Redneck Nation (12 page)

Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, for example, the president of the Durham, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP announced
that the attacks against America
“were not an attack on freedom,” since America is not a free country. “Those black males who make it back home alive from
war are likely to come home and be discriminated against by the [very] people whose businesses were headquartered in the World
Trade Center,” Curtis Gate-wood said. The national NAACP denounced him for these comments, but the local chapter supported
him.

About that same time, the infamous “Florida firefighter flag” flap occurred in which three firefighters announced their opposition
to riding on fire trucks draped in American flags honoring the World Trade Center fallen. While the story was wildly misreported
at the time, the fundamental facts were that three Americans—black, politically engaged firefighters—voiced their opposition
to the flag as a symbol because, according to one of the firefighters, “it represents a nation of oppression,” it is not a
symbol of justice, and “because America hasn’t apologized for slavery.”

This was one week—just one week—after the horrific pictures of the World Trade Center collapse and the deaths of more than
340 of their fellow firefighters. Think of the strength of your opposition to the American flag and your ambivalence toward
your fellow Americans for you to stand up that week and say, “I won’t honor the fallen by flying this flag today.”

This is an inevitable consequence of southern-style racism, including the “good” kind.

Spend a Memorial Day weekend in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where the original Confederate Memorial Day is still observed, not
the Yankee one, and you’ll see it there, too. Recall the words of John C. Calhoun, the great white southern hope himself:
“Union—next to our liberty, most
dear.” That liberty was the freedom of the South to maintain the slave economy and, if necessary, bail out of the Constitution.

Southerners, especially southern whites, are always ready for a scrap, and we honor and admire military service more than
most Americans. But there is at our core, and solidly in our southern character, an ambivalence about our national government
and identity. We’re Southerners, by God, and, oh sure, we’re Americans, too. But it is our southern identity that provides
our passion.

Northernism was the rejection of the “American by birth, southern by the grace of God” mentality. Northernism sought to drag
the South into the American whole, at least in the realm of ideas: a color-blind society seeking one-size-fits-all justice
pursued through powerful ideas that are greater than any sectional or ethnic consideration.

Today, no idea is more powerful in the public sphere than that of race. Just as it did in the pre-Civil War South and the
Jim Crow era after that, group identity and race obsession have trumped all else. Reason, rationality, not even love of country
can overcome them.

And what kind of country is this where race triumphs over all? It is America, the Redneck Nation.

O
ne of the reasons I left the South was to go somewhere I could get fired.

And in the American South, it is nearly impossible to be declared too stupid to keep a job. The typical Southerner might get
fired for showing up drunk, for leaving work early, for slipping a hand in the till or under the boss’s daughter’s sweater.
But he won’t get fired merely for being intellectually incapable of completing his assigned duties.

Imagine an entire country run by the Department of Motor Vehicles and you get the idea.

I mention the DMV for two reasons: It is a branch of government roundly agreed upon to be the acme of ineptitude; and it is
the only branch of democracy I know
of that has proven concretely that government workers can’t handle shit.

Literally.

The proof can be found on the floor and furnishings of a South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles office near Spartanburg.
The story began in the fall of 2001 when an elderly man showed up at the DMV to get a new driver’s license. After he and his
daughter stood in line for about an hour, the gentleman proceeded to have a bowel movement in the middle of the DMV.

The man, it turned out, suffered from incontinence. Soon, the hundred or so people waiting in line began suffering, too. There
was an unpleasant odor in the air and telltale droppings on the carpet. Apparently this gentleman was too embarrassed to go
to the store and buy a bag of Depends, but not too embarrassed to take a dump in a roomful of angry strangers waiting to renew
their tags.

Some people gagged. Others left the building in disgust. Something had to be done, and, according to David Burgis, deputy
director in charge of South Carolina’s DMV offices, immediate action was taken. The DMV official on site asked the daughter
to take her father to the rest room and clean things up. But because the DMV would not guarantee their place in line, she
refused. So the official, faced with nauseated taxpayers and numerous, obvious health code violations, did what any good state
employee would do: He walked back to his office and sheepishly closed the door behind him.

As a result of this brilliant crisis-management strategy, the old man and the feces continued to make their way through the
line for another hour, dropping excess nitrogen in their wake. Which meant that every taxpaying citizen
who walked into the DMV offices for the rest of the day also had to walk through another person’s poop to do their business
(pardon the pun) with the state government.

Now, don’t get the idea that these state employees did nothing at all as their customers tiptoed through this manure minefield.
After the incontinent-yet-legally-permitted-to-drive-heavy-machinery gentleman left, “DMV workers changed the line configuration
and taped off a chair where the man had been sitting so other customers could avoid the fecal matter the man spread over several
areas of the room,” according to the
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
. Other employees helpfully suggested that folks getting their driver’s license photos should “watch where you step.”

Two and a half hours later when the DMV office closed for the day, the poop was all still there. These government workers
never cleaned it up. Ever. It wasn’t until the janitorial service showed up that the mess was finally handled.

Two and a half hours of shit. Two and a half hours of paid employees watching citizens stepping around shit. Two and a half
hours of a senior manager not doing shit. But would you care to guess how many of the state employees involved were fired?

None. Zero. Zippo. Nada. Not only was there not a summary execution, but commendations were handed out. The boss, Mr. Burgis,
went out of his way to tell the media that his workers had done nothing wrong.

“You can’t keep someone from getting a driver’s license for incontinence,” Burgis insisted, missing the obvious point that
this old man’s incontinence kept any
number of nauseated and disgusted customers from getting theirs. And folks—these government workers aren’t even unionized.

Now, think for a moment what it must be like for the one competent person (if he exists) at this DMV office. He shows up for
work focused, alert, and ready to excel. He wants to perform well and he wants his performance to matter. He would like to
think that there are benefits to be earned and punishments to be avoided based on his merits as an employee. Instead, he discovers
that it doesn’t matter if he throws his customers’ car registration into the nearest open septic tank, he’ll still have a
job.

That’s the sinking feeling I’ve known so many times as a Southerner, and it is the part of the Mason-Dixon mindset I find
hardest to bear. As a radio talk show host down South, I would repeatedly point out abject, obvious failures by the people
we citizens pay to serve us, but instead of hearing, “You’re right, Michael! These folks need to shape up or ship out,” most
listeners suggest that I’m the problem.

“Why you always got to be negative?” one caller asked. “Every day I hear you complaining about how schools are so bad and
the government is so bad, and there’s all this racism—if you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave?” When I asked the caller
if he thought I was wrong, if my complaints were invalid, he said that he thought I was pretty much right on. “But you don’t
have to talk about it.” In other words, our schools are run by idiots, our lawmakers are buffoons, we’re surrounded by wanna-be
Klan members… and
I’m
the problem.

I have been forced to conclude that, next to miscegenation and interracial marriage, the most fear-inspiring
idea in the South is that people should get what they deserve. Perhaps Southerners have an inferiority complex that causes
us to quietly accept lousy treatment at the hands of others. It could be that we think second-rate is all we deserve. Then
again, it could be an unspoken contract of Mutually Assured Destruction invoked at every customer service counter: I will
pretend not to notice that you can’t make change, and you agree to pretend not to notice that it took me twenty minutes to
order a cheeseburger.

Whatever the cause, Southerners simply will not accept merit as a cultural value. If Karl Marx had dropped “each according
to his ability” and stuck with “each according to his need,” the capital of the Confederacy would be Havana, Cuba.

Our
Confederate Communist Manifesto
would be sprinkled with ideological phrases like “Who’s your daddy?” and “He’s good people” and “You ain’t from around here,
are you?” The social and political system in the South rewards overachievement in the “who you know” category at the expense
of those who’ve invested long hours in the “what you know” department. The notion that incompetence or lack of initiative
should impact negatively on one’s life is as foreign a concept in the southern states as free love or public atheism.

I got my first inkling of this anti-merit attitude when I showed up for second grade at Pelion Elementary School. I was reading
at the fourth-grade level (thanks to my one year in Los Angeles public schools) and was immediately identified as a problem
student. How was this a problem? It turned out that, in order to award passing grades to the larvae of local prominentos,
the school system used grading
curves so extreme they would make Dolly Parton blush.

It was a useless enterprise. The dropout rate in South Carolina was above 50 percent at the time, and the South still has
the lowest public school completion rate in America. And it was annoying to the handful of us who would blow off the
B. J. and the Bear
marathon the night before a test and blow the curve.

I tried to point out to one teacher that giving a passing grade to people who knew less than 50 percent of the material meant
that, in her own opinion, half the stuff she was teaching us wasn’t worth knowing. This was greeted by shouts of anger from
the other students: “Shut up, Yankeeboy! You’re still gettin’ your A, whadda you care about the rest of us?”

I had violated one of the DMV rules of southern culture: Never acknowledge that someone else sucks. It won’t matter how stupid
we are as long as we agree to be stupid in the same way.

Just in case I thought the rejection of meritocracy was merely the opinion of ignorant schoolkids, there was U.S. Senator
Strom Thurmond.

Of course, I’m not going to speak negatively of Strom Thurmond. As a Southerner and a South Carolinian, I am bound by oath
and office to love Strom. He’s seen so much history being made on the floor of the Senate—the Clinton impeachment, the Civil
Rights Act, the stabbing of Julius Caesar—and he’s an amazing physical specimen.
Did you know that before he became a senator, Strom Thurmond participated in the Normandy invasion? Yep, he was there, along
the Saxon line in 1066…

Seriously, though, it is a little-known fact that Strom Thurmond participated in the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944.
In fact, he was the
oldest
American to take part in the attack. That’s right: Sixty years ago he was already the oldest guy in the room.

When Strom Thurmond turned forty-four, he married a twenty-two-year-old. Miss South Carolina beauty pageant contestant. When
Strom Thurmond turned sixty-six, he married a twenty-two-year-old Miss South Carolina pageant contestant.

When Strom Thurmond turned eighty-eight…. nobody wanted to be Miss South Carolina. They had to cancel the entire contest.

It’s easy to mock Strom Thurmond for having run for president in 1948 on a platform of keeping the Negro “out of our homes,
our schools, our churches, and our places of recreation.” It’s easy to mock Strom Thurmond for saying thirty years later that
“I have done more for black people than any other person in the nation, North or South.” It’s easy to mock Strom Thurmond
for insisting on running for a seventh term at the age of eighty-eight and an eighth term at the age of ninety-four, when
his largest campaign contributors were funeral homes and the corporate manufacturers of Depends undergarments.

It’s easy to mock Strom Thurmond… but down South, nobody does.

Okay, I do. But the reaction of my fellow South Carolinians is violently negative. Everybody votes for Ol’ Strom. Just don’t
ask them why.

A political campaign is supposed to be an argument about what is best for you, the voter. “Elect me,” the candidates claim,
“and I will make you richer, happier, stronger, faster.” For twenty years, it has been impossible to make such an argument
for voting for Strom Thurmond, and for twenty years, my fellow South Carolinians did it, anyway.

In his last two elections, it was impossible for the Thurmond camp to argue that their candidate was going to do anything
about crime or taxes or teenage pregnancy (well, actually…) because it was impossible to argue he was going to do
anything at all
.