Friday, March 09, 2012

Tone-deaf to the Song of the South:

Meanwhile, south of the Mason-Dixon, Mitt has gotten his patronizing on:
Campaigning in Pascagoula, Miss., Romney said he is turning into an "unofficial Southerner."

"I'm learning to say 'y'all' and I like grits. Strange things are happening to me," he said jokingly.
Wow. "Why won't you stupid, cousin-humping rednecks vote for me?" indeed.

Listen, you cretinous Yankee dimwit, I'm not sure how to break this to you, but My Cousin Vinnie was not a documentary. Having your speechwriters refer to it for thematic inspiration makes you look thicker than Rush's midsection.

I know that the term "carpetbagger" is just a generic political term to you, but you might want to research its etymological origins.

70 comments:

Chris said...

I doubt, given the evidence of his speechifying so far, that Mittens can identify with any regional or ethnic group other than "patrician".

Carteach said...

I can't say how strongly I agree with this posting.

Well said. The man makes my hackles raise, and pegs my BS alarm.

Borepatch said...

What's sad is that this is pure, unadulterated Mitt.

Jay G said...

...as in "Check your shoe, you stepped in some Mitt"

Bob said...

He's also supposed to have said that he was going to have his gardener add grits to the estate garden, and that he "knew a few plantation owners."

Stuart the Viking said...

This is what I heard:

"har har har, I eats your stupid crappy food because you are too stupid to eat better food. And I say stupid things like how you... I mean... Y'ALL say them. So now you gots to votes for me."

And I'm not REALLY all that southern.

s

Gewehr98 said...

He should've just asked for a Coke to warsh down those god-awful boiled peanuts. Just sayin', as a transplanted Damn Yankee who spent 10 years of his adult life in the Deepest South...

Stuart the Viking said...

Hey look everybody! I'm now a Canadian.... EH?

s

rickn8or said...

Hey Mitt. WE decide when you're a Southerner, not YOU.

"Damn Yankee" is one thing, "Patronizing Damn Yankee" is quite another.

Anonymous said...

Had a former coworker, born and raised in Detroit, who claimed that he was "practically a Southerner" because he'd married a Louisiana girl and had lived here for many years.

I corrected him as politely as I could...

Knitebane said...

We of the South may be unsophisticated by Boston standards but we aren't stupid. You'd think someone in the GOP would have figured out that patronizing us is likely to backfire.

The political season is the worst. I'm heartily tired of having some idiot pat me on the head and tell me that he just loves him some quaint redneck foods so I should vote for him. Nicely put, Tam.

Another politician Keel-hauled.

Stretch said...

We'd feel a whole lot better if Mittens would stay north of the Potomac River. I'm sure he'd feel better keeping east of the Hudson.

Anonymous said...

What happens when a Southern politician shows up in Boston eating a lobster and saying "wicked" instead of y'all?

What happens when a Southern politicians shows up in Chicago saying how much he enjoys Chicago-style pizza?

What happens when the wife of the Gov. of Arkansas shows up in Northern Indiana with a shot and a beer? Why did no one run around with his hair on fire about such an insult?

It was a stupid, awkward attempt at a joke. What's the big deal?

Shootin' Buddy

Moogie P said...

It's kinda reminiscent of Ms. Hillary affecting "the accent" when speaking at a black Georgia church a few years back. Fingernails on the blackboard.

Anonymous said...

Ranks right up there with Hillary doing a shot of Crown at some auto worker's bar in New Castle. But seriously, folks:

Mitt:

Go home. Nobody likes you – dude, most of the people in your own party don’t like you and they’re supposed to be your supporters. There’s not enough money in the world to buy enough votes to make you President, not to mention that if you blow the family wad your own kids will put out a contract on your ass. Do something else that you might actually enjoy. Go buy a private island. Buy a private jet. Buy a Ferrari. Hire some hookers and hoover up a ton of Bolivian marching powder. Face it, you’ve been running for Pres full time since 2006 and people think you suck; they think you’re a rich Wall Street prick who lies like a rug and the longer you run the more people think you suck. Give it up and go do something else (constructive or not). Let somebody who is neither a total sleaze or a 10th century religious nut clean up the mess in 2016.

Stuart the Viking said...

We "southerners"* have always had to fight the stereotype of being ignorant, with this Mitt stepped right square in it. It wouldn't be like going to Chicago and saying "I love Chicago Pizza", it would be more like going to the inner city and saying "I am one of you because I loves me some fried chicken and some watermellon".

s

*Yes, I include myself as a southerner, I am from Kentucky. According to my Great Aunt Ruth, who was a REAL southern lady (Florida Cracker) Kentucky counts as southern... barely.

Bram said...

Weev come too farrr to everrr forgit!

Tam said...

Shootin' Buddy,

"What happens when the wife of the Gov. of Arkansas shows up in Northern Indiana with a shot and a beer? "

If I remember correctly, we mocked her pretty ruthlessly, too.

Tam said...

Exactly what Stuart the Viking said.

"It's so good to be here in Little Italy today! I feel like eating some pasta and making you people an offer you can't refuse if you vote for me!"

Hyuk, hyuk.

Sport Pilot said...

I guess it must be easy to cross the Mason-Dixon line, enter the South, visit with folks, say ya'll and think that's it.

Anonymous said...

When last I was in damnyankeeland, I was most intrigued by their strange accents and their love of somethg that looks like a middle school Biology I project (lobster).

We in Texas realize that "y'all" equals "Youse guys". There are much worse things to that political animals have said.

Lighten up, Tam.

MAJ Mike

PS: Is it okay to tell a heavily-armed woman that you think she's hot? Saw your portrait shots over at Oleg Volk's. Wowzers!!

karrde said...

@docjim,

I've met a few people living in the city of Taylor (in Detroit-Metro-Area) who had the born-down-South accent.

I don't know if they qualify as Southern.

Anonymous said...

Judge Napolitano was right on FOX, it doesn't make any difference. Mittens = Obama. Where's the 1980s Phil Crane when we need him?

Anonymous said...

OK, so the wife of the Gov. of Arkansas got mocked for drinking a shot and a beer. Did anyone from Indiana get the vapors and pass out from Hillary doing that?

Why do Southerners always get the vapors, I say, I say, when some knucklehead politician makes an awkward joke or attempt at said joke, and no Yankees are offended by Hillary's ham-fisted attempt to "be one of them"?

Shootin' Buddy

Tam said...

Shootin' Buddy,

If you see anybody get the vapors and pass out, you let me know.

I'm just making fun of some pandering tone-deaf country club Republican trying to be Bubba here. Dumb hicks fall for that stuff every time.

I'll make fun of him if he comes to Indianapolis and tries to tell me his favoritest movie ever is Hoosiers, too.

Anonymous said...

Obviously some deep-seated cultural wound. I blame Dukasis and his straw bales.

Shootin' Buddy

Anonymous said...

"I'll make fun of him if he comes to Indianapolis and tries to tell me his favoritest movie ever is Hoosiers, too"

That is because Breaking Away is a far superior film.

Shootin' Buddy

Stuart the Viking said...

MAJ Mike,

Yes, Tam is a very nice looking lady, and as such, saying she is "HOT" is crude and says a lot about your upbringing.

Sorry, this whole "Southerner" thing gets me in a mood.

s

Keith said...

I was under the impression that "making us an offer we can't refuse" was the core platform of the Mittens campaign.

"Nice second ammendment you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it."

azmountaintroll said...

Really, Mitt? Well bless your heart.

Ken said...

Yeah. As I said over at Borepatch's place, the problem with the National Lampoon Candidate -- "Vote for Mittens or the Republic Gets It" -- is that if Mittens is the best choice on offer, maybe the Republic deserves it.

rickn8or said...

"Another politician Keel-hauled."

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I like it.

Jake (formerly Riposte3) said...

"Obviously some deep-seated cultural wound."

It probably has more to do with the carpetbaggers. Like Tam suggested, you may want to actually look it up. There's a reason it's considered an insult in the South, and a reason the kind of behaviour Mitt behaved in still hits all sorts of nerves with Southerners today. Those reasons don't apply in Chicago or Arkansas, even if the events you pointed out were insulting and ridicule-worthy.

Keith said...

batman voice

He's not the candidate we need right now but the candidate we deserve.

/batman voice

Anonymous said...

Most of political campaigning these days is just another Performance Art Theater of the Absurd, and has little or nothing to do with the actual qualifications for the office.

But a guy whose superhero power is the ability to rub everyone the wrong way, piss people off even when he's trying to make friendly-like, and send off powerful pathological liar vibes even when he's telling the truth... probably not a good choice for President.

I can just see, the end of his first week in office, and we're at war with Canada, NATO, and the Cub Scouts, just because he tried out his humor on them.

Alath
Carmel IN

kishnevi said...

Knitebane, there's plenty of places in Boston that are, if anything, less sophisticated than most places in the South. And more racist, too. South Boston was rioting over school integration long after the South had faces the issue. It's only certain pockets that are "patrician"--around Harvard and the other schools, and those neighborhoods where they still remember the days when "the Cabots speak only to Lodges and the Lodges speak only God".

And I don't know of any other major city in the US that has ever elected someone mayor while he was sitting in jail (Curley).

And of course New England has the world's tastiest trafe food items (Maine lobster and New England clam chowder).

I'm speaking here as a person who was born in Boston but moved to South Florida when I was a kid, picked up on grits and y'all from the Cracker neighbors, went to college and law school in parts of the "Real South", and returned to live in South Florida ever since. Don't think Aunt Ruth would accept me as a Southerner, however. After all these years I still have a Boston accent lurking at the bottom of my speech.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Dude, wait until he has to Campaign in SoCal, fur shure. Betcha he's gonna love eating some Burritos!

God, what a Maroon.

Jay G said...

I want to see Valley Mitt campaigning in Encino... Like, OMIGOD!

Stuart the Viking said...

Good thing he doesn't have to campaign in Germany. He might admit to being a jelly doughnut.

s

Anonymous said...

"Where kin I git me a huntin' license?"

Jean-Francois Kerry
2004

DaddyBear said...

JayG, I heard that in your voice when I read your comment. Please don't ever do that again. There isn't enough bourbon in Kentucky to cover that image up.

I've lived in the South off and on for about 1/3 of my life. I do not now, nor will I ever, claim to be a Southerner. My kids, maybe, will be able to say that, but not me. I'm a Damyankee, and will be until the day they spread my ashes over my frozen tundra homeland.

Romney should stop trying to be one of the little people and own his own background and personality. Might get a little respect for the effort.

Brad K. said...

What if an evil little demon could insert the words, ". . and reconstruction of the South will be my biggest commitment!" I mean, would the gentleman, from the state that perpetually re-elected that bridge diver to the Senate, even recognize the phrase?

Anonymous said...

Alath - Most of political campaigning these days is just another Performance Art Theater of the Absurd, and has little or nothing to do with the actual qualifications for the office.

Very true. Kind of a sad commentary on the majority of voters when a candidate is less focused on "how do I demonstrate that I'm qualified?" and more on "how do I convince these rubes that I'm one of them?"

Larry said...

You can take the girl out of the South...

I have lived most of my life in Southern states, but I am reliably informed that just makes me a "damnyankee" (the kind that moves down south and never goes back home).

Telling them I was raised in southern Iowa doesn't seem to help much...

Scott said...

Parts of my family have lived in Mississippi since shortly after the end of The War of 1812. I grew up being embarrassed of being from Mississippi, until I visited other parts of this Country. There are stupid people everywhere from CA to NH and MN to FL. Sometimes I would like to tar and feather Mitt, but I would prefer that it be saved for the incumbent and his crew of nitwits after they are thrown out of office.

Anonymous said...

Well hell fire, your Jesus and my Jesus are kin!

Gerry

Anonymous said...

Mittens can do and say what he wants but everyone here already understands that he's a patronizing liberal blue blooded yankee son of a bitch.

Gmac

Cincinnatus said...

It makes me miss George W.

Old NFO said...

Well said, and yeah, he's a carpetbagger... sigh

CarlS said...

I was born and raised on the very southern edge of 'Bama, accidentally started a fight ( nowadays called a "riot") one morning at high school and we had armed George Wallace state troopers patrolling our halls that day and the next, visited a few other southern states before moving to Europe, and returned 2 decades later by way of Virginny then Chicago. I'm now holed up in the hills of Tennessee.

With all that "foreign exposure", I still don't see any culture that's better than what I was learned in Dixie. Just different . . .

Funny thing is, in Europe, they heard what they thought was a Kalifornia accent. In Boston,they heard German. When I first got to Tennessee, some folks said "Yankee". Usually the transplants. But every time I head back to the beach, it's "welcome home; where y'all been?"

Point being, Southern is an attitude, a way of life. There's assimilated Southrens, and native-born. Usually, it takes one to know one.

Now them damn carpetbaggers ain't larned nothing since the War . . . .

Anonymous said...

How is Romney a carpetbagger? He's never lived in the South. He was born in Michigan, worked in New York City and became the Gov. of Massachusetts.

He was in the South, he made a goofy, awkward attempt at humor (like your dad would make) and people are running around like he spit on a Bear Bryant or took a leak on a Bobby Lee statue.

If being Southern is some distinctive culture, then surely the South can laugh such a lame joke off.

Shootin' Buddy

Sigman said...

Its like Boyd told the carpetbagger, "Partners means we do all the work and you make all the money." Mitt needs to STFU or stay out of the south. Every time he opens his mouth he comes across as an elitist snob.

We've already had 3 years of our "betters" trying to tell us how to behave. Don't need 4 more from "The One" or Mittens

Jerry said...

As a Southerner, I must admit that I do not like grits. Love me some biscuits and gravy, but...Grits? Must be ab ET thang.

Midwest Chick said...

I just saw the video with the 'cheesy grits' comment. Wish someone would just punch him in the head. Carpetbagger indeed and so terribly patronizing.....

ShrimpBoat Reb said...

"you will never, ever hear a b&b Southerner refer to the singular as "ya'll""

Say what? Y'all sure 'bout that?

Sometimes we ain't sure how many of you there is. And it's jest polite to include everone.

Drang said...

*whistles "Marching Through Georgia*

Tam said...

Drang,

*raises eyebrow*

Got any good ditties about Dresden or Nanking?

The Freeholder said...

DmMitt can say nothing to sway me--heck, he could stand for the playing of Dixie for all I care. I'm still voting for the funny-lloking fellow from Texas.

Anonymous said...

Divemedic - As a southerner, I will tell you why it strikes a nerve. We have to endure tons of people coming here from the north, telling us how much better they do it (no matter what 'it' turns out to be) "up north," we have to endure endless inbreeding jokes, jokes about "yallin' good ole boys," jokes about dumb rednecks, food jokes (chitlin's, grits, and other comments) and all of the stereotyping that goes along with it.
I'm sick of how "redneck" or southern has become the politically correct substitute for the "n" word.

I have news for you, we are not uneducated hicks and inbred hillbillies down here, and after awhile we get tired of hearing about it. After years of hearing about how much better it is "up north," my answer has become: "So go back."


Hear him! Hear him!

LabRat said...

What exactly is so mysterious and arcane an image as "Northern politician, usually a Republican, comes down to a region with an eye toward remaking them in his own lights, condescends lamely to the locals"? "Carpetbagger" doesn't just mean a distant politician moving in to exploit a new locality, it had a very specific original context.

Then again "if you don't respond to my haw-haw jabs in the ribs with hilarity there must be something wrong with you" isn't new either...

Gewehr98 said...

Hey Mitt. WE decide when you're a Southerner, not YOU.

"Damn Yankee" is one thing, "Patronizing Damn Yankee" is quite another.


I suffered through much of the above when doing my USAF time south of the Mason-Dixon line.

I never went out of my way to appear like the proverbial carpetbagger, and made many lifelong friends while there. I did however remind a few of the more vociferous that we're all AMERICANS, members of that big melting pot we all watched on Schoolhouse Rock.

I agree that Mitt's joke stank and his jokewriter should be fired. In the meantime, to quote my good Georgia Bulldog friends who still use Damn Yankee as my first name after we moved to the snow belt, "Y'all get over your damned selves!"

They taught me early on about the "Bless your hearts!" underhanded non-compliment. For that I am eternally grateful. ;-)

Anonymous said...

"what's a Bear Bryant?"

Paul William Bryant, aka "Bear Bryant", was a Southern football coach, specifically Alabama. A Bear Bryant statue stands in Tuscaloosa and Mitt Romney did not spit on it. You can google the statue if you wish to see photos.

Do you wish me to learn you about who Bobby Lee was as well?

Shootin' Buddy

Anonymous said...

"No thanks"

Well, at least I taught you about Bear Bryant.

"while you're looking up "carpetbaggers"

I looked it up, it says something about whiny, oversensitive types complaining about people with funny accents making stupid jokes.

Shootin' Buddy

Beaumont said...

Those born north of the M-D line fall into four caregories. From best to worst, they are: Northeners, Yankees, Damnyankees, and Hemorrhoids.

Apparently the sole reason Shootin' Buddy avoids inclusion in the final class is the fact that he remains on northern side of the Ohio River.

pygmy rattler said...

Our ancestors didn't vote for Abraham Lincoln. We ain't voting for Barack Obama, and we ain't voting for Mitt Romney.
I'm so sick of this campaign that I wish we consider seceding AGAIN!

Justthisguy said...

My Dad's family has lived in GA since 1830 or so, when they came there from South Carolina. My Mom's family are from Mississippi, and provided all of the Marines in the family.

The proudest boast I can make about my family is that all four of my great-grandfathers served honorably against the United States of America in the Lincoln War. One of them lost an eyeball at Chancellorsville.

Fuck Mittens. I may do as I have done many times in the past, that is, turn in a mostly-blank ballot.

Anonymous said...

"How is Romney a carpetbagger? He's never lived in the South. He was born in Michigan, worked in New York City and became the Gov. of Massachusetts."


"In modern usage in the U.S., the term is sometimes used derisively to refer to a politician who runs for public office in an area where he or she does not have deep community ties, or has lived only for a short time. See also: Bob
Kerry."

We have been getting a lot of this: local guys going to NYC, DC, making a fortune and coming back to run for office..... so they can move back to the East Coast "to represent us" .... Carpet baggers.

Tam said...

I'm still trying to figure out why a Southerner would get mad about somebody pissing on a statue of Bear Bryant. Would a Yankee get butthurt if someone were to spit on a statue of, oh, Joe Paterno?

Tell some watermelon jokes about black people next, SB; it'd make you sound less tone-deaf, bigoted, and provincial.

the pawnbroker said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tam said...

...and I think that this thread has well run its course.