South-bashing [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

Feel free to correct me rigorously if I'm over-assuming my responsibility, but I fear my thread noting the anniversary of Appomattox helped lead to yet another eruption of South-bashing threads, and to the destructive bullshit that inevitably follows.

I've been on DU since May of 2001. I have been a Democrat since 9am on my 18th birthday. I have worked on more Dem campaigns than I care to remember.

My father was born and raised in Decatur, Alabama, just across the river from Huntsville. I spent many a happy hour with my grandmother at the Space & Rocket Center.

My grandfather was a pediatrician. My grandmother was a schoolteacher for more than 30 years. My father worked every Democratic presidential campaign from Bobby Kennedy to John Kerry, and led the Alabama Democratic Party for a time. He shared the phone that was tapped at the Watergate, so the tapes include my father and pregnant mother talking about unborn me. While my mom was pregnant, they called me "Benny" for whatever reasons. It's all on the tapes.

I wrote the article below after the tornadoes ripped through the state. It will tell you all you need to know about why this Boston boy loves Alabama, and the South.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet

Or, put more bluntly in my own Boston/Bama way: Regional stereotypes can kiss my ass.

My Alabama
Monday, 02 May 2011 09:54
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/853:my-alabama#