The last four Democrats to be elected to the White House were all southerners elected by southerners: Gore, Clinton, Carter, and Johnson. Of course, as we know the Republicans sabotaged the Gore outcome. While Lyndon Johnson foolishly got us deeper into the Vietnam War, he did provide the primary leadership in the government that Martin Luther King, Jr. needed to reform civil rights laws. Carter and Clinton were southern presidents who were not war mongerers.

If the Democrats ever expect to occupy the White House again they may need to groom another southerner to run for the Presidency. The trick to electing a Democrat or a Republican to the White House is to find a candidate that is acceptable to a significant number of black and white church-goers. It’s no accident that the Republicans pander to the religious right. These folks will probably never vote for a Democrat that does not claim to be a Southern Baptist as Clinton, Carter, and Johnson were. And most black voters, while they usually vote Democratic, are about as socially conservative in their own way as the white southern Baptist, and therefore are unlikely to enthusiastically support a Democratic candidate outside the south (Barak Obama withstanding).

Southerners are no more war mongering than people from other parts of the country. It’s just that too many of them were manipulated by the Republicans playing the religion / values card in a rather twisted and perverse fashion that only the Bush Neocons can do.

I’ve been exasperated by southerners all my life, and I should know, I’ve lived in northwest Louisiana for 51 years. The south has historically had to cope with a serious set of social issues to a greater degree than most other regions of the country. We’re not all the same. And most of us black, white, etc. are reasonably good people.

I moved back home to New Orleans about a year ago, after my family lost everything in Katrina. Before, it was 6 years in Seattle consulting, and it was a place that seemed so pleased with itself on its ultra-blue politics and intellectual smugness. After the storm, so many people kept asking me how something like that could happen, as though if there were the same type of natural disaster that the same population of people wouldn't be left behind (What do you think would happen to Oakland if something happened in SF? The rich liberals would be out of there, fast, just like in the south...and they would bemoan it...from afar...in Salon).

When I got home, it was a culture shock, but only as far as it took a while to identify a logic to the consistent election of rotten, conservative politicians: they speak the language of their constituents. Sure, I'm all for discussions of ideology, marxism, absurdity, hegemony, social justice, same-sex marriages. It's not a new idea, but it feels like liberal intellectuals make a point of showing off their shiny-degree authority and take what they say as gospel. They'd do a bit better if they spent some time in a chapel and listen to a speech of the people they claim to represent.

When Katrina happened, it was a pundit field day, an example to be thrown out as the worst of what is wrong with our W regime/administration. But that's just it. It's not an illustration, not a case study to hold up. I would believe that people would warm to liberal politicians if they didn't feel like they were the correct style choice of a cause - much in the same way tea and coffee are the correct drink choices - than getting down here, putting on jumpers and ripping out rotted drywall with a dead animal behind it (how did it get there?) Stop being so poncy and sidle up.

My feeling is that in most of the liberal culture (which I include myself in) is that it's the right position to take, but really, they don't like the people they claim they want to help. It just rubs the wrong way when you stop to say a prayer to Jesus before finding a toilet in an attic (last November). Send up more fucking help and put dollars instead of good thoughts behind it.

but it's awfully presumptuous to state that that interaction is "kind" and "friendly".

To paraphrase Keillor, as a non-American, I may be missing some context in all of this, but I've always found the reserved respect for privacy that northerners practise considerably more polite and less stressful than the intrusive busybodying and faux-intimacy that has come to be known as "southern hospitality".

Keillor obviously doesn't, and that's fine with me if bizarre. But he could stand to tone down the preachiness.

As for the politics, it's clear that superficial personal interactions are no predictor of actual beliefs, and that a person who seems glib and "authentic" can really be a total asshole.

Or maybe Mr. Keillor's simply a poor judge of character.

..and I live in Germany. I think the differences you are noticing here must have to do, in part, with which groups of people settled where. I have noticed in my empirical oberservations of the Germans in the last seven years that they are distinctly non-southern in attitude and behaviour, that is to say, a little slow to warm and withdrawn and stiff. I think the further north you go over here on this continent the more you'll find that true, and if I'm not mistaken, a lot of north europeans ended up settling in the part of the states you are writing about.

The kind of folks I am from in the south are more your scots/irish hillbilly type, and while friendly and quick to open up about personal details of life, we're sort of generically pround of that whole rugged individualism BS that the right likes to play up to and also everyone I know/am related to down that way is really an easy sell on the republican propaganda front for various reasons, mostly I suspect having to do with the fact that people are working all the time and worrying about medical bills and wage garnishments and foreclosures and don't have time to wade through the really piss-poor excuse for newspapers and "news" programs to dig out what's really going on, and just assume that they aren't being lied to buy the people who they elected to protect their best interests. Also, the right says "god" a lot and my people like that.