Southern Charm

by Pa Rock
Social Commentator

There was a cultural myth when I was growing up that said - whatever their faults, southerners could always be counted on for politeness. A southern lady was a lady. She might not like you, or your politics, or your Blue Tick Hound, but she would have you parked in a comfortable chair with a glass of cold and sweet iced tea before you could doff your ball cap and bid her good afternoon.

A southern gentleman was a gentleman. Oh, he might take a mistress and hit the bourbon a little too often, but he was a gentleman who subscribed to all of society's conventions regarding good manners.

She was Scarlett O'Hara and he was Colonel Sanders, and they were the poster people for order and decorum. But it was a myth. The ideal was false. There were no (or damned few) gentle southern souls sipping their mint juleps and dispensing kindness to every wayfarer who happened to stroll across their plantations. Real southerners at the time I was growing up were more apt to be raging crackers and hillbillies who fought integration and prayed to a white male God who smiled kindly on the likes of Bull Connor, Orville Faubus, George Wallace, and Lester Maddox. They bombed black churches, murdered civil rights workers, and overtly supported the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

But that was decades ago. Integration happened. The South slowly progressed into the American mainstream. Witness Atlanta, for example, a fairly liberal and progressive city that is leading the South into the twenty-first century. All of that ignorant cracker and hillbilly stuff is history - it's a New South.

Or is it?

Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican of South Carolina, showed his class and his ass tonight at the President's speech before Congress when he felt obliged to yell out "You lie!" at one point during the speech. He was, of course, playing to his voters back home - people who would appreciate name-calling and rudeness - ignorant crackers and hillbillies. Good job, Rep. Wilson. You may be the fool nationally, but the good ole boys back home are gonna love that shit. What a great sound bite for your next election! You really told that uppity colored boy a thing or two - by God!

Kudos to my senator, John McCain, for calling the fool, Joe Wilson, out on his bad behavior.

Update: I just heard Rachel Maddow say that Congressman Joe Wilson has issued a written apology to President Obama. So, in the words of the immortal Miss Emily Litella, "Never mind!"

(But I still think the slimeball will use the sound bite in his reelection campaign!)

Finger Lickin' Chicken

by Pa Rock

I saw an article on the Internet today regarding America's number one artery blocker, Kentucky Fried Chicken. It seems that Colonel Sanders' handwritten secret recipe of eleven secret herbs and spices (the herbs and spices that give the company's chicken its special taste) was being moved from one super secret location to another. That task will involve off-duty police officers, private security guards and an armored car. During the transfer the recipe, now fading on a sixty-eight-year-old piece of yellowed paper, will be slipped into a briefcase and handcuffed to the chief of the private security firm that is responsible for the document's safe passage between secret vaults. It is, it seems, one of the best protected trade secrets in existence.

Those under a certain age, say forty or so, might not even realize that Colonel Sanders was a real person. But myself, on the other hand, being well above that age, can remember him quite well. His name was Harlan Sanders, and like many other people in Kentucky, he called himself "Colonel." He ran a restaurant in eastern Kentucky that specialized in very good fried chicken with a unique flavor. He eventually sold his chicken recipe and his franchise idea for a hefty (at the time) sum of one million dollars.

One of my first memories of the Colonel was when he appeared on an old TV game show called I've Gotta Secret. His secret was that he had brought one million dollars to the studio in a large glass box to show everyone how rich he was - and every one obligingly ogled all of that cash. Years later he became bitter with the thought that he had sold too cheaply.

Another memory of the Colonel was listening to him being interviewed on the radio as I was driving cross-country in the early 1970s. The questioner asked him about his favorite piece of chicken, and without hesitating, he said that the wing was the most flavorful part of the chicken.

The Colonel also did many, if not all, of the KFC television commercials. It was said that over ninety percent of Americans could recognize his face, while roughly half that number could recognize a picture of the President!

Colonel Sanders died in 1980, but his secret recipe lives on. The "original recipe" still has that unique taste, but somehow it is not nearly as good as it was fifty years ago. But then, few things are.