Readers respond to Seeing Red:

Mon, 24 Jan 2005

Ms McArdle,

Thank you so much for your wonderful article on Louisiana & it trending "red." You saw a conservative culture not something that ridicule & lampoon, but you really tried to understand them & above all: to respect them. I am a pretty conservative guy, and having lived in Boston & London, I have been turned off by the moral & intellectual arrogance of progressives. They detest the moral narrow-ness of conservatism, yet I find progressives just as narrow, just as intolerant; worse, they think anybody that disagrees with them is stupid & beneath them. I'm from a school of thought where respect for others & being able to agree to disagree are among the highest virtues; where in the marketplace of ideas, the best one wins out as you have respectful discussion of ideas. There are reasons why I believe the things I do: good ones; progressives don't own the truth: funny how they have morphed into what they hate.

Once again, thank you.

Luis
Miami

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

Ms. McArdle,

I enjoyed your article Seeing Red. I am originally from Maine and my husband is originally from Georgia. He is in the military and we have spent the last 12 years transferring back and forth between Virginia and North Carolina and traveling to Maine a few times a year. Your article touched on so many experiences and conversations we have had with family and friends about their perception of the north and south.

I e-mailed your article to several friends in North Carolina and know they will enjoy it as much as I did.

Kim

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Sun, 06 Feb 2005

Your article provided a lot of food for thought.

I'm from the Deep South myself. There are some very nice individuals in the South, by some miracle. However, I found the culture as a whole to be not only misguided and ill-informed, but mean and hurtful. No amount of smiles and waves and hugs can make up for the systematic cruelty shown towards anyone perceived as an outsider. That's why I'm now living on the opposite corner of the continent!

My own family opposed the war, so they did not vote for Bush. Instead, they found a candidate worse than Bush: Joseph Peroutka.

Your article does underscore the need to choose a presidential candidate for Folks Appeal. I wonder if the outcome would have been different if the Democrats had run Edwards for President, and Kerry for VP.

Name Withheld By Request

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Tue, 25 Jan 2005

Enjoyed your piece in last Sunday's Globe. My question is, wouldn't you say the southerners so enamored with George Bush are so more from a personality standpoint as opposed to tangible policies espoused by the right-wing of the Republican party?

It has been said that Bush hoodwinked the red staters in voting against their very interests under the guise of his "aw shucks" appeal. Meanwhile, the deficit bleeds red, common sense policies are co-hijacked by the Christian right and American soldiers remain in Iraq -- in danger and unwanted.

These people have been co-opted by the 'us. vs them' mindset cultivated by Karl Rove. They devour Fox News and all things thereunder, never stopping to consider the very labels they throw around, i.e. "Massachusetts liberal," etc. I am from California, so they would probably consider me a fruit, nut or flake of the highest variety. I, like most people, prefer to frame my thinking beyond such gross, tired and non-imaginative stereotypes.


Regards,

G. Pitzer

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

Very good article, Elaine!

For 15 years my mother called me her “Yankee child.” With my family here, in Shreveport, I had chosen Massachusetts and New Hampshire as home. It was my way of erasing the lines of bigotry that made no sense to me. I returned here to Shreveport 15 years ago to marry and stayed after the divorce…

My perspectives are labeled as “liberal” – supporting the right to choose both who you marry and what you do with your body… yet, I support gun ownership. Due to having “grown up” here with a memory of entry ways into restaurants marked “white”/”colored”; as well as being told that only baptized Catholics could go to Heaven… the bias I saw was truly a gift. It handed my reality back to me to do with as I choose.

Thank you for your clear perception and respectful representation of “the South”.

And I do love Boston! I miss making snow angels…

Mary Catherine Rollo

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Ms. McArdle,

Your piece was very interesting on many levels. However, in contrast to your views, I do not find Boston, the Northeast, nor the West Coast very tolerant at all of conservative political views. The word that more accurately describes the political attitudes of folks inhabiting the aforementioned areas is "insufferable". Now, I wouldn't do without the political left anywhere in the country for anything....maybe just raise the level of discourse to (passionate) discussions of ideas, rather than castigation of intelligence, religious belief, and/or racial interactions.

Chuck Butterick
Justin, TX

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Elaine:

Great article. You throw around the standard poverty statistics but: the Boston area is one of the most unaffordable in the country. They have more real poverty there than in Louisiana. If Massachusetts was such a great place why was it the only state in the union to lose population last year? Unions, land restrictions and the mob make it a horrible place. It's not what's wrong with Louisiana it's what's wrong with Massachusetts. And I'm from the mid-west.

BEST
Alec

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

I truly enjoyed your piece on Red State Louisiana. I believe a slightly more prosperous state such as Georgia would give you an even better understanding of the dramatic influence of Southern Culture. It is infectious even to those who moved here a long time ago from the north or even Cananda. The second generation of what we call snow birds or damn yankees are some of the most conservative of all of us.

Best Regards
Lance McMurray
Suwanee GA

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Exceptional!

John Rieman

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Thank you for writing "Seeing Red" in today's Globe magazine. I moved here two years ago from the South, and this election has been frustrating for me. (I didn't even vote, an admission I've made to few people. I consider myself a liberal but couldn't bring myself to support either candidate for some of the reasons you mention in your story.) Also, I've been troubled by the negative, and often ignorant, attention the Southern red states have received. I, too, have wondered how an open-minded city like Boston could be so close-minded.

I'm a freelance writer also, although I'm just starting my career (finished grad journalism program at BU this month). So, my final thought on your story, and what I consider the best compliment -- I wish I had written it.

Thanks again,

Jennifer Justus

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Interesting article. And very well written. The people you interviewed sound really nice, and there is no irony in that statement. They sound a bit like the people in my family.

Unfortunately, your article only served to accentuate my incomprehension of those who voted for Bush. Though I would have preferred Dennis Kucinich to Kerry, Bush never even made the short list.

I have never thought of Bush voters as uncultivated or uneducated. In fact, they are proof that even the most well-educated, cultivated person can make some pretty foolish decisions. The explanations of the people you interviewed, who voted for Bush, just leave me open-mouthed with amazement. Voting for someone because he seems like someone I could drink a beer with seems to me a foolish way to choose the President. Choosing a someone whose decisions you don't really like because he's a known quantity seems wrong headed. And deciding that a candidate who sees the world in terms of black and white and acts accordingly is better than one who acknowledges the complex degree of shading in most political decisions seems to me downright bass-ackwards.

I too would love a place where everyone is more friendly, but if I have to choose between warm fuzzies and clear-eyed analysis, I know where I come down. The impression I get from reading your article is that some Bush voters would vote for someone like the fictional murderer in a novel I once read: he was "just folks", always polite and nice to everyone--just before he drove the knife into their ribs. No one would ever believe that "such a nice man" could do such things.

Lisa Spencer
Lille, France
Formerly of Pembroke, MA

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Hello. I very much enjoyed your article. I picked it up off www.realclearpolitics.com, which picked it up from the Boston Globe.

I can relate. I am 55 years old, and live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I lived in Bossier City for 5 years, 1973 - 1978, and graduated from LSU-S in 1978. My wife is from Texarkana, TX, but I am a 'Yankee' from Michigan... We met in 1972 at the Texarkana Kmart, married in 1973, and were transferred to Bossier to help open the Kmart store there. I quit Kmart in 1974 to go back to college.

I agree with your assessment on race relations, southern society, and the unfortunate status of Louisiana politics & it's economy. I was very active in the fledgling Louisiana Republican party back in those days, and we elected the first republican since reconstruction days; But it was not any political philosophy that we pursued so much, as simply getting an 'honest' government in place. My wife & I go back every year, and things do seem to get better, but the economy ...

We love the people. Friendly. Open. And a sense of 'peaceful at ease'. I have a son that is a Freshman at LSU-S, and I encouraged him to go there simply to experience that part of Southern Culture. He misses his friends in Michigan, but he is back for the second semester, and doing well. We'll see if he goes back for his Sophomore year.

Red vs. Blue? I am a conservative Republican, local elected official type, that has a lot in common with 'the average person' (laid off, house mortgage, etc.). I simply don't see the 'great divide' of issues between Republicans & Democrats; But I do see the shrill voices, demonizing of people, exaggeration of positions, and unwillingness to dialogue & compromise. We must change that.

Up the road from Shreveport, to Cass, Texas (by Atlanta) lives my wife's 83 year old Aunt; She's very active & clear minded, and has been an active Southern Democrat all her life. But the Democratic party of here allegiance is not the Democratic party in place today; Invariably, when we talk politics, she refers to the party of FDR, and Truman - GREAT leaders. She just refuses to give up on the idea that those kind of leaders are still out there, and will someday come back. I hope she's right.

Again, thank you.

Jim LaPeer
Grand Rapids, MI

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Great article!

Claude Lancome
(Kerry voter who thinks it's dangerous to dismiss Bush voters as stupid.)

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

Hello,

I just finished reading your Globe Magazine article, "Seeing Red." As a native Bostonian (I just returned in August) who lived for 15 years in Texas and worked for 4 in Louisiana, a state I too love, I read with great interest. I am living here temporarily to take care of elderly parents and will return to my home in Texas when my responsibilities end, so I am quite rooted in the South.

I must disagree with the essential points of your article. Absolutely nothing you wrote indicates any willingness on the part of "Red
Staters" to try to understand the concerns of "Blue State" residents. The reasons given by the folks you interviewed about supporting Bush ("otherness") illustrate what I believe to be an essential problem in the South. The South has always been a closed place, closed to innovation, closed to granting rights to those it sees as "other," like blacks and gays, closed to social progress. Let's not forget that
Louisiana, until recently, had a member of the Klan in its legislature and that the South had to be coerced by federal courts to provide
equal rights to black people. As you can imagine, living in Texas and working in Louisiana (and Oklahoma), I know a lot of Republicans (I am an Independent and voted for Republicans quite a bit until 2000). No one attempted to try to understand my dissenting political views. On the contrary, my views were dismissed, ridiculed and suppressed as being "liberal" or "Unchristian." So much for open mindedness or tolerance.

Blacks and whites do not mingle as easily in Texas and Louisiana as you state in your article. Try visiting a Mardi Gras celebration in
southwest Louisiana. Blacks and whites have completely separate celebrations in parishes such as Lafayette, Opelousas, and Calcasieu. During Mardi Gras parades in Church Point and Eunice I have watched white people in black face mimicking what they consider to be simian-like behavior of black people. Blacks and whites do not live together nor socialize in general, though they may work together. Having worked in small Louisiana communities, I regularly heard the white teachers with whom I worked utter the most prejudiced generalities about black people. As a Catholic, I was told on numerous occasions while working in the Bible Belt parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana to not mention the fact that I am Catholic. Southern Evangelicals do not operate on the belief that all religions are equal or that people of the "Book" are equally worthy in the eyes of God. Southern Evangelicals, and there are a lot of them, believe that if you are not one of them you must be "saved." The religious intolerance of the South is rooted in this very culture of exclusion.
.
If public assistance laws, state spending on social welfare and education, and political rhetoric are any indicator of people's
values--and I believe they are--the poor in Louisiana and Texas (mostly people of color) are regarded as less worthy and somehow morally deficient. Both Texas and Louisiana execute mentally retarded prisoners. Both have prison populations that are overwhelmingly black. Both balk on spending money to help poor people with housing or education needs. Their poorest citizens in both states are black (and Hispanic in the case of Texas). They too are "other." Somehow in these very religious parts of the country, the Old Testament God of punishment trumps the New Testament's Son's message of compassion to the less fortunate.

The South is Republican because Democrats did the unforgivable---they forced civil rights for black people on a region that for 100 years after the Civil War maintained and institutionalized an apartheid system. "Big government" is code for programs that help poor or black people. Southerners fled the Democratic party because it stopped being the party of exclusion and started to be the party of inclusion of "others"----black people, immigrants, gay people. Republicans triumph, in large part, because they promote "Southern values," some of which are based on exclusion.

Finally, there are gay people. Intolerance of gay people is not only common, it is codified in places like Louisiana and Texas. Texas,
until their law was struck down by the US Supreme Court, made consenting adult sexual same-sex relationships illegal. In Texas you
can be fired from a state job for being gay. You can be evicted from your home for being gay. The Texas Legislature in 2003 introduced as one of its first pieces of legislation a bill that would remove all children from single-parent homes (targeted at gay foster parents
since gay people cannot get married and technically all parents in same-sex relationships are single parents). Talk, as I have, to gay
teens in small town Texas and Louisiana. They feel isolated, oppressed, and in some cases fear for their lives.

Yes, Southerners are friendly (though the friendliness is superficial and is matched by a strong resentment of non-Southerners). But you mistake friendliness for tolerance and open-mindedness. Sure, I love to say "Howdy" in the grocery store too but on far more fundamental issues of openness toward and protection of gay people and New England's long history of social progressivism toward immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities, I think Louisiana might want to try to understand us.

Thanks,
Mary Burns
Brighton, MA

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

What a great article. My wife is from Monroe LA in the Northeast part of the state. We have made many trips back to the South in our 15 year marriage. I wish people in Massachusetts would not be so provincial-it is a big country out there. The world does not stop at Route 128.

My wife works as an attorney representing children so she has a unique perch from which to observe the system. She will always be from the South, but she chooses like you to live here.

I can't wait to show her your writing.

Sincerely,

Jim Blodgett

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

What an insightful piece of journalism. Maybe, just maybe, the folks in Mass. will see from your article that the South isn't full of ignorant rednecks. What famous New York woman couldn't understand how Nixon got elected since she didn't know anyone (in her circle, that is) who had voted for him. How provincial, indeed! I have watched, with interest, Vitter's rise in Louisiana politics because his wife was a bridesmaid in my son's wedding in Houston twenty years ago. Hope he's in Washington for a long time.

Sallie Watts

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Mon, 24 Jan 2005

Ms. McArdle,

I admit, I saw red after reading your article. A born and bred New Englander who spent a year of her childhood in North Carolina and returned for a year in her adulthood was eager to try to, as you put it, "understand the South, a beautiful part of our country." I would like to share what an eye-opening experience that was for me.

The day we moved into our new apartment in Greenville, NC, we went out to eat at a local restaurant. During a friendly conversation with the waitress, I mentioned that we moved from Masschusetts.

"Oh, my momma was a Pepperell yankee," was the waitress' thoughtless reply.

Articles in the local paper the day we moved in covered a wide range of topics from legal rights to use the Confederate flag as a symbol of the DAC (unconstituational though it is) to editorials on why don't yankees leave if they don't like the south.

The first week I found work in a local children's store. The manager was an intolerable bigot, sneering at well-dressed black women who came in and whispering that "they" were cheap and wouldn't buy anything. When I sold one of these lovely women $200 in children's furniture, the manager took credit for the sale and gave me no hours the following week, in effect letting me go.

During my search for a second job, I was discriminated against for having a Bachelor's degree because the employers assumed I would leave them for graduate school (which I had no plans or even funds to consider back then.)

Two weeks later, I started working at a dollar store where I came face to face with many examples of "Southern Hospitality." (by this I mean white southerners, for most black people I met were kind, although mostly self-segregated from whites.) I saw store clerks smile sweetly until customers or co-workers left the area. A guy who worked next door was friendly to all of us and was so friendly he shared a joke with me, thinking I would laugh.

"What's the difference between a yankee and a damn yankee?" he asked me.
"I have no idea." I replied quietly.
"A yankee comes to visit; a damn yankee comes to stay." He smiled.
"Well, I can't wait to get my little feet out of here." I replied with a smile.

He didn't come back in the store to chat after that. It is difficult for New Englanders to mesh into more clannish areas for the south because we believe in making plans to get together. Southern hospitality is dropping by unannounced. Our so-called friends would not schedule time with us. I could knock on the neighbor's door and get a friendly welcome, yes, but she could not tell me if Saturday night would be good to get together. The veneer was sweet, but there was a distance placed between us even though we tried to "fit in." One friend, a transient from New England, said he didn't feel accepted until he'd lived there five or ten years. How sad is that? I make a point to speak to new neighbors or even visitors to our state, offer advice on good tourist sites, make friendly conversation in store lines. No one did that with me down South unless I instigated it.

My friends down south were not "Southern." They were transients from the northern states, also Brazil and Central America. I knew a few young, well-educated southern women white and black, but the black women were more friendly and the white ones more confused by me. The more well-educated and open-minded people became friends. I had no respect for southerners who mailingered anyone of Hispanic or latino heritage, lumping them all into some "migrant worker" category. Several of them were medical school scientists and avid churchgoers and all were positive contributors to the community.

I am a Christian who does not believe in legislating Christian beliefs to those who do not believe. Kerry had it right. I also believe divorce would have a greater impact on the sanctity of my marriage than a gay couple tying the knot. I fail completely to understand how these Christian people can honestly say they want a man who lied to us to go to war to stay and finish it. When will they realize he won't finish it? Bush has sold our country into debt to others to foster a stagnating war which has no real hope of fair elections or anything beyond a farcical perpetuation of American ideals imposed upon another people, the majority of whom detest American ideals. I cannot wait to see how many of them vote Democrat in 2008 out of desperation to make up for the tragic mistake they made last November.

I appreciate the quality of your writing although I do not agree. Thank you for making me think.

Sincerely,
Lynda Vernalia

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Fri, 4 Feb 2005

Thanks for writing a super article about your home state. I missed it due to the snow storm, but thanks to grub street rag, read it this morning. I'm from Iowa - and like you, have been frustrated by my New York and Boston friends who assume everyone there is a born again dummy. I hate to think of all those folks who voted for Bush - but I also know they are not ignorant fools. And you are so right to say that there seems little interest in understanding what the true needs are of those who, in spite of Bush's lies, felt they couldn't vote for Kerry. Every time I suggest we get out of our own shoes and try to understand our country from another perspective - I get blank stares back. Thanks for making the case so well!

Janet Banks

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Sun, 23 Jan 2005

excellent,

thanks

jules