Are All Southerners Superstitious Fools?
Last year, the governor of Georgia asked his citizens to perform a rain dance to alleviate the drought in that state.
Now the mayor of Birmingham, AL, Larry Langford, has decided that the crime rate in his city is way too high, and that it’s time to try to look as though he’s doing something about it.
I suppose if it were me, I’d start by sitting down with the police to find out what they’re doing and what support they could use from the mayor’s office. And since the University of Alabama’s Department of Justice Sciences is conveniently located in town, I’d call them up and see what works in crime prevention. I bet the FBI or DOJ might be helpful, too: maybe they can recommend a few speakers, or send some brochures, or something.
But obviously Langford isn’t me, because his innovative solution is to dress up in a burlap bag and shout.
That’s quite clever, actually: when the criminals hear about this, they’ll be too busy laughing their socks off to resist arrest.
Either that, or Langford and a large number of people around him really are credulous superstitious fools who believe in magic. And yet somehow manage to function in 21st century society.
You do realize that you left this comment on the article about the subject on website of “Birmingham Weekly”? Birmingham Weekly is a weekly paper based in, you guessed it, Birmingham. If you read the article at all, you would quickly realize that at least one southerner (the author of the piece) is not a superstitious fool (and I think it probably safe to extrapolate from authors of non-editorial print content to a larger group of people [read: if they were writing stuff in that context that no one else agreed with, then they would be fired pretty quickly – isn’t profit based mass media wonderful?]).
Also, if the behavior of Governor of Georgia and Mayor of Birmingham gives you license to generalize about all southerners, then how much more does the behavior of the President of the United States give me license to generalize about all Americans? Why is that the people of America are allowed to be heterogeneous, while you can say certain states or even entire regions of the country are composed solely of like minded, homogenous populations.
Creationism, religion, and the like are all the result faulty reasoning, but your thoughts here are just as faulty as any of those.
Let me break it down for you- all of the previously mentioned places are roughly democracies. Assuming for simplicity that people fully agree with all actions taken by the candidate they vote for, then at it takes is 51% of the population to be crazy to get a crazy leader elected. That leaves 49% of southerners who are not known to be superstitious fools.
Of course, reality is more complex – many people do not vote at all, particularly when they feel that they are already in the minority and so their vote wouldn’t count, and particularly when the government isn’t directly harming them. Also, many people vote for candidates based only on 1 or 2 issues, because say they are really scared from 9/11 and want a leader who they feel will deal with that issue even though they disagree with them on many other issues (large segments of the population in both California (40%!) and New York voted for Bush Jr. for his second! (after we had proof of his idiocy) term). That previous little example highlights another issue – most often, there are only 2 candidates, and usually both are pretty stupid, so people are left choosing the one who seems less bad – the 2 party system doesn’t leave room for crafting perfect candidates.
Maybe if your logic was actually logical, then it would have a better chance of helping those blinded by religion to see the light. Just a thought.
While eloquently written, nowhere does Barry denounce the actions of Langford.
barry:
You seem to have mistaken hyperbole for sincerity. Though if you’re an Alabaman, and my subject line made you think that Langford’s public piety extravaganza makes the state look bad, and spurs you to speak out against him, and work to improve the state, then my purpose is accomplished.
Yes, there is diversity of opinion everywhere. But saying that there are people who disagree with something doesn’t mean a whole lot unless those people speak out.
That’s a valid concern. I’ve met people whose information about the United States comes primarily from what they see in the news, including a lot of what the president says and does. When no one speaks out against him, it makes it look like silent assent.