Monday, January 11, 2010

The South Never Fails to Fascinate

The South long has been America's most exotic region, the place where the dark pages of our history intersect with the bright possibilities for our future.

So I should not have been surprised when a post I wrote last week--"Why Isn't the Deep South the Most Liberal Region in the U.S.?"--drew probably more response than anything I've written at Legal Schnauzer. The post asked this question: Why doesn't the South's love of college football--a "team first, me second" activity--translate into support for the community-oriented ideas offered by liberal/progressive political candidates?

I cross post quite a bit of my work at Daily Kos, and this diary drew 266 comments, which I'm pretty sure is a record for me. The post also drew the attention of the Jeff Farias Show, a progressive radio program based in Phoenix, Arizona. I appeared on the Farias show last Thursday, about an hour before two Southern teams, Alabama and Texas, kicked off in the BCS national championship game.

You can check out the comments at Daily Kos here. Many of them are very thoughtful, some written by people who apparently have studied Southern history in a serious way. It was heartening to take part in an intelligent conversation about our region. And I was glad to see that many people remain hopeful about the South; for all of our shortcomings, we have not been written off.

You can hear the Jeff Farias Show interview here. Just click on the free podcast, and my interview begins at about the 56:20 mark.

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