Southern Hospitality: Chopped & Screwed

The future will inevitably—and unfortunately—make many an addendum upon this post, but I wanted to round up a few related items for those of you who may have skimped a little on yr newspaper reading lately.

I want to talk about South Carolina—the state in which I spent my formative years, and one that I have a very high regard for and miss very much. Too frequently overshadowed by its less reactionary and more carpetbaggin’ northern neighbor, South Carolina holds a distinct place in my heart for its heart & belly-warming cuisine, uniquely serene natural landscapes, and genuine qualities of its inhabitants. I understand it is a particularly Southern—and with regard to race, particularly problematic—tendency to be paternalistic, but along with some of the sharpest minds, South Carolina boasts some of the most base. I’d actually be remiss if I didn’t confess that I didn’t cherish them all. In other words, they may be idiots, but they’re our idiots.

Now, I grew up in Charleston, often regarded as a sort of New Orleans of the southeastern seaboard—romantic, cosmopolitan, home to dandies and quaintrelles of loose morals, and, with regard to its neighbors, racially relatively easy-going—admittedly, a city not terribly representative of the state in which it resides. (Many folks “upstate” speak of the port as one they simply tolerate, and hope their sons and daughters don’t desire to go to college there.) Still, Charleston is undoubtedly Southern, where one can partake of all that implies (food, architecture, weather), while remaining a city that breathes a more worldly air which provides it with a concrete otherness from the rest of the state and its people.

And it is this dichotomy between Charleston and the rest of South Carolina which, more or less, brings us to the brunt of this lil’ essay: namely, the agonizing fact that the vast majority of South Carolinians, as sweet as they often are, continue to persist in electing the most willfully ignorant, two-faced, coarse, racist, and corrupt Politicians-With-a-Capital-P to their state and national governments. And if that weren’t bad enough, the Daily Show is there to remind us that we bang horses.

The facts speak for themselves, and the stories are all too true. So, as a Charlestonian, I increasingly ask myself Why? Or rather, how? And the answer, more often then not—and not terribly secret—boils down to ignorance. It is a trait that is unfortunately self-perpetuating in a state consistently ranked near the bottom of national public education rankings, and near the top in unemployment. Southern politicians (nearly always Republican) self-servingly harness the uncertainty that such ignorance and poverty breeds, and channel it directly into fear—of bogeymen. Big government. Illegal immigration. Socialism. Fugitive slaves. And no matter what the actual political/economic priorities of the Republican party are (chiefly, promoting the interests of the wealthy), they are able to manipulate poor, naive Southerners into voting them into office. Every single time.

Will this change? Unfortunately, I doubt it. The recent electoral inroads made by Barack Obama in Virginia and North Carolina have more to do with the migration of liberal-leaning Northerners to Southern cities, not a paradigm shift in the thinking of Republican Southerners. And as a previous post attempted to explain, the Internet will only facilitate the entrenchment of those beliefs, rather that expose them to a world without bogeymen.

But still I’ll go on loving South Carolina and Southerners in general. I could love the region and despise its people (an opinion I’ve heard bandied around quite a bit outside the South), but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t separate one from the other. They are part of each other’s landscape—Columbia’s mouthwatering barbeque as no distinct from the unreformed yokel who makes it. Sometimes this dichotomy is funny; other times, only laughingly sad. There is an obvious existential tension to this quality of Southerness, but like the day-to-day tensions of city living, it is an anxiety which ultimately makes you understand and appreciate all the more where you grew up.

Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?

Life is about finding the right balance, no? Efficiency versus beauty. Freedom versus security. Vice versus virtue. Most Americans shoot straight for the middle, which aside from some boring artistic preferences and questionable policy positions, seems to work fairly well. We are a generally private people (an inheritance from the English), sometimes stupidly rational (thank our German forbearers), and forever proud and usually suspect of authority (all rise: Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sequoyah, etc.)

As of late, however, you may have noticed a few of your fellow citizens in danger of falling, nay, regressing into more reactionary, and decidedly far (…)-wing sectors of thought. Back in the nineteenth century, they used to call this phenomenon “know-nothingism,” and while it proved to be a successful political tactic, the trick was short-lived, and is today generally shorthand for being willfully ignorant—a short leap from just being a crazy old coot.

This has manifested itself most recently, and most virulently, in the town hall meetings cum shouting matches called up by your local senator (or President) explaining how a public option of health care might help you and your family receive quality medical care. Those more historically inclined might have confused the fiasco for a thirteenth-century waltz of Guelphs and Ghibellines (minus any tangential literary bequests).

Another inferno that has been a-ragin’ is that between the defenders of the agri-biz food industry and the many-monikered green/sustainable/organic/local movement (a subtlety hydra-headed group of interests, but more or less speaking to the same thing, and everyone knows who they are) that ironically finds most of its adherents in the places furthest from the farm and food chain.

More below the radar, but particularly interesting, is the small, but fervent group of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children for fear of unintended, and so far unfounded, side-effects like life-long allergies and autism. That the other side of this argument is nearly a half century of successful (some would say miracle-working) public health policy is no matter.

Is the private and old-fashioned rational mind fast becoming a thing of the past? Or has the Internet and social media allowed for like-minded individuals to cohere, trade ideas, and organize movements much more successfully than ever before? The latter more than the former, surely; but it’s the particular virulence of social media that is actually making the decline of the rational mind a certainty, rather than just upstaging it as a new value in American politics.

Männertag/Herrentag

Today is special day in the Deutsche-speaking world. To zee Germans, today is “Männertag,” or Men’s day; while the Austrians, their slightly eccentric and more conservative cousins, call it “Herrentag,” or Gentleman’s Day. Historically, the holiday appears to be affiliated with Father’s Day (“vatertag”) or Ascension Day—a kind of “God our Father” transliteration. But that’s where the innocence ends. Mix in a little Teutonic nature worship, and of course booze, and you get something much more akin to what has marked the holiday since at least the nineteenth century (although, back then, at least they did their revelry in the woods). These days, men—invariably older and sporting potbellies—walk around town with a wheelbarrow/bike/anything-with-a-hollow-cavity-and-wheels filled to the brim with all manner of beer, wine, and schnapps; and if you and your vehicle are adorned with twigs, flowers, and leaves, all the better. Beginning early, and ideally drunk by, say, mid-morning, the revelers can be expected to be stumbling the streets, singing songs, recuperating in gutters, and no doubt by the beginning of the afternoon, filling the city’s ambulances and emergency rooms (municipal services maintain one of their highest levels of alert during the holiday).

Naturally, I have heard that women should remain scarce on Men’s Day, but my suspicions lead me to believe otherwise. The ladies in Germany like to booze it as much as the men, and more often than not, I’ve heard, are as liable to wind up sans shirt. There is, of course, an official Ladies’ Day or Mother’s Day or whatever, but I don’t think it gets the same sort of play around town. Who knows, though? From what I can gather so far, Germans love to drink beer everyday, at all times of the day, all the time. And being a logical people, if there’s a Ladies’ Day, the idea goes to create a Man’s Day; or vice versa. So here’s to it:

Prost zu Männertag!

Marci Washington

Marci Washington is a painter from here in the Bay Area (Oakland/SF), and I recently wrote a piece for the nice folks at Shotgun Review about her solo show “Dark Mirror.”  (read)