As someone who left the Mountain State and environs over 20 years ago (officially, I lived across the Ohio River, and then south where I went to grad school, but spent purt near every weekend of my life visiting the homeland) I find that people just don't get it when it comes to the disposition of the upper Mon and Allegheny valleys, as well as the part that stretches down to the southern Blue Ridge.

First off, yes indeed. There are a lot of racists and homophobes. This is true throughout the lower Mason-Dixon line states. 'Nigger' is often a word used in Appalachia more than I've ever heard it in the South. Fact.

But the thing that is truly different is that the working class KNOW that the MAN has the boot on their neck, and is keeping them down. Gotta remember that the union movement was in part started in the coal fields-- anyone remember John J. Lewis? And its history is well-documented by locals like author Harry Caudill, of "Night Comes to the Cumberland" fame.

Since moving out West, to basically a hillbilly's idea of heaven (streams with clean water, big mountains, roaming room) though, I've been profoundly (negatively) impressed how the locals here are not near the folks that the ones in Appalachia are. They are dysfunctional individualists, fawning toward defective power, and have little capacity to do anything to advance their cause.

Not true with the folks in Appalachia.

If I had to give Obama any advice, it would be also don't give up on Appalachia. The sense of collective destiny is still strong there, and the sense that people can band together to do something about their shared fate also exists. Yep, they share some of the negatives with the real idiots to the South, and to the West-- but they're miles ahead, culturally. Just because they talk funny and like to pick up snakes doesn't mean that they don't share core values with most Democrats.

One thing that I think urban progressives have that is discomfiting to them is a bias against people that settle their disagreements at times with their fists. This is a 'Process' thing that seems to grip most of the middle class in this country-- that it doesn't matter what the end result is, as long as the process seems fair.

Folks in Appalachia don't necessarily cotton to that-- they are 'Product' oriented. You'd get that way too if you had to sit for 14 hours in an emergency room with your kid that just broke their leg. And you'd be a little pissed, regardless how nice the secretary was.

Looks like I really have been away from home too long...

Of course, such thing as an honor killing is reprehensible. No 'buts' about it.

However, when you have a country with 20+ million people, you are going to have some extreme kooks. Some extreme kooks will inevitably have some of their behavior sanctioned, in some way, by some aspect of the culture that no one else wants to touch with a 10 foot pole, but folks look the other way, because, culturally, it's OK.

We happen to have a couple of those extreme kooks in Washington. Their names are Dick Cheney, GW Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld. In a perfect world, they, who are chiefly responsible for killing over 500K Iraqis for what has amounted to a global honor killing, are somewhat glossed over and given pensions. For those in doubt, read Glenn Greenwald's take on Tom Friedman's comment (Suck.On.This.) and watch the video.

It's not that there shouldn't be activist groups interested in stopping honor killings. There should. But I'm not convinced that one teenage girl dying at the hands of an obviously misogynist father means anything. I just think we have bigger problems with our own kooks, than giving the insane, misogynist jerk a soapbox.