Two Cheers For Michael Lind

Leftie Michael Lind, writing in Salon, makes a game and appreciated (at least by me) effort at denouncing liberal bigotry against Southerners, with particular scorn directed at the likes of Kevin Drum and Kathleen Parker:

Oh, those dumb white Southerners! No other group in American society could possibly believe in preposterous conspiracy theories. Well, maybe one other group, the most reliably Democratic demographic in the whole U.S. electorate. A 2005 study by RAND and Oregon State University showed that a majority of blacks believed that a cure for AIDS was being withheld from the poor; that nearly half believed that AIDS was man-made, with a quarter believing that it was created in a U.S. government laboratory and 12 percent naming the CIA as its source. Black paranoia about AIDS is understandable, given the Tuskegee experiments. Even so, the theory that AIDS was created by the CIA to commit genocide against black people is wackier than the craziest Birther conspiracy theories. Would Kathleen Parker write, or the Washington Post publish, a column arguing that black Democrats "have seceded from sanity"? Would Kevin Drum applaud Parker's insult and extend to it to all African-Americans?

Lind's article isn't perfect. He couldn't stop himself from explaining away the polititcal proclivities of conservative Southerners with quasi-Marxist twaddle, painting them as uneducated victims of antibellum "ogliarchy" who want but for their liberal betters to show the way (just once I'd like to see at least one Leftist admit that their ideological rivals just might be able to think for themselves), but even for all that, I applaud his overall effort. It's a damn sight more civil than 99% of the garbage that gets thrown in this direction by the "intelligencia" and the media.

UPDATE: Quoth the Blogfaddah, "But isn’t insulting white Southerners one of the main pleasures of liberalism? I mean, if you have to give that up, what’s the point?" Well, they can always fall back on the self-aggrandizing air of moral superiority...