Southern Man Does Need That Around, Anyhow

 

Crispin Semmens

One of the biggest myths the last decade or so has busted for me is that of the no-bullshit Southerner.

Oh, I'm not saying the South never had more than its fair share of BS, from snake-oil salesman and revival preachers (on TV or otherwise) to military recruiters and amenable yarn-spinners. Southerners have always bought into BS from people like them. They just never used to tolerate it from outsiders. It was one of my theories that the last few Democratic party presidents all won in part because they had a degree of Southernness to them. (Obama, from Illinois and Hawaii, nonetheless had more of a twang to his accent than H. Clinton sometimes did or didn't.)

The idea that a casino developer from Jersey could hustle 'em, and do so, so mutually, that even with the con exposed they'd still stick to him, was not a thing I could have expected.

It's up there with conservatives actually being genuinely concerned about hypocrisy.