Newsweek’s latest cover story “Southern Discomfort: A journey through a troubled region” is an utter failure at original reporting and fresh insight.
The goal of the article was to convey the South’s “discomfort” with Barack Obama, which according to author Christopher Dickey, whose father penned “Deliverance,” has nothing to do with the senator’s liberalism, but is rather rooted in the South’s backward, racist outlook.
The article falls so far short not only because it completely glazes over the fact that the South has evolved tremendously over the past 30 years, but because its analysis is remarkably stale and unoriginal.
For instance, Dickey even follows the path of Sherman’s March to the Sea in his reporting, dredging up and illuminating one of the darkest chapters of the South. On his tour, he doesn’t encounter the burgeoning suburbs of north Georgia, but rather a seedy cast of characters:
- Dent Myers, an “unreconstructed” shopkeeper who peddles Ku Klux Klan hoods
- Bill Fincher, a “racist” candidate for sheriff who describes Dubya as his “idol”
- The Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials commemorating a mass lynching
- White men “who spend much of their spare time and disposable income re-enacting battles and reproducing camp life as it was in the 1860s.”
It’s reporting that is as tired and stale as the picture Dickey’s trying to portray of the South.
Now, I’m not a Southerner so I’m not trying to defend my heritage or anything — I was raised in Northern Virginia and my family has Midwestern roots — but this article is hopelessly unoriginal.
I learned nothing from it. Southerners such as Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and UNC’s Ferrell Guillory, on the other hand, have offered fresh insight recently into the region.
Webb taught me a lot about the poor, white South in his 2004 book “Born Fighting,” in which he challenged the stereotypes that Dickey lets encourages. And Guillory has extensively analyzed the demographics of the so-called New South, which is term that has become a bit of a cliché but is undeniable when you look at some quick examples of political, economic and cultures change in the region.
For example:
- In politics, the region that once rejected the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln and Sherman is now reliably red.
- In business, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte and Richmond are home to a collective 67 Fortune 500 companies, which is more than Los Angeles and Chicago combined (52). Houston is home to 16 large energy firms; Charlotte is a banking boomtown; and Atlanta is now home to America’s busiest airport.
- In manufacturing, Volkswagen announced in July that it will build a new assembly plant in Chattanooga, TN. According to Joel Kotkin, “The new plant will sit within close proximity to one Toyota is building north of Tupelo, MS (where the popular Prius will be manufactured), and another that Kia broke ground for last year in West Point, GA on the Alabama border. This joins existing plants such as those operated by Nissan in Nashville and Smyrna, GA, BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, SC and three assembly plants in Alabama.”
- In technology, North Carolina’s Research Triangle and Virginia’s Dulles Corridor are home to such giants at AOL and SAIC and are beacons of biotech R&D and defense technologies, respectively. Even rural Kentucky was the subject of a recent Wall Street Journal special article on high-speed Internet access.
- And even on social issues, I think the South remains much more integrated than many places in the North. People I know in cities like Richmond, Chapel Hill or Atlanta tend to have integrated networks of friends than in cities like Boston or Chicago.
Dickey is from the South. Maybe he has a different experience. Maybe he’s from a different generation. But for an author who’s is trying to discuss a new kind of candidates’ influence on a region in flux, he is awfully rooted in the past.
12 responses so far ↓
1 john lane // Aug 6, 2008 at 5:54 am
Make a correction above in yr blog: James Dickey didn’t write the Newsweek story. His son Christopher Dickey did…
2 Citizen Grim // Aug 6, 2008 at 10:34 am
Civil war reenactors aren’t just history enthusiasts, now they’re racists, too?
3 Patrick Ottenhoff // Aug 6, 2008 at 1:41 pm
“The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.” — W.T. Sherman
Sherman was a Republican. The Palmetto State is now reliably Republican.
4 Patrick Ottenhoff // Aug 6, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Dickey uses the March to the Sea as a frame of reference, but if the March to the Sea was so formative for Southern identity then why is South Carolina vote so reliably Republican? W. T. Sherman was a Republican.
And Sherman said, “The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.”
If the South is so haunted by its past, as Dickey suggests, why would they vote for the party of Lincoln and Sherman?
5 LT Lawrence // Aug 7, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Why does the South vote Republican? I was there when it happened. It was all about desegregation and civil rights. When the Democratic Party got behind the civil right movement, the GOP saw an opportunity and capitalized on it. They went about getting the Dixiecrats to change parties, and they did. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Lester Maddux, et. al. found open arms in the GOP.
As for the South changing, well, maybe it has in some places. I don’t visit every single part of the South regularly. As for the place where I grew up (Southside Virginia), my frequent visits would indicate that not a thing has changed except for the absence of Jim Crowe laws. Same old white people.
Same as always.
6 nimh // Aug 10, 2008 at 8:15 am
A reminder of the correction that the first commenter already pointed out should be made:
You write of the article’s “author James Dickey, whose father penned “Deliverance”.
But the article’s author is Christopher Dickey; James is the father who penned “Deliverance”.
7 Citizen Grim // Aug 11, 2008 at 10:38 am
“When the Democratic Party got behind the civil right movement, the GOP saw an opportunity and capitalized on it. ”
Except that it was the GOP that was advancing civil rights, and persuaded LBJ of its merits while much of his own Democrat party opposed him. The Democrat Party didn’t get behind civil rights until nearly a decade later when they perceived it as a useful vessel to attack Reagan.
8 toby // Aug 12, 2008 at 4:40 am
There is a queasy underbelly to Civil War re-enacting. For example, organisations like teh “Sons of Confederate Veterans” are pushing the notion that blacks remained generally loyal to the Confederacy during the Civil War, and that many slaves fought patriotically for the Confederacy. This continues the “Lost Cause” as an Utopian myth of an era of racial harmony when blacks knew their place.
However, I agree that there is much that is good happening in the South. For example, blacks have moved back there in numbers following the high tech industries and are turning parts of it back to blue from deep red. Many educated whites have moved in the same direction.
Northern Virginia, for example, seems to be swinging pro-Obama, whether that will influence the while state.
I also see that the Southern Universities (like Texas U and Georgia IT) are now as good as any in the country, where once the South had only cow colleges and sent (even before 1860) the cream of its talent North to get an education.
It is easy to pick out the hard cases … Dickey should have tried to get a bit more balance in his reporting.
To end, I am not sure about the GOP “advancing Civil Rights”. Dwight Eisenhower had 8 years (1952-1960) to address it and did sweet FA. What happened is that the Northern wing of the Democrats adopted Civil Rights and alienated its obstructive Southern wing, which went “Dixiecrat” since 1948.
The GOP adopted the Dixiecrats and willingly went along with the “Southern strategy”. See “Nixonland”. Reagan began his 1980 Presidential campaign near Philadelphia, Miss., where Civil rights workers were murdered a decade earlier. The signal was obvious. Trent Lott exposed the whole thing when he let slip his remarks about Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond: “if he had been elected President, we would not have these problems today”.
But I think as the Thurmonds die, the the Lotts retire, the South will only get better.
9 John e // Aug 12, 2008 at 8:06 pm
The south votes GOP in national elections because they cannot support the pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion on demand, pro-secularist, liberal platform of the national Democratic party. In my neck of the woods, they tend to vote Democratic on the local and state level. The 1860s Republicanism of Sherman and Lincoln is not the definitive issue in the national politics of the South of today nearly so much as conservative morality.
10 John E // Aug 13, 2008 at 10:55 am
Addendum: I should add that race is also very much a factor in the south, but is just one part of the anti-liberal mindset that likewise kept both Kerry and Gore from winning the south. Bill Clinton was able to win in the south primarily due to Perot but also because of his own southern accent, which Gore, Kerry, and Obama all lack. Even though Gore was a Tennessean, he obviously failed to impress Southerners (even in his own state) as one of their own. Until the natl Dem party can somehow overcome this great gulf between what they stand for and what the south stands for, the dem-libs wont stand a chance winning the south in a presidential election.
11 James T // Aug 19, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I wish Lincoln had let the south seccede. I am tired of gun-happy, bible thumping, anti gay, arrogant, bullying,flat earth- know nothings dictate the national dialogue and policy. Say what you will, the Republican south is just racist dixiecrat bullies in drag. Just once I wish a Democratic or Republican politician would say something like “You know what? If you want a pistol in your night stand to feel secure at night, fine. But you don’t need a semi automatic weapon for that, nor do you need one to hunt deer or turkey. Those weapons are for killing as many people as quickly as possible. As for religion, you, as an American, are free to worship God in any way you wish, as long as you don’t force everyone else to believe the same things you do. And,if you are not gay, then don’t marry a person of your gender. But you have no right or rationale to deny gay people that right. Don’t like abortion? No one LIKES the idea of terminating a pregnancy, so how about we do more to minimize unwanted pregnancies AND offer women more options and support in dealing with an unwanted pregnancy?” Would anyone say such a thing? Fat chance.
12 John e // Aug 20, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Typical elitist snobbery, to wish to deny the equal right to vote to others based only on the fact that the differ with your views, while giving lip service to equality by asserting a “right” that doesnt exist- “gay marriage.” Also, it is an absurd exagerration to say that the typical southerner owns a machine gun.
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