Redneck Nation by Michael Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

eat it. If I said, “Man,
     this is great,” more than once over a plate of to-die-for chicken and mouthwatering homemade dumplings, my host would assume
     I was there to sell something.
    • In New York, the assumption was that, in any conversation not involving frog gigging, any Southerner was the dumbest person
     at the table. If I was sitting in the backseat looking at a map and telling a New Yorker which Manhattan street to turn on,
     he would ignore me, take the wrong turn, then scream profanity at me because I got him lost.
    • In the South, the assumption is that, in any conversation, we Southerners are the dumbest people at the table. That’s why
     we don’t want to hear how you do it up North. Thanks for the help, but we’d rather screw it up ourselves.
    • New Yorkers pretend they’ve read books they haven’t. Southerners deny reading the ones they have.
    • Down South, it’s impossible for a person to be too quiet. In New York, it’s impossible to be too loud.
    • In the South, you’re a racist if you send your kids to an all-white private school instead of the integrated public one.
     In New York, you’re a racist if you support vouchers, which would allow black kids to attend the same all-white private schools
     your kids do.
    • In southern restaurants, there is no such thing as “too much.” The same is true in New York, except it applies to the price.
    • Southerners consider Woody Allen a sick, perverted weirdo who makes movies for New York Jews. In New York, nobody ever calls
     Woody a Jew, but they don’t call him a pervert, either.
    • Down South, a great Saturday means you never had to go inside. In New York, it means you never had to go out.
    • In the South, locals tend to resent people they meet who are smarter than they are. In New York, locals never meet anybody
     who is.
    • In New York, the Yankees can win back-to-back World Series, and the fans say, “Yeah, but whaddaya bums gonna do
this
year?” In South Carolina, the local college team can lose twenty-one straight games, and the fans say, “Yeah, but remember
     back in ’89 when they almost had a shot at the national title?”
    • In the South, it’s okay for a kid to handle a gun, but giving him a condom might inspire inappropriate behavior. In New
     York, condoms are in middle-school vending machines, but dodgeball is banned from playgrounds for inspiring inappropriate
     behavior.
    • In the South, a woman who stays home with her children while her husband works is called a hero. In NewYork, a woman who stays home to raise children is called a nanny.
    • In New York, the most commonly heard phrases at showings of foreign films are “He’s no Fellini” and “It breathes with ironic
     pathos.” Down South, the most commonly heard phrases are “Subtitles? What’s that?” and “Baby, you ever bring me to another
     one a these readin’ pictures, I’m gonna whup you.”

5
Rednecks and White Whine
    The Southerner who is chiefly heard from is apparently all toes; one cannot have commerce with him without stepping on them.
     Thus he protests hysterically every time northern opinion is intruded into his consideration of his problems, and northern
     opinion, so often called to book, now prudently keeps out. The result is that the Southerner struggles alone, and that he
     goes steadily from bad to worse
.
    —H.L. Mencken
    M eet Fudgie, a symbol of our new All-Redneck Nation.
    Fudgie, a fifty-two-year-old retired baker, is from Ohio, not down South. He’s a proud member of the Independent Bikers’ Association,
     Cincinnati chapter. That’s “biker” as in Harley, not Schwinn; cycling is an archetypically northern activity. In the South,
     real men don’t ride anything that can’t be floored, gunned, or whipped—which may explain the condition of our women.
    So how did Fudgie—a.k.a. Carl Campbell—come to represent the newly southern America? It’s not because herides a Harley, an honorable avocation