I don't know why I keep reading Salon. I'm a Southerner and I have yet to read a single article by one of you New York pencilnecks about my region that doesn't get everything wrong. I'm a pencilneck myself. But that isn't the point. The point is that you Earnest New York Ivy League Right Thinkers are incapable of writing about the South without fucking it up. We hate you and your delicate analyses of our culture. We hate the lyrical way in which you celebrate our tragically corrupted authenticity, leavened only by the presence of the black angels whose innocent suffering will ultimately redeem our benighted region. We hate your fake gourmet versions of our food even though they are obviously better. We hate your bien-pensance. Salon.com should be called articlesthatappealtobienpensantdouchebags.com. I am sort of a leftist. I hate all that Republican crap as much as you New York pencilnecks do. But I can't stand it when you write about the South. Stay up North, we don't like you.

Slipperylane,

Even though you'll never read this because I'm posting it too late, I have a response to your response.

One, my post is better than yours in every way. It is a well-written, engaging polemic.

Two, your criticisms of my opinion are nothing but stock responses. "Faux-moral outrage"...there is nothing moral or faux-moral about my outrage. Nor am I outraged. I am amusing myself at the expense of a pantywaist and his pretentious discourse. The real reason I continue to read Salon.com, of which I coyly pretended to be unaware in my last post, is because I don't like President Bush or Republicans and I like reading articles insulting him. You also suggested I "get over myself". I think this is one of those things that people say on forums that's supposed to deflate the adversary's posturing. You are like one of those famous Jerry Springer Strong Black Ladies who hollers from the audience, bringing the debate back down to earth by injecting some Down Home Straight Talk...after she says her thing, people start affirmative action cheering...and don't tell me I'm a racist...I admit it freely. I am one of those famous Southern Racists. I am also smarter and better than you...whoever you are...and more authentic too, why not. Your world is more advanced than ours...and I am not really welcome in the South because I evidently have more in common with you, a Northeastern Liberal Type, then I do with my Southern brothers and sisters, who are indeed mostly stupid and backwards...but somehow when you make fun of them on Salon it doesn't work. I think it's the position from which you're making fun...or maybe it's the fact that you can never seem to get it right. Those Red State videos, for example...these videos would probably be more convincing if you put them on some sort of right-wing website as examples of Northeast Bien-Pensant Liberals trying and failing badly to caricature the South and succeeding only in looking weak. They are petty and badly-done...the accents aren't good...and the people acting are obviously castrated New England wimps.

Yuck...more creepy fetishization of the unhealthy but tremendously picturesque practices of the underclasses. Those dice games are certainly "authentic". So was that awesome dis...and Ok, so that Brown Authentic was driving a Hummer but...c'mon, we can't hold them to the same standards to which we hold ourselves, we the illuminated Right Thinkers! Halliburton gives money to charity. Hamas hands out rice to Palestinians. Tammany Hall helped immigrants out when they arrived in New York. I'm sure you could easily dredge up plenty of people who owe their lives to these organizations...plenty of little Billys from Beaumont whose heart transplants would have been impossible without that phone call from Dick Cheney. None of this changes anything important. There are two ways of looking at these groups: 1. They are noble public endeavors which have all, unfortunately, been tainted with some sort of corruption. 2. They are all gangs who, for one reason or another, have masterfully and cynically manipulated the established orthodoxies of public opinion to accrue power to themselves in one way or another.

The author mentions that that one guy with the Mumia poster on his wall has gentle eyes or something...this is the whole substance of this kind of heartbreaking ideological junk thinking: seduction by the image. The raised fist - Mumia's benevolent gaze - the American Real Man cutting Brush on his Ranch - the nobly suffering Brown Authentic - the post 9/11 American Flags everywhere - the hysterically impotent gesture (picking the fancy lettuce) flung in the face of the Evil Master - the stupid "commemorative vegetable patch" ("we are united in our putrid resentment"), no different from those maudlin and ridiculous 9/11 "Osama we're coming for you!" t-shirts - just empty images, exhilirating in the same way that watching a Kevin Garnett slam dunk is and whose capacity to deceive is bottomless...disgusting.

Hypocrite! Even if what you say is true you are a hypocrite and your show is really boring too.

This is just like that guy in 1984 who gets denounced by his kid for talking about Big Brother in his sleep. So you remember a racist song? So what? What is racism? People are either different or the same. People organize themselves into societies based on fixed, established roles that they adopt and which, for the most part, across the board, are stereotypes. There are at least two kinds of racism: 1. real, virulent, classical racism and 2. a sort of prophylactic racism, one more accurately described as a general misanthropy, and which consists simply in realizing to what extent the depraved monkeys that we all are will settle, like water finding a low point, the most narcissism-gratifying position that is open to us.