Wonkette
Our new president might say he likes diversity and things, but then why does he not fiscally stimulate the ailing South by hiring some southerners to work for him, HMMM? He has precisely one (1) staffer who hails from below the Mason-Dixon line, one “Robert Gibbs,” who does not count because he has zero neck tattoos and does not listen to Skynyrd.
In an interview with regional newspapers this week, a reporter asked Obama why he didn’t have more southerners on his staff and Obama basically said, “Because I despise the Confederacy.”
I love the South. I’ve got to admit that we have thought a lot about finding the very best people for the jobs and haven’t been thinking with great intensity about regionalism, because partly except for food and sports teams and weather, I mean, we’re one country. And I think that people are so mobile these days that — I tend to think of ourselves as all just Americans.
But if you’ve got some great Southerners — (laughter) — who want to work for us, please let me know, because we’re always open. I love the South.
See that, what he did there? Seething hatred.
Obama: ‘I Love the South’” [Washington Post]
DAMN that man is tactful. *swoons*
“Read my lips, No… New… Texans”
Perhaps they need employees who know that condoms work and evolution happens. I’m just sayin’, maybe you should ask your school districts that question instead of the president …
And Ozzie Guillen, manager of his favorite baseball team, is from Venizuela. WAKE UP AMERICA!
Southerners don’t get fancy high school educations and therefore are disqualified from any job that doesn’t have a foreman.
“Food, Sports Teams & Weather”
The American Trifecta
Well, considering what the good Southern Goveners are doing to his stimuli, ie; refusing it, (Perry, Jindal and Sanford), he probably shouldn’t invite them to the sandbox, they’d crap in it.
That’s because the new South is north… in Alaska.
“Because the Secretary of Shitkickin’ is no longer a cabinet-level position.”
…being that that Barack Obama requires your total of teeth in your mouth and I.Q. score combined to be higher than 12 to get a job in his administration, its no surprise!
Seriously, what’s with the fucking Will Ferrell OD? Can’t we put that bitch in a banner on the side and get down to bizness?
Southern man
better keep your head
Don’t forget
what your good book said
Administration folks
not hiring your ass
Now your economies
are burning fast
Southern man
I saw Muslin
and I saw black
In a Tall White House
and well toned arms.
Southern man
when will you
say that he’s your PREZ?
I heard screamin’
and the dumb ones crying
How long? How long?
Southern man
better keep your head
Don’t forget
what your good book said
Administration folks
not hiring your ass
Now your economies
are burning fast
Southern man
Southern boys,
Your W was a gigantic FAIL
I’ve seen the half breed man
goofin on you
Swear by Allah
Maybe you’ll get jobs next time round!
I heard screamin’
and the dumb ones crying
How long? How long?
…the only department a southerner would be qualified to run is the “Department of Tobacco & Firearms”.
freakishlystrong: Haley Barbour’s poop really frightens me. It would take a trencher to bury it in the sandbox.
I think Gibbs listens to Kid Rock.
…because they would try to force Nancy Pelosi into a ballgown made out of curtains? Not that that wouldn’t be kinda awesome. Just sayin’.
AngryBlakGuy: You forgot the Alcohol . . . including rubbing and sterno’s okay too.
I don’t have neck tattoos nor do I listen to SKYNRD. Wonder if he is looking for an assistant…
AngryBlakGuy: Surely you meant “Deparment o’Redman, Smith’n'Wesson and Bud Light!”
To be fair, the employment questionnaire is biased against Southerners with questions like…
Name the national Anthem.
A) Star Spangled Banner
B) Hymn of the Republic
C) Free Bird
unemployed NASCAR drivers make great chauffeurs
It truly offends me that everyone makes fun of the South the way they do.
I think, secretly, y’all are jealous because we get more sunshine and green than you get and, oh, I don’t know, created all the genres of music (jazz, blues, rock, country) you guys cite as “influences” on your facebook profile.
Come visit sometime and you’ll never leave. There is no NASCAR/neck tattoo/trailer park requirement. We even wear shoes!
So, if Texas is the South, can I have their stimulus bonus bucks, please?…’cause I think I could put them to use in Michigan, making mini-cars….and buying up ingredients for Cuba Libres….
Scarab: Yup, that’s a WIN, pardner.
Actually, with the Texas stimulus bucks, we could buy all of Michigan and make it a haven for the Wonketeers… can we lobby somebody for this?…
Actually he invited many more southerners to apply for jobs, but he vetted the ones who refused to remove their white hoods during their interviews.
Cabbage Babble: …hey, I live in Miami! Which is TECHNICALLY as south as you can get! Now “theoretically”, that is a totally different subject!
No Alaskans President Obama?
Even after all this corporation…. haha
http://www.governmentalityblog.com/my_weblog/2009/03/newest-in-alaska-corruption-sweep.html
I have never really heard a southern person make fun of the North. I guess we just think it is rude to make fun of other people. It could also be that we aren’t able to be heard above the babble of northern people calling us stupid.
I’m just happy to have a President that doesn’t have a fucking annoying regional accent.
Well, that young whipper snapper Robert Gibbs used to throw his empty beer bottles over my fence when he was skipping classes at Auburn High. And my part of Alabama also produces white boys like Morris Dees and Millard Fuller.
It’s the Yankees — like Connecticut’s George Bush, Nebraska’s Dick Cheney and Pennsylvania’s Newt Gingrich — who have ruined the South.
V572625694: Platypus: …the Department of “Wild Turkey®, GPC lights and Sawed-off Shotguns”?
“I’ve got to admit that we have thought a lot about finding the very best people for the jobs and haven’t been thinking with great intensity about regionalism”
Translation: Why would anybody care about this asinine, arbitrary bullshit? Go away.
ewilliams: Honestly?!? Never?!? When I go back home to visit, I run across people all the time who think I’m actually *from* New Jersey and they’re all like Yankee this, Yankee that - and it gets just worse when they just assume I never left the area.
Southerners seem to obsess on the North-South distinction which doesn’t even occur to most people above the Mason-Dixon until someone like Sanford starts mouthing off the stupid.
Cabbage Babble: Wait, we’re supposed to wear shoes? Shit.
Seriously, true southern liberals, if you can find them, are some of the most terrifying people on the planet. Apparently dealing with idiots your entire life makes you a complete badass.
ewilliams: …Northerners are just jealous that we can actually fukk our sisters and they can only hide in her closet and masturbate while sniffing her underwear!
AngryBlakGuy: Department of Southern Comfort, Kools and 120-mm main guns on the M1A1 tanks down at Anniston Army Depot?
Internally valid: Really! Why isn’t anyone asking how many gingers or blue-eyed people Obama’s hired?
El Vista: …in all fairness, George Bush was traded to Texas(part of the south) for a future 12th round draft pick and a pack gum!
I was thinking of taking a little vacation to celebrate my medical miracle survival and the kids mentioned Hilton Head. I’m a little worried though about going down there where you can’t drink the water and peanut butter isn’t safe to eat. Then I think about all the pork barbacue I can eat on the way down and I’m torn.
I suppose I’ll have to scrape off the Free Abortions For Everyone bumper sticker, also.
OffTheRecord: Good point. I was in Neshoba County, Mississippi the summer the civil rights workers were killed. A former student of my dad found Emmett Till’s body.
I didn’t learn liberalism by listening to NPR and going to the Unitarian Church.
Find me a Southerner who isn’t a raving lunatic right-winger and I’ll find you a stoned hippie who gets his ganja allowance by freelancing for “Creative Loafing” and waiting tables at a vegetarian cafe*.
*They mostly live in Asheville, NC.
V572625694: …I give up, you win. *head down*
OffTheRecord: Amen to that. And that love of whiskey seems to be a universally defining characteristic. Mean sarcastic drunks with no patience for idiocy = good people.
Iggy Plop: Well, I would have to disagree. After living in NY for almost a decade, I have found that northerners always have wonderful questions for me like:
Do you still have slavery? (yes, my master just let me come here for education)
Did you known that you lost the civil war? (no way, you don’t say)
Do you live on a farm? (we do have cities you know)
Was your school all in one room? (yeah, definitely)
Maybe you don’t encounter this because your accent has been neutralized.
Serolf Divad: I live in Huntsville, AL. I am as liberal as it gets, and have a full time job.
102415: …“I suppose I’ll have to scrape off the Free Abortions For Everyone bumper sticker, also.”
…bumper sticker or not, they are gonna know you are a liberal the second they see your Toyota Prius!
AngryBlakGuy: Really! Was that necessary?
Three words: avoiding Klan infiltration.
Internally valid: I often wonder how Obama makes it through the day without banging his head on the table a few times at all the idiocy he has to put up with on a daily (hourly?) basis.
Cabbage Babble: FTW from this transplanted yankee. Of course, I live in a urban area in the south, that has more transplanted Lon Guylanders (epic FAIL) than charming southern folks. We sometimes take our kids on road trips so they can see The South. It’s just a few hours away.
ewilliams: At the Corps of Engineers, Missile Command, or NASA?
V572625694: None of the above…at a private software company.
V572625694: I have serious ethical issues with all of the listed orgs.
ewilliams: …shyt! Every region has their own stereotypes! I live in Miami and all i hear is :
-Why don’t you have gold teeth?
-Do you live on South Beach
-Do you have Coke connection(to which I reply: “I could tell you but I would have to chop you up with a chainsaw!”)
-Or they immediately start to use their 6th grade remedial spanish
AngryBlakGuy: If I had a profile signature somewhere I would display that proudly.
ewilliams: …ehhhh, I suppose not. But then again are any of my comments?
ewilliams: Jes’ funn’ w/ya. I got to Huntsville a lot, like it very much. 801 Franklin’s a very nice restaurant. And Intergraph’s a great company. Let me think…who’s their biggest customer, hmmm?
ewilliams: Any southerners in Huntsville? I was there once–it was all yankee rocket scientists and the town named their civic center after a former S.S. officer. That officer, Werner von Braun, became the father of NASA’s rocket program. And now you know the rest of the story.
/snark
Actually, Huntsville was really nice, and I moved from the north to the south by choice. It’s better here–it hardly snows in March, there’s Waffle Houses everywhere (none of that IHOP nastiness), you don’t have to pay a bunch of racists to walk on the beach (see also New Jersey) and people don’t lay on their car horns just for sport. Yes, there’s that thing with the turn signals, but all in all, the South is just fine. My state even tries really hard to fund public colleges and universities, something that New York and New Jersey did at the point of a gun, more or less.
If you don’t get The Southern Thing, start with Southern Rock Opera by Drive By Truckers. It isn’t all Skynyrd down here, y’all
Hooray For Anything: That would make a cute avatar! Someone photoshop Hopey with his head on table and the words ::headdesk::
Serolf Divad: Greensboro, NC is also not “real America,” if you are going by stupid pundit standards.
ewilliams: Ha! And we thought we had a real American on our hands. Alas, just another libtard, like us, only with a charming drawl.
BTW, when the questioner said “Southerners,” he did not mean women, Blacks, Celestials, Hispanics or any of that other stuff that may happen to live in the South. He meant good ol’ white boys, with hair on the palms of their hands.
I’m thinking President Obama has hired all kinds of southerners. They just got the fuck out early when they realized they wanted to be educated, have all their teeth and not get dragged to death behind a pickup truck if they happened to be the wrong color in the wrong small town.
I have lived in the deep south my whole life, and most of the better folk I know here came from somewhere else and did not grow up in the south. Hell, check the comments on the Houston Chronicle website re: Governor Perry (who is definitely not gay) declining unemployment benefits from the stimulus. It’s like 25 to 1 in favor of Perry. Who the fuck wants selfish kid-diddlers like that in their cabinet? I was born here & grew up here & there is no defending us. Obama done right.
V572625694: Yeah, I guess I am being a little uptight.
However, it is irritating to have people constantly talk about how stupid you are because of where you were born. If people said these things about another country they would be chastised immediately.
PS. I don’t work for Intergraph either.
“Southerners” created those musical genres, yes — if by Southerners you mean “black people.”
ewilliams: If you think it’s rude to make fun of other people, you’re on the wrong web site.
DangerousLiberal: The South may be a different experience for people choosing to move there, but having grown up in the South, I beg to differ. If you don’t get the Southern Thing, start with Warron Zevon’s “Play it All Night Long.” (Lyrics available at your local Google).
WadISay: …ohhhhhh, you mean the “44 Chromosome” demographic! Why didn’t they say so?!
DangerousLiberal: Yes, to wit: I live in Atlanta. We Atlanta liberals are a furtive bunch. We move through the shadows like the …uh… Shadow and know what evil lurks within the hearts of men. We speak in hushed tones under the haloes of street lamps and glory in the sound of silence. We’re one breakup short of a Simon and Garfunkel song, really.
ewilliams:
Yes, I read about you! I think it was in Creative Loafing.
Serolf Divad: I obivously need to check out “Creative Loafing.” It seems like I am missing something.
yellowdogdem: Why yes, they DO have black people in the South. Are you implying that all non-Klan members consider themselves Yankees?
TGY: Your version of Atlanta liberals reminds me of the half dozen or so liberals at our UM church who huddle in the corner of the narthex or at the back of the sanctuary, whispering about politics. Come to think of it, I had to attend the Southern Baptist church across the street one time, and I don’t remember the same phenomenon happening there.
AngryBlakGuy: In a previous incarnation I had inlaws in Vicksburg Miss. They didn’t consider Flahda the south because of all the yankees. This was back in the days when the little historical museum in Vicksburg (the “Gibralter of the Confederacy”) featured a photo of smiling darkies sitting on a porch with the caption, “Some of the slaves were very happy.”
And they referred to Oklahoma as being “up north.”
“…true southern liberals, if you can find them, are some of the most terrifying people on the planet. Apparently dealing with idiots your entire life makes you a complete badass.”
I can testify! some of my best friends, etc.
ewilliams:
It’s sorta the “Village Voice” of the South.
For purposes of this discussion, is Jacksonville, Florida part of the South? If so, I volunteer to work for Hopey. I was born here and am married to a 5 generation Floridian who is a Skynard fan. OK,OK, so he’s a union boss too. And my parents were yankees (my dad via Sicily, so I’m sorta brown) And we go to church, even though its a liberal episcopalian church where we heart teh gayz. But still!!!!
DustBowlBlues: “…hey, I live in Miami! Which is TECHNICALLY as south as you can get! Now “theoretically”, that is a totally different subject!”
Let me clarify.
Florida Technically: The South!
Florida Theoretically: A Caribbean banana republic
OMG LIMO LIBRUL SAN FRANCISCO VALUES MAKING FUN OF REEL AMERIKAN SUTHERNERS!!111. Also.
TGY: I find this comment Faulkneresque.
hobospacejungle: I’m with you on sticking up for the south, although I consider OK/TX a region in and of ourselves. On one hand, people are incredibly friendly, on the other–well, you want stupid, just listen to the fucktards around here. But for pockets like Norman and Austin, Oktexastanis are dumb as fucking stumps–and proud of it. That’s the really sad part.
Honestly, once Jesus and the Civil Rights Act hit this part of the country, it was all over. The people who are bitching about no southerners in the cabinet are the same ones who criticize O’bama for using a teleprompter. They got nothin’.
Did you known that you lost the civil war?
Well, DID you?
ewilliams: Cracker.
Scarab: thank god
IslandGirlFL: …Jacksonville is definitely the south! So is Gainesville, Lake City, Madison, Tallahassee(kinda), Deston ad St. Augustine! My test is if I count more that 3 homes flying a Conferate flag in their front yard. Or when you are in the super market little children stare at you like they have never seen a black person before.
102415: It is also called the “stroke belt”…. Hilton Head and the whole Georgia-SC-NC coasts have an unusual cluster spike in death from strokes…..a medical mystery unexplained to this very day.
AngryBlakGuy: Comment of the day.
sati demise: Since I am half-black I don’t think I qualify for that title…but maybe you are right.
AngryBlakGuy: Sorry ABG…
Florida is in the south, but it is not part of The South, excepting the panhandle, of course. (Note the capitalization.) I hail from South Alabama and can speak with on authoritty on the redneckiness of the Florida panhandle– it’s even worse than South Alabama. You might as well rip anything south of Apalachicola off and stick it up next to Massachusetts.
Cabbage Babble: “created all the genres of music (jazz, blues, rock, country)…”
The decendants of African slaves created that music(even country). All your people get credit for is fucking it up enough to make a shit-pile of money from it.
sati demise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_belt
CARCUNTZ!(tm)-R-Us: damn @ my typing.
but you know whut I mean.
AngryBlakGuy: but teh NYC Jewish people built the lovely South Beach art deco district.
Not considered ’southern’. But a gem nevertheless.
Cabbage Babble: DITTO FROM ME! And I have ALL my teeth with never so much as a cavity! :-p Nor any tattoos.
Zomg! I’m from the South and I need a job! Pick me, pick me! I went to college! Pick me!
Schadenfried: Descendants of African slaves who are still Southerners…
ewilliams: Pretzel?
CARCUNTZ!(tm)-R-Us: There are outposts of the Confederacy outside the panhandle. Ocala is one, Daytona is another. I’d move the line further south. About halfway between Gainesville and Orlando you leave the South and enter a twilight-zone hybrid of Latin American and the Middle Colonies.
It’s weird, but I’m sorta finding it hard to be my normal snarky self here, especially because I noticed this “no Southerners” trend in Obama’s staff a while back. To my delight.
Speaking as a former Texan and North Carolinian (and current Marylander, to those diehards that still want to claim MD is somehow southern): Really, motherfuck the south. They’ve been running shit clear back through Carter. Enough already. They’ve had an INORDINATE amount of influence in all three branches for a good, long while now. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
About fucking time the pendulum swung back. It’s sad to think how less fucked up we would’ve been if government was actually more representative for the last 2-3 decades. Or ever, really.
sati demise: CARCUNTZ!(tm)-R-Us: …yeah, I was referring to central and north Florida as the “South” and south Florida as different tiers of “Banana Republic”.
West Palm Beach & Monroe County = S.California meets Suburban Massachusetts
Broward & Dade County = United Nations of the Caribbean
AngryBlakGuy: St. Augustine actually has an annual Cracker Day celebration, so yeah, it meets the Southern specs with flying colors.
Schadenfried: Pretzels are usually darker that crackers…Oreo is what I usually get.
Schadenfried: Wait - are black people from the South not considered “Southerners”? Why do you assume that I’m speaking about white people? There are wonderful and lasting contributions on both sides of the race aisle in the Southern musical canon.
I feel like even responding to this post was a mistake. It only makes me sigh at people’s lack of information. A friend told me not to “feed the trolls.” I should have listened.
ewilliams: Well you did say you were half black. And anyone who says oreo usually doesn’t use the term properly.
Schadenfried: It has a different connotation in the South, or a least that has been my experience. People in other places us the term to describe a person that is black with “white characteristics,” where as it is used most often in my area to describe a person of that is half black. (either way it is pretty offensive)
Cabbage Babble: Oh, of course my people from that reigion of the country considered “Southerners!”, It’s just that when people start talking about the contributions that South has made, they tend to leave us out it for some strange region.
sati demise: Oh, shit I’m going to die on this trip with a sandwich stuck in my mouth like Mama Cass.
ewilliams: Well, the pages in the back of Creative Loafing serve as a great guide to the adult services industry in the Atlanta area. Recommended by GHOPAC!
AngryBlakGuy: Daddy’s got a huge, fucking 1992 Lincoln ex-livery car (27 MPG easy)if he can start it up one more time we will roll in that.
AngryBlakGuy: I thought we were getting better until yesterday. My 10 year old advised me that she is the only white kid in her class who likes Obama. Of course, her school is in the 2nd most rednecky part of Jville, i.e. her school was not named after a confederate general.
There goes my hope, right out the window!
102415: the only reason I know about this is my brother in law had a strokeish event on Hilton Head while on vacation.
He is from Colorado. Beware.
He did not even eat the local dish called ‘potato chips’, which are in reality thinly sliced potatoes that are swimming in lard-not crisp, not brown, but a deathly white and soggy mess.
Uncommon Nonsense: Can I buy you a bottle of Billy Beer for that comment?
Scarab: moins c’est plus. well said.
One Yield Regular: Any true Southerner (i.e. Real Americans) drink Natural Lite.
C’mon. Unless you’ve got a sworn affidavit, I’m thinking Gibbs like Skynyrd. It’s genetic.
Schadenfried: Ack! that should be reason, not reigon. That’s what I get for working and Wonketteering at the same time.
And speaking of trolls, if you pulled you “stop bashing the South” braying on Crooks and Liars, you would be branded a “concern troll” in a second.
DustBowlBlues: Per Little Feat, “Texas is a world all of its own.”
ph7: Everyone likes Skynyrd. Hell, I’m black and I once got a lighter burn when “Freebird” came on at a concert. It’s The Law.
(I say “came on” because it wasn’t even a Skynyrd concert. I just thought I should make that clear.)
CARCUNTZ!(tm)-R-Us: redneckiness of the Florida panhandle; … America’s Taint?
I live in Tulsa and stay away from the suburbs even. Oklahoma is like the taint of the nation, defined by what it’s not. Not midwestern, not southern, not southwestern, and not Texas (thank god).
ManchuCandidate: FREEBIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!
Capricatony: Tulsa?! You poor poor Hawt Libtard Wonkette chick! While I was in OKC (voluntarily, on my own dime!), I met a guy who drove all the way from Tulsa, to try and get just a little R&R… so if one has to escape to OKC for a little bit of life-worth-livin’, then what kind of living-hell must Tulsa be?
102415: Gotta tell you I fucking HATE Hilton Head. It’s that rod-up-the-ass rich pricky golf-obsessed southern style that is, to me, beyond annoying. They have some insane rule that everything has to be the same colors of beige and green, up to and including the mcdonald’s, wal-mart, etc. So tasteful that way. If I remember correctly you even have to pay to drive on the road that takes you to restaurants and such near the beach. Private community, you know. Give me the unashamed tackiness of Myrtle Beach (North Myrtle isn’t so bad) or the nothing to do prettiness of the Outer Banks any day.
Suds McKenzie: If you could only smell it down there.
Though, in all fairness as long as you stay within a mile and a half of the coast, it is quite nice on the Redneck Riviera.
lazyb: Oh, beige buildings and golf. No amount of life threatening food would make up for that.
Can’t we just all get along?
Deo Vindice