Chicken Fried Snobbery

Why am I carrying the load for Naoum up in this piece? I guess he slept through "Writing Chops" class in law school.

This is one of those "Defending the Deep South" posts I'll probably feel obligated to post now and again, as a former resident.

Living in Mississippi turns your off-site friends into reporters. I don't think I even need to give sample questions. One of the things I would tell them is that I lived near the biggest inland body of water in the state (the Miss. River does not count), the Ross Barnett Reservoir just north of Jackson. Barnett, if you'll reach back to Civil Rights History Class, tried to bar James Meredith from being the first black man to attend Ole Miss. The ugliest kind of civic demonstrations and violence blackened (there, I said it) the state under Barnett's approving gaze. "Oh wow!" my friends would say, and I could hear the Gears of Disapproving Thought hitting 6,000 RPM: 'Not a surprise that honor that old cracker son of a bitch.'

But hold up, Yankee boy! If you drive into very liberal Washington, D.C., from Chevy "Che!" Chase, MD, on Connecticut Avenue (a liberal state, for what that's worth), you will pass a Newlands Street, named after former Nevada senator Francis Newlands. Newlands, when founding the Chevy Chase community, explicitly barred blacks from owning homes in the area. I believe a search of local tax records in Montgomery County may show that some homes' ownership deeds may still contain these provisions.

If we had to strike the names of racists, pedophiles, homophobes, religious bigots and other assorted and classifiable jerkwads from the sight of young children who go out in public, President Obama would have to appoint a Secretary of Nomenclature. Let's keep it away from the guy who ginned up TARP.