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Yesterday evening I ran across a posting (HufPost) entitled "A message to the Red States". It’s little more than a cleaned version of the 2004 poison pen "F#@k the South". I think my initial response was Fair & Balanced, i.e. too much tit-for-tat:
This was funny 4 years ago. Now, it is neither amusing nor accurate. Blue States? Minnesota? you mean the home of Michelle Bachman? Gee, thanks Blue States.Or Ka-lee-for-nee-ah? with their punch-line of a govenator out stumping for McCain? And Saddleback Church? Just wow.Or how about us evil horrid Red States like Georgia, that’s so close to going for Obama that it hurts. The truth is, like Howard Dean set out to establish, we need 50 state solutions. Look how far it’s taken us already. This sort of snickering finger pointing is not anything to engage in today.
Really, I do get the humor. In ’04 I felt very much the same way- wanted to get the hell out of Georgia- go somewhere I thought more civilized. Been there, bought the T-Shirt… 
literally! But I think there are several very important points we’ve (I’ve) learned:
1) What’s a red state now can go quite bluish before you know what’s hit it. Virginia? North Carolina? Howard Dean gave us the now famous 50-State Strategy, and look where it’s already gotten us!
2) Every state has its wingnuts. If you’re busy laughing at the expense of current Republican states, you may find your little slice of heaven taken over before you know it.
3) It’s easy to be mad. It’s easy to want to stick a fork in it and give up hope. move. run away. It’s hard to stay and fight. But it can be done, and with time it can work. I don’t know if Jim Martin is going to get rid of Georgia’s Chambliss problem, but if you’d told me or most anyone else just a matter of months ago that the race would be competitive, we’d likely have laughed. There’s lots of room for humor and satire. I think we all know what I’m talking about. (Thanks for that one TBogg, made my day!) But on Nov. 5th, we’re going to have to multi-task and start working on extending our gains, not alienating regions.
7 Comments
obama can win the south back over to teh democrats, if this country is to unite, if we are to heal, then we need to educate the bigots
if they can see real progress because of obama, there will be far less bigotry in this country and then world
we need to take the south along for the ride, everyone can learn when they’ve made mistakes, we won’t change all the bigots be we will change plenty
this I guarantee
Thanks perris! Thas what I’m tawkin’ about!
I’d like to distinguish between the Rethug leaders and the people who followed them. The leaders, like Chambliss and of course Rove, Palin and McCain, deserve no mercy and all the venom we can heap on them. Those who followed them and voted for them, on the other hand, include many good people who were misled and swept up in the climate of fear the Rethugs worked so hard to build. perris is right that with four years of Democrats actually demonstrating that we care about them and are working to improve their lot in life, we can bring many of them over to our side.
META: if anyone feels like helping out a Noob:
How to work the Flickr image embed thingy.
sry! I’m dumm.
email me- dusty59 #at# gmail #dot# com
a while back I put up a diary on how to it, hope this helps.
Wow, Thanks! I’m going to breakfast now, but will try in a bit- looks quite helpful.
I do believe that Dr Martin Luther King said the hardest place to march was Chicago not the South.
That and Bull Connor saw what Chicago Mayor Daley did to the Hippies protesting the Democratic Convention and as a Democratic delegate he cast his vote for President to Mayor Daley!
Hmmm maybe the South needs a good press agent?