As a Yankee, born and bred in the heart of America’s elitist, communist, terrorist-embracing, tree-hugging sodomite wasteland (a.k.a. “Taxachusetts”), I grew up with a certain prejudiced view of the South that pretty much disappeared when I actually crossed the Mason-Dixon line for the first time. Driving cross-country with friend and Screengrab colleague (and Hick Flick scholar) Scott Von Doviak after college (and later relocating for a time to George W.’s old stomping ground of Austin, TX), I was pleasantly surprised to discover how generally nice and friendly the residents of the Confederacy seemed up close.
Now, back on the East Coast, the inescapable maelstrom of election coverage has got me shaking my fist at the Red States again on a daily basis...so I was pleasantly refreshed when my lovely Polish bride (in the midst of a recent spate of Dolly-mania) rented The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which reminded me again of some of the nicer parts of Southern culture, while making me wonder afresh why, to paraphrase Rodney King, we can’t all just get along.
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