THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 22, 1996 TAG: 9607200053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 76 lines
SCENE: THE breakfast table of a typical Southern home where Harold, the master of the house, is having scrambled eggs and grits. His wife, Marge, watches her husband's hands tremble as he reads the newspaper.
Marge: Something wrong, Harold?
Harold: It's this news article, this lying piece of garbage. . . .
Marge: Oh, I've already seen it. A couple of professors from the University of Michigan and Illinois claiming Southern white men are more likely to start a fight than anyone else. That's what has upset you, isn't it?
Harold: You bet your bippy. Insulting is what it is. You talk about being politically correct. Fine. Then a couple of damn Yankees trash an entire class of people and that's okey-dokey. (He bangs his fist on the paper for emphasis.)
Marge: Well, it sounded like a scientific study. They just say that Southern white men are more prone to violence, Harold. And I must say they do make a point.
Harold: The only pointed thing I see around here is your head, Marge. What science?
Marge: You read it. They did some tests with Southern and Northern students who were both white. They asked them to deliver some forms down a hall. But in the hallway was a person with a file drawer who opened and closed it to get in the way of the students passing them to deliver the forms. Then when the students came back down the hall, the person at the file drawer bumped into them with his shoulder and called them an insulting name.
Harold: And they checked their saliva, didn't they?
Marge: That's right, and they found that the Southerners showed a 12 percent increase in testosterone, an indicator of aggression. And the Yankees none. And they also found that Southerners who were insulted showed a 79 percent increase in a hormone that indicates stress. But Northerners weren't stressed at all.
Harold: And you call that scientific? They didn't consider the larger question here.
Marge: What, dear?
Harold: The question is whether any real Southerner who wasn't out of his mind would go to school in Illinois or Michigan in the first place. Think of the Yankee rabble with no manners you'd be associating with day in and day out. Eating with them, sharing the same rooms. Aaargggh. And the food. Scrapple and beans cooked without side meat. You'd have a high stress level before those moron professors even began their bump-you-in-the-hall experiments.
Marge: Well, it was an interesting experiment. And the South does have its slights in the South. The lynchings? And the Ku Klux Klan. And that article points out the higher rate of homicides in the South.
Harold: Well, we don't Klux and duel much anymore. And those homicides reflect the fact that we are a people with a proud tradition of hunting. Some of our hunting guns go off from time to time and hit people as well as squirrels, that's all. You know what those professors should be doing with their time up their in the Nawth?
Marge: What's that, Harold?
Harold: Instead of probing around in people's mouth's for spit, they might consider holding classes on manners. Which would be tough for 'em, since they obviously haven't got any.
Marge: Oh, Harold surely . . .
Harold: Lemme tell you what I'm talking about. The other day I was stopped for a light beside the 7-Eleven. The second the light changed, I hear a jackass behind me leaning on his horn. Some jerk with New York plates. I got out of my car as casual as blue jeans. And you know what I did?
Marge: No, dear.
Harold: When he rolled down his window, I told him that down South when we honk like that we want to tell somebody that maybe his tire's getting flat or something. But I said if that wasn't the case, then we usually concluded people were being deliberately rude. Which is another matter. I told him if he was just being rude, then if he'd step outside the car, I'd be happy to beat the begeebus out of him. He drove away. But I was never violent, Marge. Just kept that smile frozen on my face and polite the whole time.
Marge: That's nice, dear. by CNB