I want to personally thank Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) for helping to set the reputation of Southern men years back. 31, to be exact.

Saaaaaaalute!

Find out here. 

I’m back home in Mississippi for Thanksgiving and currently recovering from the great feast of yesterday that included twice-baked potatoes, creamed corn (the thick Southern kind, not that disgusting soupy variety foisted upon the country by Yankees), butter beans, dressing, succulent turkey, banana pudding (that my Mama made especially for me) and a rich chocolate pie among other great Southern cuisine.

Speaking of going home, here’s an article that my aunt wrote for her magazine about that very subject.

Florida pulled out a thriiler Saturday against the Old Ball Coach and the USC Gamecocks.

The game probably cost Florida a lot of credibility in the BCS picture thanks to voters who don’t appreciate the coaching clinic Spurrier put on in the Swamp, but the game was a great chess match. Bottom line is no one else needs to know how huge this win is… Florida fans know, and we can deal with other folks’ right to be wrong.

Such is SEC football, where every game is a war and every win is worth celebrating.

Check this YouTube vid to share in the experience of The Block.

Clever picture from Mississippi Politics

Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel, who will be the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, opens his mouth and inserts his foot:

“Mississippi gets more than their fair share back in federal money, but who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?” Mr. Rangel said.

Nice way to win over the Southerners, Mr. Rangel. Perhaps someone can send him some of these posters?

Oh, Rangel’s now issued an “apology“:

“I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone. I just love New York so much that I can’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to live here.”

[Dr. Evil] Riiiiiight [/Dr. Evil]

Kudos to Rep. Chip Pickering, GOP Congressman from the 3rd District of MS, for this press release:

“I have friends and colleagues from New York that are fine people and I’ve visited their state and think it is a wonderful place. But I love Mississippi. I would rather live in Mississippi, raise my family in Mississippi, and serve Mississippi - and there are millions of Mississippians who agree with me.”

“From the Coast to the Delta to the Pinebelt to the Hills and across Mississippi, there is beauty in every city, charity in every heart, love in every church, and majesty in every countryside. When I travel this state I see it in the resolute handshakes, the hospitable smiles, and the sincere prayers of our neighbors: we love Mississippi and we are proud and happy to live here,” Pickering said.

Pickering concluded, “Last year, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Coast. We have been working hard not only to rebuild our own homes and communities, but also to repair and protect the network of refineries, pipelines, and transmission grids that supply energy, gas, and oil to the rest of the country, including New York. If Mr. Rangel believes those efforts required more than our fair share of federal money, he is welcome to send that energy back to our state and find an alternative supply. At the very least, he should send us an apology,” Pickering said.

(h/t Michelle Malkin)

Yessiree, Mr. Andrew, we’re just a bunch of racist, freedom-hating rednecks. 

Yep, you’ve got us pegged.

Now, here’s a vote you can feel good about.

Todd is a native southerner and a news anchor for Fox News Radio in [gasp!] New York. You can check out his blog, Todd’s Journal here. Stop by and pay him a visit, folks. It looks like a promising read. 

Oh, and you gotta love the introduction he penned for his blog:

I’ve left my beloved South to find my fortune north of the Mason-Dixon line. It’s a barren land — void of the blessings that make the South the promised land. The people are nice enough, but there’s no Waffle House, no Cracker Barrel, and for some reason, I can’t seem to get a glass of sweet iced tea to save my life. So enjoy the ruminations on my journey as a Tennessee Volunteer in New York City.

Roger Kimball’s essay in the September issue of The New Criterion is also available online.  Recommended!

The legendary college football coach died Friday in Statesboro, Georgia, age 80.  Russell was Vince Dooley’s defensive coordinator for 17 years at Georgia, then built a Division I-AA national championship program at Georgia Southern during his 8-year career there (1982-89).  Georgia Southern’s write-up of the memorial service is here; UGA’s tribute to him is here.  There were several stories about Russell in the Sunday Journal-Constitution, but registration is required.  If you don’t want to bother with that, the Macon Telegraph has several articles and features you can access directly.

This book will be my next purchase from Amazon; and I suspect that many of y’all will want to get a copy of ”Christ in the Camp” as well, given that the book covers two of SA’s primary topics o’ interest (Southern History/Culture and Christianity).

Heh.

I know one particular alum who is still mighty peeved about Citadel being forced to admit women.

And in his honor, I offer the following excerpt from Justice Scalia’s blistering dissent in the VMI case (i.e., United States v. Virginia):  (more…)

Here is an interesting op-ed in my local paper, The Greenville News.  It is written by a couple of poli sci profs.  They have examined national data on support or opposition for flying the Confederate Battle Flag atop the SC State House.  The Flag was removed several years ago and placed at a soliders’ monument.  Anyway, the authors find some interesting trends.  Here are a couple:

To our surprise, Americans were almost evenly split on opinions about the Confederate flag — 51 percent of Americans wanted the flag removed from atop the South Carolina Statehouse and 49 percent wanted the flag to stay. There was more support for the Confederate flag among Southerners (59 percent preferred the flag remain) than among non-Southerners (47 percent wanted it removed), but these differences, while statistically significant, were not as dramatic as many in the media had us believe.

When we analyzed the data from the Annenberg study, we noticed something else quite astonishing. Although whites were much more likely to support the flag than blacks, a surprising 26 percent of blacks nationally supported keeping the Confederate flag atop the Statehouse in South Carolina.

From the press accounts at the time, one would have thought that pro-Flag supporters were isolated and had no support across the nation.   Methinks the attitude of our left-leaning media explain much of this perception.

I cannot recommend this post by Deep Thought highly enough. It is superb. Here’s a taste:

Are Southerners racist, or not?

Let’s start with the South. For some time now the FBI has been tracking hate crimes. These are broken down by state and type of offense. If we look at racially-motivated hate crimes, we see something, well, that goes against the conventional wisdom. According to the 2004 statistics, the top four states for race-based hate crimes are;

New Jersey
Michigan
Montana
Minnesota

That is a bit of a surprise, isn’t it? Let’s look at the bottom four states for race-based hate crimes. They are;

Louisiana
Georgia
Mississippi
Alabama

I must admit, I expected the results to be counter to the commonly held ideas, but this was a shock to me. Especially when I looked at the breakdown of numbers and realized that when you compare state to state, per capita, hate crimes are FIFTY TIMES more likely in Minnesota than in Alabama! Texas has 1/6th the race-based hate crime rate of Michigan, racial hate crimes are more than twice as likely in Massachusetts as opposed to West Virginia, and North Carolina has 1/3rd the incidence of racially-motivated hate crime of California.

(LvHH, who still loves Harriet Miers)

Only in the South, folks.

In light of the response to this recent post, I thought this article would be of interest to SA’s readers.

Redstate’s got a little SA flavor this morning. I am thinking that it just might be the influence of its new CEO.

LvJayC

This sums things up nicely:

Experts say voters like Carolyn Walker of Abbeville are a major reason for the shift. A secretary to the warden of Wilcox State Prison, the 58-year-old Walker grew up in a large, poor and staunchly Democratic family in Middle Georgia.

“I can remember my big mama, my grandmother, talked about the wonder of finally having a light bulb up over the table and then being able to pull that string and how wonderful Franklin Delano Roosevelt was,” Walker said. “He was like a god.”

Her grandmother called the thickened gravy the family used to supplement their meals “Hoover gravy,” a derisive reference to Republican President Herbert Hoover, whom many Americans blamed for the Great Depression.

“In my family, Republican was a dirty word,” she said.

But now Walker and her husband participate in the GOP primary because they think the core principles of the Republican Party more closely parallel their conservative beliefs. Walker said she is upset that some Democrats at the state level opposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage. And she disapproves of the national Democratic Party’s support of abortion rights.

State Rep. Mickey Channell (R-Greensboro) has seen the swelling ranks of voters like Walker. Channell has been in elective office since 1972. He was a Democrat all of his life until this election cycle when he filed to run as a Republican.

“Every year it seemed like there was less and less room for conservatives like myself in the Democratic Party,” he said.

For those of y’all who wonder why some Southerners are still angry about the Civil War.

Stealing Bibles? What kind of person does that?

Answer: A damn yankee.*

*For the record, not every person from the North is a “damn yankee.” And every person from the North who reads SA is a “damn good yankee” (especially those who reside in South Bend, Indiana). :) 

This may not be enforceable; but it should be.

That’s the charming title of a Daily Kos diary by “edencho” (real name Ed Encho) in which the author expresses a thoughtful critique of the culture and politics of the denizen’s of the South. Here’s a taste:

Given the regressive hostility of the south and the willingness of the Republican party to capitalize on southern desire to drag the country back to the good ole’ days of Jim Crow, religious intolerance and a gross renunciation of intellectualism is only too deserving of a descriptive term from days past be resurrected for these folk and that word is PECKERWOOD

A peckerwood is a rural white southerner, usually poor, undereducated or otherwise ignorant and bigoted, the term gained popularity in the deep south during the early twentieth century and was meant to be derogatory. It is a reversal of the name of the red bellied woodpecker which had a patch of red on the back of it’s head and neck, therefore a peckerwood is a redneck, terms that describe similar groups of people are trailer trash or white trash but neither of those have the same effect or ring to them as peckerwood does.

Such a wonderful display of leftist open-mindedness and compassion. Rhetoric like that is surely going to help “progressives” make in-roads in the land of Dixie.

Seriously speaking, this guy’s a hate-monger and as we “peckerwoods” say in hinterlands, “someone ought to learn him some manners”. Also, judging from the comments on that diary there’s a lot of lefties who agree with him (In fairness, there are some left-leaning commenters that are very critical of Mr. Encho’s bile-filled diatribe, though they do seem to be in the minority).

via The Corner and DonkeyCons

No, this is not the title of a lost Beatles bootleg. 

Prompted by the Instapundit, I went over to check out the Acidman’s blog after hearing he’d passed on after quite an interesting blogging career.  What I found was a radical individualist who liked to cook himself egg sandwiches with lots of tabasco sauce.  I just kept reading and got a little addicted to this NRA-member, middle-aged southerner apparently outfitted with artificial wedding tackle. 

Maybe you could visit with this cranky and highly interesting fellow for a few minutes as his virtual reality lingers.  His earthly commencement took place at his home in Rincon, GA, not so far away from some of us at Southern Appeal.  I got the idea to mention him when I saw SA on his blogroll.

 Update:  I should add that the Acidman is a bit testy at times and does some of his blogging while apparently quite ill (physically).  He’s an acquired taste, but he reminds me of some of the southern men I’ve known through the years.  Not my daddy, mind you (who is a bit of sunshine), but like some good old boys you would never emulate but can’t help sort of like a little.

You don’t see a picture like this too often.

Only in the South.

Whether it’s politics or music, it is never a good idea to intentionally anger your base of supporters.

The renovation of Miss Welty’s home (in Jackson, Mississippi) has been completed, and it is now open to the public by advance reservation.  (If you’re not familiar with this Mississippi author, click here or here.)

My tastes in Country Music, as with many other things, tend toward the traditional.  I am not a fan of the high gloss suburban pop that currently passes for Country Music on the radio.  Consequently, I am always on the lookout for good traditional artists.  One such band is the John D Hale Band.  Their new CD “One of a Kind” is an absolute must have.  Simply put, they play Country Music as it was intended to be played.  Their song “Rebel Soldier” is worth the price of the CD alone.  However, the whole CD is great. 

While I am making music recommendations I will also mention Dale Watson’s newest CD, “Whiskey or God.”  This CD is also a must have.  This is another CD without a bad song.  If you buy this CD you are getting more than your money’s worth.  

Do yourself a favor and check out these artists.

Watch Tom Wolfe discuss “What’s Southern Today?” from the North Carolina Festival of the Book.

The noted historian of the American South died April 18 in Abilene, Texas.  He was 77.  His most influential work was the book, Cracker Culture, Celtic Ways in the Old South (1989).  Other work included Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage.  The predictably combative NY Times obituary is here.