my Confederate credentials quite suspect. For example, I was born in Los Angeles, where my mother, an Oklahoman, grew up. My father, who sharecropped with his father just a few miles from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, joined the navy out of high school and was sent to Long Beach. Therefore, it could be argued, I am not a Southerner but am instead bicoastal—except that you can’t tell people from down South you’re bicoastal, because they think it means you have sex with men on the beach.
And I’ve never really acted southern. I talk fast. I ask rude questions (actually, most questions are considered rude in the South, other than “How’s your mama?”). Growing up, I read books that weren’t assigned by a teacher or given to me by my pastor. I listened to bebop and opera, and I’ve never lost a tooth opening a bottle.
No, I am not a Southerner at the insistence of the South. Trust me, most Southerners would be happy to buy me a bus ticket and point me toward Toronto.
And I don’t have to be a Southerner. During my lifelong struggle against Southernism, I’ve lived in Chicago and New York. I liked them both, and unlike most Southerners, easily fit in. I could “pass.” In fact, once while living in Scarsdale, New York, someone asked me if I was Jewish.
It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
But in the ongoing discourse of my life, the painful moments of self-observation, the acute moments of selfrevelation—the evidence is clear. I am a Southerner.
I am a Southerner in the same way that the Reverend Jesse Jackson is black… and in the same way he is a Southerner, too. I am a Southerner the same way that Flannery O’Connor was a Southerner and much the same way she was a Catholic.
I am a Southerner not because I claim it, desire it, or have somehow achieved it. I am a Southerner because after years of resistance and denial I have discovered that it is my true nature.
I confess my Southernism to underline the point that my criticism of the southernization of America is not based merely on self-loathing or the smoldering resentment of a redneck without honor in his own land. What annoys me is not that America has become more like the South, but that it has been overcome by the worst the South has to offer.
Meanwhile, there is much about the South to love, and much to my surprise, I do.
The first inkling of my deviant southern tendencies came when I was invited to lunch at the historic Chicago Racquet Club. A local whom I met through the local GOP was fascinated by my exotic Southernism and wanted to show me some true northern pride. The Chicago Racquet Club is an impressive, imposing building. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman was once a member of this club, and my host went to great pains to have us seated beneath the general’s portrait in the dining room. I always enjoy a good joke and tried to play along as best I could, given that, had I been at the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, in 1865, my one comment to Sherman would have been “You missed a spot.”
But as the lunch dragged on, I found myself getting more and more defensive about the South. My host’s witty put-downs, which would have won my applause back home, were suddenly raising previously unworked Confederate hackles here in Chicago. By the end of the lunch, I actually found myself beginning a sentence with the words, “Well, what the Confederate flag means to me is…”
I stopped at two bars on my way back from that lunch.
It may be that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or it could be that I was experiencing the inverse of “familiarity breeds contempt.” Whatever it was, I found myself speaking out in behalf of the South more and more. When Hurricane Fran blew through the Carolinas, a Chicagoan snickered at me, “Who wants to live in a place where you wake up one morning and your mobile home is a submarine?”
“Oh, yeah?” I shot back. “Maybe it’s people who are tired of having to use butane torches to defrost their derrieres after taking a winter walk.”
The low point came one day as I read the Chicago Sun-Times. I ran across two brief articles on the same page. The first, headlined “Anthem Anathema to US,” reported that Nicaragua was considering a change in the lyrics of its national anthem for diplomatic reasons. One line giving American diplomats pause is “The Yankee is the enemy of humanity.”
The next article listed South Carolina among states that have not given our nation a president. I read the article several times, and as I did, something snapped. Some vestigial Confederate organ in my brain, some recessive redneck gene, overtook me. By the time I regained consciousness, the following had been e-mailed to the Sun-Times:
As a South Carolinian temporarily residing in Chicago (my visa expires in November), I must respond to the scurrilous column in your vile and disgraceful rag which stated that South Carolina has not given this great nation a president. Sir, that is an outrage! You have cast a shadow upon the honor of the Palmetto State. South Carolina gave America its last great (true) Democratic president, Andrew Jackson. He was the greatest president since Jefferson (another Southerner) and far superior to the butcher, Abraham Lincoln.
The honor of the South must be restored! South Carolina has given this nation John C. Calhoun, Dizzy Gillespie and Lee Atwater, not to mention hickory smoked barbecue, secession and the Shag. The South shall rise again!
Now excuse me while I freshen up my julep. Yours respectfully, etc. etc. PS: And what’s wrong with the Nicaraguan national anthem anyway?
The Sun-Times published a portion of my letter, and I remember reading it in disbelief a few days later. Had I really written these words? After years of denying all things southern, was I still so completely lost in the Land of Cotton?
Apparently so. Part of the impetus for writing this book was the unceasing barrage of arrogance and attitude directed southward by northern Americans. Another motive was to find some way to differentiate the parts of southern culture that should be buried (but sadly, have been bought into by the rest of America) and the parts that should be embraced and preserved.
The Northerners who have adapted the worst of Southernism have, in turn, dumped their worst upon us. Take bagels—please.
Take them back up North or out West or wherever you brought them from. The one thing we do not need in the South is another white, flavorless breakfast starch. If I wanted to spend my mornings choking down lumps of tough, indigestible dough, I would ask my wife to start making biscuits again.
Bagels are an example of distinctly northern dining, like a bowl of clam chowder in New England or a twenty-seven-dollar plate of Chef Boyardee at a Manhattan hostaria. Bagels are about as southern as a subway token. But travel around the South and in every strip mall, in every grocery store—even in the hallowed aisles of the Winn-Dixie—there they are: bagels. And not just any bagels, either. Spreading like kudzu across the South are shops like New York Bagel and their competitors Big Apple Bagel—which is likely to be around the corner from Manhattan Bagel.
I know that the Carolinas are a popular retirement destination for disillusioned Yankees fleeing the wrecked, northern cities they helped destroy, but my God, people—didn’t you leave anything behind? The New York state of mind is seizing control of the entire southern economy, and I’m not just talking delis. Down South we’ve got New York City Pizza, New York Life Insurance (don’t they need a lot more of this than we do?), and, of course, New York Carpet World.
Without leaving our borders, I can buy a suit at New Yorker Men’s Fashions, pick up a hot new f
rock for my favorite gal at the New York Boutique, get my hair done at New York Stylists, and while away the evening at Manhattan’s Nite Life. And if that’s not enough, people in Charleston, South Carolina, can go to something called New York Moods, where, I assume from the name, cheerful Southerners can get an up-North attitudinal adjustment. I have even written them a new motto: “Turn Your Jethro into a Jerk!”
I became more sensitive than most to this new War of Northern Aggression after living in New York for a while. I can tell you firsthand that there is still plenty of northern aggression to go around. Ask a waitress in a New York restaurant if they have grits, and you might as well take out your teeth, strap on your banjo, and start squealing like a pig.
“Grits?” one particularly parochial hash slinger barked at me. “Wazzamattawitchoo? Weahdoyootinkyoare, anyway? Weahyoofum? Hey, Joey! Dis guy wants to know if we got grits!” Well, I showed her. I hitched up my overalls, stuck my John Deere hat on my head, and stomped my bare feet outta there.
Having lived on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, I have noticed a strange double standard. When we Southerners travel to the North and ask the locals to accommodate our cultural tastes—grits, barbecue, inbreeding—they react with indignation. “Wazzamattawitchoo? You people are weird!” Conversely, when Northerners traveling in the South find their ethnic needs occasionally unmet, their response is “Wazzamattawitchoo? You people are weird.” No matter which direction you go, the blame winds up here in the South. And I believe we Southerners, beneath the weight of our regional inferiority complex, tacitly agree.
Southerners, particularly college-educated ones, are Upper West Side wanna-bes, closet carpetbaggers who believe in our hearts that we should emulate our big-city betters, with no expectation that they will return the compliment. The entire time I lived in New York, I never saw a sign for “Carolina Carpet World” or “Dixie Hairstyles.” No “Alabama Boutiques” or “South Carolina Moods” either. And what’s more, I didn’t expect them. It seemed perfectly natural to me that New York tastes would be accommodated down South but that southern tastes would disappear in northern climates.
Southern scholars like C. Vann Woodward and John Shelton Reed place the blame on our native obsequiousness, one result of losing the war. Having lost our nation’s only military “intramural scrimmage,” our tendency is to defer to our northern neighbors. That is one theory.
Another, less esoteric view was best expressed by my uncle Willie: “Damn, there’s a lot of Yankees! And those Catholic ones breed like rabbits.” To put it another way, states like New York have big populations, and as their citizens travel, it is only natural for their superior numbers to give them more influence in the marketplace.
Whatever the cause, I believe it is time for defenders of southern heritage to respond. If America is going to be a Redneck Nation, we rednecks ought to take advantage of it while we can.
Perhaps we could get Southerners identified as an ethnic minority with special rights. The government would be forced to implement a quota system so that a certain percentage of road construction money would be set aside to build restaurants selling pecan logs along New York expressways. The National Endowment for the Arts funds could be used to foist Charlie Daniels music on unsuspecting New Yorkers. We could even ask the World Trade Organization to impose a swap: For every bagel we eat, a Yankee has to eat a chitlin.
That’ll show ’em.
My wife and I were discussing this trend with great concern not long ago, wondering what we could do to stem the tide of encroaching New Yorkism. We were down in Myrtle Beach sitting in a local watering hole at a place called Broadway on the Beach. She was drinking a Manhattan, and I was having a Long Island Iced Tea. From the jukebox came the sounds of Ol’ Blue Eyes singing “New York, New York.”
Suddenly it hit me. “Bartender!” I cried. “Two mint juleps—before it’s too late!”
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM WARNER BOOKS
POLITICIANS, PARTISANS, AND PARASITES
My Adventures in Cable News
by Tucker Carlson
Millions of Americans tune in to see Tucker Carlson on CNN’s Crossfire as he rouses conservatives and charms liberals with his singular brand of acerbic wit and razor-sharp insight. Now he loosens his signature bow tie and cracks keen and wise like never before, as he exposes—and defends—Washington’s power elite. In riveting, often hilarious detail, this most unabashed of Beltway insiders demonstrates how television distorts and distracts even as it informs… or, in his indelible words, “it brings out the crazy in people.”
ARROGANCE
Rescuing America from the Media Elite
by Bernard Goldberg
In his #1 New York Times bestseller Bias, Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg created a national firestorm when he laid bare the mainstream media’s liberal bias. Now, in his new blockbuster exposé, he goes one dramatic step beyond to reveal the source of that bias. Building his case with lively arguments and interviews, Goldberg also offers a twelve-step program to cure even the most thin-skinned, close-minded, and arrogant in the business. Insightful and riveting, Arrogance is a must for all readers of every political persuasion.
Forget the calzone and cannoli; the only real difference between Brooklyn, New York, and Birmingham, Alabama, is that you can’t get a gun rack into a Trans Am.
Trailer parks, pickup trucks, Hee Haw, grits …just the mention of any one of these can elicit a smirk north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But according to Michael Graham, the South is getting the last laugh because redneckery has spread like kudzu from Bangor to Baja. Don’t believe it? How else do you explain the incredible popularity of NASCAR and pro wrestling?
Now Michael Graham—writer comedian, radio talk show host, and former GOP flack—fearlessly takes on big government, the public school system, Enron, free speech illiteracy, multiculturalism, and racism. He proves that the ideas Northern liberals once marched south to protest make up the agenda they promote today. Provocative, honest, and hilarious, Graham takes no prisoners—reminding us that for every slack-jawed yokel swearing he just saw Elvis, there’s a left-wing Yankee trying to re-segregate America’s schools or watching the chitlin’ eating contest on his favorite reality TV show.
“Michael Graham’s REDNECK NATION dispels the Southern stereotype. Perfect for reading in bed with your sister.”
—Bill Maher
“A literary shotgun wedding between George Will and Jerry Seinfeld.”
—CNN.com
“I can’t remember the last time I read a political book as witty and incisive as REDNECK NATION. It was like potato chips: I couldn’t stop. And I felt better after.”
—Tucker Carlson
* Although Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia and lived in (among other places) Columbia, South Carolina, no true Southerner can count the former president of Princeton and governor of New Jersey as a “Southern” president.
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