Maryland Seceding From The South
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I support this 10000%.
Though Marylanders live just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, their attitudes and even their accents straddle that border. These days, leaders feel they’ve got more in common with states to the north.
In one sign of the shift, lawmakers successfully petitioned to move from the Southern Region of the Council of State Governments to the Eastern Region, where they’ll be able to trade ideas with fellow officials from Pennsylvania, New York, and other states they consider more like-minded.
‘I just don’t think we’re as Southern as people used to think,’ said state Sen. Catherine Pugh, a Baltimore Democrat.
Maryland is not even remotely a southern state anymore.
15 Responses to “Maryland Seceding From The South”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Not as a whole is it Southern, but I’ve been to bars in Cumberland where, for example, the people there refer to football players by using a very unfortunate word. (Gee, I wonder how those bar patrons vote? Maybe we should ask Bobo.) And dude, St. Mary’s county. Overall you are correct, but we still have work to do. Keep on keepin’ on!
Oliver, when I lived in DC in the early ’80s, I had a housemate from Waldorf. Very nice guy, but I remember him telling us how better off South Africa was before Mandella came to office. Granted, this was a while back, but still…
Of course, I guess that didn’t necessarily make him a ‘Southerner.’
I will concede that southern Maryland does not cover itself in glory. But frankly most of us Marylanders are clustered around DC and Baltimore.
And western Maryland (i.e., Cumberland). Maryland’s kinda the opposite of Pennsylvania in that sense: Blue down the middle sandwiched between Marl-tucky.
If we chip away at their empire around the edges, perhaps some day the South will be something better than a dragging sea-anchor.
Perhaps we already are.
Generally, cities are bluer and outlying areas redder. When I’m on the road I can tell the color of loyalty by the music stations available on the car radio. When the urban music (pop, R&B, rap, rock, jazz, classical, metal…) fades to country and western and gospel I know I’m entering Glennbeckistan.
From what I’ve heard from relatives and friends, Fredrick Co. may have to be added to that particular list.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that when you’re in a bar where the patrons refer to football players with a very bad word with a very bad history, you know you’re in the middle of DumbFuckistan. Thanks Rush et al!
People should keep in mind that the Mason-Dixon line was not the boundary of slavery. Ohio was a free state, largely below the line, and Delaware was a slave state, above and to the east of the line. Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco is below the line and Idaho’s small but virulent neo-Nazi and white nationalist communities didn’t choose Arkansas as their home.
That said, I whole-heartedly endorse this change. We in MD have much more in common with New Jersey – high-tech, urbanized, transit-dependent, socially liberal, high income, situated across two big metro areas – than we do with Virginia or North Carolina. In terms of ethnic and religious diversity, Maryland is quite similar to New Jersey, especially if you count in the entirety of both states.
Rule of thumb: if a bagel with lox is easier to find than grits, and in Baltimore it is, you ain’t in Dixie. If it’s easier to find Little Italy than a Confederate war memorial, you ain’t in Dixie. Peace be with peaceful Southerners; please visit Maryland sometime for a rather different experience.
When I lived in Savannah I found the city’s “hood” and its white bred communities to be relatively small – the rest of the city was more integrated than cities I knew up north and out west.
But the local country-bred city-immigrant hicks (who regularly used that “very bad word”) were some of the dumbest people I’ve ever seen. I witnessed a redneck at a gas station with an massively overloaded pickup truck full of roofing shingles pumping up his tires (to get the truck to quit scraping bottom, I suppose) to where the tire exploded in his face. A redneck “manager” at my apartment complex put his foot through my ceiling, twice, trying to fix the air conditioning in the attic. Sexual harrassment at work from male hicks was as common as their racial prejudice. All big guys are called as “Bubba” regardless of their real name. And so on… Par for the course.
From what I’ve seen, “Real Americans” are fucking idiots.
“The 100% American is 99% an idiot” – George Bernard Shaw
I miss Maryland-style crabs.
Timmy, just so I have it straight – were you smarter than everyone in Savannah, everyone in Georgia, or everyone south of the Mason – Dixon line? I’m surprised they didn’t mistake you for a smart ass Yankee and lynch your ass.