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Bigots get free pass to insult the South

By RONDA RICH

In this world where political correctness is paramount and every comment is scrutinized, analyzed and criticized, why are Southerners still fair game for wicked words and distorted views?

Why don’t others leap to the defense of Southerners on national television and harshly reprimand those who see fit to make fun of us?

Merri Grace, a diva friend from college, and I had this conversation after seeing a television show where a Southern woman was placed in the middle of a trendy Manhattan restaurant so the show’s stars could make fun of her behind her back for wearing a scrunchy, a ponytail holder, popular over a decade ago but now considered a ridiculous relic.

One of the stars tapped her on the shoulder and asked with a smirk, “Where are you from?”

“Macon, Georgia,” she replied cheerfully.

The actors exchanged oh-that-explains-it looks and then voiced snarky comments to that end.

Merri Grace and I were outraged at yet another slap in the face by television writers.

“Why is that all right?” asked Merri Grace, who has worked in the political arena for more than 20 years. “Liberals jump all over stereotypes except when it comes to Southerners. Then, for some reason, it’s okay for people to make fun of us. I don’t understand it.”

I don’t understand it, either.

Over the years, I’ve battled various forms of discrimination including that of being a female sports writer in a world dominated by men. But never have I known anything that compares with the affronts I have faced as a Southerner.

Rednecks, hicks, hillbillies, slow, backward, inbred — I’ve heard it all and been accused of most of it.

Repeatedly, I have found myself explaining that the movie “Deliverance” is not a documentary but rather a work of fiction.

It’s very tiresome. Many times these showdowns have occurred on non-Southern soil. Sometimes they have taken place in my own homeland, voiced by those who chose to move here.

But the one that bothers me most, the one I have the hardest time shaking off, even harder than the uninformed ones who think that indoor plumbing is a luxury for us, is voiced by those who think our Southern society is largely illiterate.

American literature without the ponderings and pontifications of Southern writers would be an extremely thin collection of musings.

When American librarians voted on the most significant literary contributions of the 20th Century, the two books that headed the list were written by women from within the deep heart of Dixie. Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” was tops, followed by Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind.”

Both books won Pulitzer Prizes, both became Academy Award-winning, classic movies and both deeply affected the conscience of the world.

No fewer than 10 Southern women have won Pulitzers for literature. Where would the world, not just America, be without those contributions along with those of Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, and others?

And where, pray tell, would our pop culture be without the imagination of Mississippi-born John Grisham?

Once at a book conference, a man from upstate New York asked me, “You’re from the South? No kidding?” He grinned wickedly and then winked. “I thought that people in the South couldn’t read.”

Fury ran over my body but I kept it in check. “Not only do we read,” I replied icily, looking him straight in the eyes, “but most of the time, we write what the rest of the world reads.”

Funny, but he had no reply to that.