It's not racism, it's herritage...and denial aint just a river in Egypt

This past Saturday the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrated the founding of the Confederacy by reenacting the swearing-in of Jefferson Davis on the Alabama State Capitol steps (where Jefferson Davis was sworn-in 150 yeas ago).




Predictably, their message was that the Civil War was about States Rights and that they were honoring the brave men who fought for this noble idea.

I was thoroughly creeped out from being surround by all of these lunatics -- I was less uncomfortable when I visited the gas chambers at Dachau. I'm not kidding.

Maybe it would be unfair to label them all as racists, but who puts stickers like these on their cars?:



No one threatened me, but one guy came up to me and said, "do they know a Yankee is here?" I wasn't wearing anything to indicate that, but I obviously didn't fit in.

The most lunatic speech came from this guy:



Besides bringing up Harry Potter, he compared his plight -- a white man who is maligned by liberals because he speaks the truth of what the Civil War was really fought over -- to the Civil Rights Movement. He told the crowd that like Rosa Parks, it was time they stood up from the back of the bus and walked to the front. So I guess he must feel like he's living in an apartheid state. And there's no doubt that Rosa Parks' name was invoked because we're in Montgomery, AL, home of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and only several hundred feet away from MKL's church where the boycott was organized.

I was happy that Bill Maher focused on this event in his New Rules segment on Friday's show. My local friends weren't happy that Bill attacked all Southerns, but my response to them is that even though the Sons of Confederate Veterans do not represent the majority of Southerns, the majority is complicit by never speaking out against these Civil War revisionists. There should have been a counter protest, but there wasn't one. And while these guys obviously have a Constitutional right to assemble and say whatever they want, I don't think the State should have allowed them to hold the event on the Capitol steps given that they are slavery deniers.

All my pictures from the day:

Someone really likes 'The Dukes of Hazzard'

I spotted what appeared to be a near perfect replica of "The General Lee" in town today:





The confederate battle flag was on the roof and "01" was painted on the doors. The only apparent dissimilarity was that the doors did not appear to be welded shut.

Alabama Gov. to non-Christians: Go to hell

Our new Governor, on his first day on the job, speaking at an MLK day event, at MLK's church, had this to say about his non-Christian constituents:

"So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

While there is some context to the statement, it's pretty scary that when writing the speech no one thought someone might take issue with telling non-Christians that the Governor is not their "brother."

The good news for the Governor is that there aren't many Jews in Alabama, and I doubt any of them voted for him.

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

I received this in the mail the other day:

Unsealing Revelation's Mysteries

Unfortunately I've been out of town during some of the early seminars, but nothing is going to keep me from missing "How to Postpone Your Funeral."

It turns out that this church is local and they have podcasts. Listen to this one and be sure to listen for at least a minute. You'll see why.

Panic at the Supermarket

An inch or so of snow and some freezing rain was predicted for Sunday through today (Monday), and sure enough, on Friday people began clearing out certain items at the supermarket, most notably bread.



It doesn't take much snow to legitimately shut things down here in Alabama -- neither the city nor state have many plows or really any salt stockpiled.

But what I don't get, is the level of fear that is induced when people hear that it could snow.

People react like they're going to be trapped in their homes for days, maybe weeks, and will be completely shut off from food.

Let's pretend for a second that this really could happen. Why is that people think they can subsist on sliced bread? There are a lot of other things in the supermarket that have substantially greater nutrional value as well as a longer shelf life, like canned fruits and vegetables. If I thought that a snow apocolyspse was really imminent, I'd stock up on canned foods, not wonder bread.

The Check

Here's a cultural difference I've noticed between the Dixie and the North.

When a group of people receive the check for a meal up north, it's always a single check. In the South, probably 65 to 75 percent of the time the server either asks the table if everyone wants separate checks, or they go ahead and do it without asking. And this seems to be indicative of the people in the South. When I'm out with people and the server gives the table a single check, someone always ask if the table can have separate checks. Up north I find it is very rare that someone asks for separate checks -- almost everyone seems find calculating what they owe.

While I suppose that always having separate checks does make it a lot easier to calculate what you owe, especially when everyone at the table has ordered a lot, there's something anti-social about it. When you ask for the separate check, you're pretty much saying that you don't trust the people you're dining with to properly split the bill.

There have certainly been times where I knew someone calculated wrong and I had to over pay by a few dollars, but my philosophy is that it will all even out in the end. So maybe the folks up north are actually more friendly than people in the South?

Alabama: Where Pontiacs go to Die

I’ve been traveling a lot in the last two months, so I haven’t had time to post any new updates. But right now I’m on a long flight with a baby that won’t stop screaming, so now seems like a good time to review my first year in Dixie.

When I think of the last year living in Central Alabama, three things come to mind: college football, sunglass chums and Pontiacs.

College football

The obsession with college football goes beyond the degree to which Eagles and Giants fans vicariously live through their respective teams. When two people in Alabama meet, within 5 minutes someone will say: Auburn or Alabama?

On Saturdays everyone is at home watching football. There are a few restaurants in Montgomery where you actually do need reservations, especially on a Saturday night. If Alabama or Auburn is playing at night, the restaurant is empty. And when I say empty, I mean it’s the bartender, the wait staff and me.

My theory with the obsession is that people view it as a form of social mobility. By going to either the University of Alabama or Auburn University, you’re part of a special club, and you maintain your membership by being a vocal fan – it’s how you let everyone know you went to one of the two schools. It’s like how people tie their identity to a country club. And what’s really wild about it, is that the only thing the schools are known for (whether deservedly or not), are their football teams. Let me try and explain it this way: when pretentious assholes like me brag they went to an Ivy League school, we’re trying to showoff that we’re smart, or at least people should think we are smart. When people say that went to the University of Alabama, they’re bragging about the football team – and people here are impressed that they went to a school with such a good football team. People are so obsessed with the teams that it’s not uncommon for parents to tell kids that they can only apply to one school.

On the upside, Alabama and Auburn fans are much more pleasant than Philadelphia sports fans. No one is throwing batteries, puking on children, or beating people to death.

Fashion

There are some fashion trends that are distinct to the Deep South, most notably sunglass chums.

All the locals wear them – everyone from construction workers to attorneys. I think that people believe it communicates ruggedness. I think they look ridiculous. I bought one and tried it out to see if I was missing anything. I wasn’t.

Pontiacs

Have you ever wondered why you see so few Pontiac cars on the roads up north? It’s because they’re all down here. While most people have at least one SUV or pickup truck, the sedan of choice is by far a late model GM P.O.S. Pontiac (completing the trifecta of gas guzzlers).

The 1980s time warp

In many respects, Alabama is still in the 1980s. While there are surprising number of restaurants that are into only using locally grown and raised organic food, they are up against a culture that believes a meal should not cost more than $10. New restaurants have a very hard time convincing people that it’s reasonable to charge $20+ for an entrée.

But more emblematic of the 1980s culture is the lack of urban redevelopment. The major cities – Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile, etc. – all have vacant downtowns. There’s no retail, and few restaurants and bars. The problem is urban sprawl.

Here’s what city planning in Alabama amounts to: someone builds a new planned community in the outskirts of the city, and strip malls are built nearby to provide retail and food for the people living in the community. A few years later someone builds another community even farther out – being surrounded by pastures is selling point. A new strip mall or two is built near them. The process then keeps repeating itself over and over again. The homes in the old communities are obviously not as nice as the ones in the newer, so people in the older communities move out to the new ones. As a result, people are increasingly moving out of the city center to the city limits, and the geographic footprint of the city is increasingly expanding so there is still wide open land for new planned communities to be built on. The old homes and strip malls then become dilapidated.

The most cynical I’ll get is that people here have unknowingly chosen to live in mediocrity. No one has figured out the connection between paying little in taxes and having roads that have not been repaved in a two decades, public schools that are only surpassed in failure by Louisiana and Mississippi, and an inadequate number of police officers. As ass backwards as Philadelphia can be, Montgomery makes it look like the most efficiently run city. In Philadelphia, if you call in a pothole it will typically get repaired within 24 hours. There are heavily used roads down here that look like Dresden after the bombing.

But to give you a real idea of the mediocrity, there is no curbside recycling. While every city in America is moving to single stream recycling and expanding the various waste they recycle, the Mayor of Montgomery decided to get rid of curbside collection because he said it costs too much. Now this is total bogus because the dumping fees for recyclables are less than waste. Further, there is already twice a week trash collection. How about eliminating one day of trash collection – if people have curbside recycling they’ll have less trash, and won’t need twice a week collection. I feel like I’m the only person in the city who realizes this.

And the whole recycling thing gets better. The city has drop-off sites where you can leave your paper and cardboard, and one or two of the sites will supposedly accept glass and plastic. Nobody uses them because it’s a pain in the ass to drive out to them. Even the Mayor has acknowledged that the recycling rate has plummeted since he eliminated curbside. So what’s his solution to this? Add more drop-off sites that are not used. I’m going to find out where he lives and leave my recyclables on his lawn – turn it into a drop site.