Why are they so many American Jews here?

[Shankara20]

I've tried (I won't eat this crap, but my morbid curiousity is sufficient for me to sample) deep fried oreos, twinkies, ice cream (the Mexican version is VASTLY better), pickles, coca-cola, mars bars, snickers bars, and probably a few other things. Fair food people will deep dry your toddler, if you leave it unnattended.

deep fried oreos,
twinkies,
ice cream (the Mexican version is VASTLY better),
pickles, -
coca-cola,
mars bars,
snickers bars,

International Tent aside, they sell things like deep fried corn dogs and deep fried snickers bars there. I'm not making this up.

What other way does one serve a corn dog if you don't deep fry it?



Way Out West here we also deep fry the mountain oysters....

 

[Shankara20]

Well you have to put salt, pepper, and butter on them first. Then kind of mix them up with your eggs.

so eating them from the side dish w/o added seasoning did not give me the full experience?

 

[00Syd]

I'd just like to pop in and say that I LOVE grits. With a passion. They are amazing. I know everywhere they are served in downtown Manhattan and go regularly. Unfortunately I haven't found anywhere in Boston that has grits on the menu, at least not yet. anyone know?

 

[BiBunny]

I will say that anyone who believes the South is about racism and voting for far-right fundies really doesn't have any idea about what goes on here. I'm trying to think of what to post, but I can't come up with anything coherent. I just don't much appreciate the stereotype, personally.

I guess I'm a hypocrite. I call myself a redneck. Most of my friends call themselves rednecks. I'll just laugh if any of my friends--even the non-rednecky ones--call me a redneck. But let someone who doesn't know me or understand my way life call me a redneck, with the implication that I'm an ignorant bigot, and them's fightin' words.

There is a whole lot to Southern culture that I think you have to witness personally to understand. Seriously, the other day I was sneered at while working by some dude who told me I was too cool, just a typical Southern woman who was all veneer. I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue because I was working, but if I'd let the "veneer" fall and told him I thought he was a raving dumbass, I sincerely doubt that would have gone over very well, either.

I'm fascinated by other people's cultures. I know I'll only ever have an outsider's perspective on them, but I love to learn things about other groups of people. So I have a hard time with being put in the "ignorant, bigoted, hardcore fundie Southerner" box, I guess.

 

[JMohegan]

Yeah I can imagine seeing the civil right images would taint your opinion. I was too young to pay much attention at the time. And it seemed like more of a Alabama/Mississippi thing.

But it was over 50 years ago. I think even some of the hard core racists like George Wallace and Lester Maddox realized in their heart what they did was wrong before they died. Not to say there aren't any hard core KKK or militia types out there even today. I don't know any though.

I was born in '58, so it's not like I was watching that stuff as a college student.

In a way, though, my age meant that the images had a much deeper and lasting impact on my perspective. Imagine what something like this looks like to a seven year old kid.

King was shot when I was ten, and for me it was a real end of innocence. Because unlike in the movies and fictional adventures that I acted out every day in the backyards or woods of my childhood existence, what I learned was the plain truth of life. The hero doesn't always win.

King was shot in '68, so I'll disagree with the math behind your 50 year comment. But I understand and appreciate what you're trying to say.

 

[JMohegan]

I will say that anyone who believes the South is about racism and voting for far-right fundies really doesn't have any idea about what goes on here. I'm trying to think of what to post, but I can't come up with anything coherent. I just don't much appreciate the stereotype, personally.

I guess I'm a hypocrite. I call myself a redneck. Most of my friends call themselves rednecks. I'll just laugh if any of my friends--even the non-rednecky ones--call me a redneck. But let someone who doesn't know me or understand my way life call me a redneck, with the implication that I'm an ignorant bigot, and them's fightin' words.

There is a whole lot to Southern culture that I think you have to witness personally to understand. Seriously, the other day I was sneered at while working by some dude who told me I was too cool, just a typical Southern woman who was all veneer. I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue because I was working, but if I'd let the "veneer" fall and told him I thought he was a raving dumbass, I sincerely doubt that would have gone over very well, either.

I'm fascinated by other people's cultures. I know I'll only ever have an outsider's perspective on them, but I love to learn things about other groups of people. So I have a hard time with being put in the "ignorant, bigoted, hardcore fundie Southerner" box, I guess.

When "far-right fundies" stop winning southern elections, that stereotype will go away. Until that time, it hardly seems unfair.

BiBunny, aren't you the one who said there's no sense in someone with a different perspective even registering to vote?

I know that's not the whole picture. That's why I'm asking about the culture. What does it mean to you, to be "southern," in your corner of the southern world?

Self-identified Bible Belt forum members give the impression that the environment is a lot more socially restrictive than most areas in the urban north. That seems to be point one. On a brighter note, multiple comments about general warmth and hospitality seem to be a very endearing point two.

 

[midwestyankee]

But once experienced, like grits, I do not need to do again


but to be on the fair side of grits I was in Virgina at the time...

Well you have to put salt, pepper, and butter on them first. Then kind of mix them up with your eggs.

My take on grits? They're like Cream of Wheat but without all the flavor.

 

[Homburg]

My take on grits? They're like Cream of Wheat but without all the flavor.

They're not supposed to have much flavour. They're a base to which you add your own seasonings. Salt and pepper, mixed with eggs, bacon, bacon and cheese, sausage gravy, maple syrup, etc, etc.

 

[00Syd]

My take on grits? They're like Cream of Wheat but without all the flavor.

Nu-uh. Not even a little bit. They are so good!

 

[00Syd]

They're not supposed to have much flavour. They're a base to which you add your own seasonings. Salt and pepper, mixed with eggs, bacon, bacon and cheese, sausage gravy, maple syrup, etc, etc.

What he said.

 

[intothewoods]

It's interesting to read JM's observations about southerners and then objections and reactions from southerners, after having a similar conversation in the thread in Talk about Christians, Jews, atheists and agnostics. I have a hard time not taking the discussion personally when it's about my peeps, but it gives me some perspective to read the different points of view here. I can't speak for southerners, but it seems to me that beyond not wanting to be reduced to a stereotype, everyone wants to be seen in context. And so it's just plain difficult to read isolated observations about a group to which you belong, but that doesn't make the observations invalid.

I also would like to point out that corn dogs are always fried, unless you get one of those frozen boxes of soy corn dogs, which may not be prepared in that way. I have some lovely memories of eating corn dogs as a kid, but I will probably never buy one again, since processed meat of any kind now totally grosses me out and depresses me. So deep fried Snickers it is!

 

[00Syd]

Oh yeah, Re: deep fried snickers, twinkies and corndogs: Everyone look at this website: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

 

[intothewoods]

Oh yeah, Re: deep fried snickers, twinkies and corndogs: Everyone look at this website: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Will. Not. Click!

 

[00Syd]

Will. Not. Click!

No, no, do. It's hilarious. You'll be simultaneously entertained, grossed out, and made hungry. Its one of my favorite blogs.

 

[intothewoods]

p.s. bitches - I haven't had "bad" (akin to heroin, apparently) carbs in almost two months. If I so much look at a corn dog right now, I might lick my FUCKING COMPUTER SCREEN.

p.p.s. - this bitch looks hawt!

p.p.p.s. Is no carb-induced insanity worth the hotness? Like seriously, if a chocolate cake looks at me funny, something illegal might happen.

(sorry for the hijack)

 

[midwestyankee]

Back to Yank's Excellent Parochial Adventure

As I mentioned earlier, I knew nothing about the south when I was a boy except what I learned from Walt Disney. Even at 9 years old I knew that Francis Marion-wannabes probably weren't roaming the streets of southern towns, but the rural, self-reliant man that he was reminded me a great deal of the same sorts who helped defend Maine in the French and Indian War. Having been born on Lincoln's birthday, I did read a great deal about the war that he worked so hard to resolve. There was also a tv drama called, as I recall, The Blue and the Gray that featured two brothers who took arms with opposite sides. None of this gave me a particularly accurate picture of the south.

In third grade, an African-American family moved into my small city. They were the first to live there to my knowledge. The youngest, a boy, was my age and I proudly took him home to play after school his first day in my class. Of course, nitwit that I was, I'd not heard correctly where the teacher said he was from, so I just went with what I'd assumed: "Mom, this is Billy. He's from Georgia. Billy quickly pointed out that he had been born only twenty miles away in Maine but that incident says something about the assumptions that a youngster in my state might make. As a side note: Billy was a four-term mayor of our home town during our thirties and early forties. He's a damned good lawyer, too, as I hear it.

When I was about 10, resistance to the civil rights movement grew violent and became a nightly presence on the Huntley-Brinkley report. I was a junior in high school in 1968; that was a difficult, but highly formative year. That Dr. King was assassinated in the south made perfect sense to me at the time.

Still, by the time I had graduated from college I had never been south of New York City. My understanding of the many cultural regions of our country was vastly incomplete. All I knew of the south, I'd learned from William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Margaret Mitchell.

Graduate school in Buffalo and then later in Chicago, intermingled with many trips to Boston and New York, left me with a taste for cities despite my nearly rural boyhood (My "city" had only 20,000 residents and was surrounded by farms and forests for 25 miles in every direction.). I had no motivation whatsoever to explore the south.

When I was in my late twenties I made my first trips to the south: first to Atlanta (with side trips to Augusta, GA, and a few other nearby towns). My job on that trip was, in part, to travel with a local salesperson to get a better understanding of the local market. I didn't learn much about markets outside of Atlanta because the salesman insisted that I stay in the car during all of his calls away from the city: "I can't afford to have them know that I'm riding with a Yankee. I need their continued business." Seeing the Confederate flag flying over banks next to the Stars and Stripes confused the hell out of me and gave me the impression that the south was populated by people who would rather return to the 1850s than enjoy the progress of the late twentieth century.

Other business trips to Memphis, Anniston, and the Florida panhandle mostly confirmed the images and impressions that I'd made around Atlanta: the south was like a foreign country to me. If you'd asked me about the south in my thirties, I'd have been that northeastern snob who believed that all southerners were bigots with one eye on the past and the other one on their cousins. It was what it was: not accurate, but that was what I'd learned from my limited experience. Still a parochial New England snob, for sure.

In the last couple of decades, fortunately, I've travelled extensively in parts of the south (now, only the Carolinas are left on my list of places yet to see). And, by the nature of that travel, I've had to deal with people of various walks of life. A few trips to the Appalachian regions of Kentucky and West Virginia for home-repair missions have given me the chance to meet many proud and happy poor people whose faith impresses me still. Other trips, to help employees and managers learn various new applications, processes, or product lines put me in the company of smart, ambitious, well-educated men and women.

Finally, some of the people that I enjoy very much on this discussion board are from the south. I've gained deeper respect for southern culture and the products of southern schools.

People, when you give them a chance to be themselves, will teach you how the world looks through their eyes.

I'm grateful that my journey has brought me to a place where I look forward to my next opportunity to travel south. Good people are waiting there to share a laugh and some good, thoughtful talk. I'm sure of it.

 

[midwestyankee]

Oh yeah, Re: deep fried snickers, twinkies and corndogs: Everyone look at this website: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Actually, the Slow Burger looked pretty good to me. And the Chicago Deep Dish Pizza looks almost exactly like the one that was on my table last weekend.

 

[BiBunny]

When "far-right fundies" stop winning southern elections, that stereotype will go away. Until that time, it hardly seems unfair.

BiBunny, aren't you the one who said there's no sense in someone with a different perspective even registering to vote?

Yes. But I don't think it's necessarily that all or even most of us ascribe to the fundie culture. I just think that it's a case of rich people manipulating poor people, particularly whites, to vote against their best interests by playing on their fears. If you don't have anything else, it's easy to let religious fear-mongering be your guide.

I grew up in the Southern Baptist church. I know how this works. But I'm a shining example that the propaganda doesn't always stick.

I know that's not the whole picture. That's why I'm asking about the culture. What does it mean to you, to be "southern," in your corner of the southern world?

In another thread somewhere (don't remember which off the top of my head, might've even been this one; we're having lots of religious and cultural discussions around here this week), someone said that the first thing they thought of about being Jewish was the food.

Ok, so that works for me, too. I'm a damn good cook, when I'm in the mood, but it's all country food and lots and lots of dessert. I don't know how to fix that fancy stuff.

Southern feasts emphasize the dessert. The rest is just something you eat beforehand.

It means when a woman's car breaks the belt that runs the water pump and overheats out on some back country road, she doesn't panic and grab her cell phone (because she doesn't have service there, anyway) and call the nearest male. It means she fishes the old pair of panty hose out of the backseat and rigs up something herself that'll get her home because God only knows when someone might actually come along to help out there on that old back road. And if the women are that capable, then the men have to be, too. Probably even more so to get us to respect them. (But I will leave my pet rant about the pussyfication of the American male for another time.)

It means people don't freak out when there's a gun around or whatever. The reaction is usually more like, "Oh, cool, where'd you get that one? How does it shoot?"

It means that full-sized American-made extended cab pickup trucks with mud tires and lift kits and loud mufflers and huge speakers blaring country music or hip-hop music (either one, depends on what kind of mood the driver's in) and a gun rack in the back and a case of beer in the toolbox aren't just the stuff of some Yankee's bad jokes. That truck is some hard-working rural boy's pride and joy and a really fun way to spend a Saturday night, riding up and down dirt roads and through mudholes. Getting stuck is the fun part.

It means there is a certain way that one is expected to treat one's guests, and if one does not do so, one is ostracized and rightfully so.

It means there's this strange honor code that seems to be left over from medieval times and adapted to the modern day.

It means lots of things, and I could go on and on, but I think I've already talked way too much.

Self-identified Bible Belt forum members give the impression that the environment is a lot more socially restrictive than most areas in the urban north. That seems to be point one. On a brighter note, multiple comments about general warmth and hospitality seem to be a very endearing point two.

I'd say that holds true for any rural area, Bible Belt or no. A more urban environment is going to expose people to more influences outside of their own little cultural sphere, so those people will tend to be a little less restrictive in their views.

It's human nature to fear (or hate) what we don't understand. If you've never been exposed to something, it tends to be a knee-jerk reaction.

I mean, Atlanta is in the Deep South, but you can get away with things there you couldn't get away with in other, more insular places in the Deep South. Folks blame on the "Bible Belt" culture, but I honestly believe that's a more rural vs. urban thing.

 

[WriterDom]

When "far-right fundies" stop winning southern elections, that stereotype will go away. Until that time, it hardly seems unfair.

The south was completely blue for most of my life. In 1974, Republicans held a total of only 29 legislative seats out of 236 in Georgia. Our current governor now is the first republican governor since reconstruction. Same goes for the Lt governor who was just elected. Both houses are now republican. Both senators.

I'll tell you why democrats have a hard time in the south but you probably already know. And don't come barking up my tree. I'm not a social conservative. I'm just explaining here. If you want to call them ignorant, than go ahead. Won't hurt my feelings. But many believe that abortion is murder. No different than taking a truck load of breathing babies and throwing them off a cliff. And outside of urban areas they are against homosexual marriage overwhelmingly. Not 60/40 against, but 90/10 or 80/20. So all republicans have to do is paint democrats as being for Adam and Steve and abortion. And if the democrat has any voting record that hints of support for either, it's over. The repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," is really going to have a high political price. Is it fair? Probably not, but little of politics is based on fairness.

Now democrats have been successful by running what I call Jesus and gun democrats. I didn't look, but the few that voted against the Obama stimulus are probably worried about keeping their jobs in 2010.

And I think the attitude about the military is warmer in the South. More enlist from the south than any other region and if you want to go to military school you have other options than the national ones. Democrats tend to play the military down. I think Obama had one short paragraph in his speech about the military and I haven't seen him at a military base other than playing basketball in Iraq.

Personally I think gays should have civil unions. Gays in Military perhaps, but with strict guidelines on behavior. I lived in a room the size I'm in now with 23 other guys. I don't want guys butt fucking on the ship. If they want to get to port and get a room, that's their business. That can be a long 128 days though.

I'm becoming more and more against abortion. It's just my personal belief. But I do want forced contraception from a girl's first period until the age of 21 or so. Maybe after 18 if she is married. But this babies having babies shit needs to stop.

 

[BiBunny]

Other business trips to Memphis, Anniston, and the Florida panhandle mostly confirmed the images and impressions that I'd made around Atlanta: the south was like a foreign country to me.

If you ever happen to make it to Anniston again, I expect you to let me know! I'm only about 15 minutes away from there right now.

 

[Shankara20]

Oh yeah, Re: deep fried snickers, twinkies and corndogs: Everyone look at this website: http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

"Chicken Fried Bacon With Gravy"

now I know what I want for dinner...

 

[Homburg]

gun

Key word. Don't forget the single issue gun rights voters. A helluva lot of southerners are very pro-guns, and the democrats were very anti-gun for a very long time. Here a little less than ten years ago the dem started to back off that issue. Mark Warner successfully ran for governor in VA and a good part of his support was a group called "Sportsmen for Warner". Their signs had a fishing pole on the bottom and a rifle on top. The message was unmistakable.

Gun control is a loser issue for the democrats. Their core may want it, but they'll be just fine without so long as they make progress elsewhere. A whole helluva lot of swing voters will vote the other way on anti-gun candidates though. When I noticed the dems cooling it on that issues I figured we might see a slow swing in the south.

 

[Shankara20]

No, no, do. It's hilarious. You'll be simultaneously entertained, grossed out, and made hungry. Its one of my favorite blogs.

I got to page 8 before I had to stop - my mouth is watering like a beagle expecting a "good-dog" treat

 

[Shankara20]

If I so much look at a corn dog right now, I might lick my FUCKING COMPUTER SCREEN.

I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...
I will not post a corn dog pics in my thread...

 

[Homburg]

I got to page 8 before I had to stop - my mouth is watering like a beagle expecting a "good-dog" treat

There's some stuff in there that I can't help but think "This would be tasty."

The slowburger, aside from the freaky onion ring assisted height, looks lik a darned good burger.