TONY GOES TO WEST VIRGINIA


to condescend. a lot.

You will remember, I'm sure, that in the wake of the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette declared anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton an idiot and quite possibly a racist. At the time, I was certain that I spied -- among other, equally heavy hands -- the ham fists and unctuous words of PG columnist and editorial board member Tony Norman. So you will imagine my lack of surprise when, on the eve of the West Virginia Primary, I opened up the PG and saw even more proof of my theorem:

With the presumptive Democratic nominee running 30 points behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in West Virginia, the sound we're most likely to hear when the polls close in Appalachia tonight is the Confederate rebel yell boiling up from the swamps of time.

We'll set aside, for now, the questions of when swamps boil, how a yell boils, and what a boiling yell sounds like. And we'll even ignore that Appalachia -- which is hardly synonymous with West Virginia, since the region extends from Georgia to New York state and the Appalachian mountains stretch from Georgia through New England all the way to Canada -- is almost certainly a code-word for Land of the White Trash Hillbilly Racists. But we can not ignore the ahistorical silliness.

You would think someone so seemingly well-versed in -- or at least so willingly haunted by -- the ghosts of the Confederacy would know that West Virginia seceded from the Confederate State of Virginia in 1861, then joined the Union in 1863, when it ratified constitutional assurances of abolition and was thus officially recognized as a state. You would also think that someone so eager to cast aspersions and condescensions upon the sons and daughters of that state's 20,000 or so Confederate soldiers would know that West Virginia provided an equal number of soldiers to the Union. (They all, presumably, have moved to more sophisticated states; if any remain, they will no doubt be voting for Obama.)

But, hey, who cares about rhetorical or historical accuracy when there are cheap political points to be made and even cheaper, self-righteous insults to be hurled? What's a little contempt or dishonor among Appalachian plebes?

Posted: Tue - May 13, 2008 at 11:15 AM          

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