New. South. My. Ass.

A massuh Doug Hanks has withdrawn from the City Council at Large race here in Charlotte, due to a little problem of about 4000 posts he made to a white supremacist website. Psst: he was running as a Republican, imagine that. Hanks' formidable defense is he was doing "research" for a novel. Jebus fucking H fucking christ, that's not a scholarly way to do research. If you're Hunter S. Thompson writing a shitty novel about the Hell's Angels maybe, but dealing with race, no and hell no. And as should be expected, he played the "heritage, not hate" card.

To which I say, if you want to research our Southern heritage, you gawd damn better have some Genovese under your belt, some Du Bois, and some Booker T. Washington. If all you know about Southern history is something you gleaned from a southern rock record, shut the fuck up. You don't give two flying shits about heritage, and you're full of ignorance and concomitant hate. Begin your discussion of "heritage" by at least acknowledging that after the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, rape of black women by their owners to produce new laborers/ human commodities became a cornerstone of the Southern economy, not by waving your little flag behind the gun rack which you widdled for your monster truck.

But that is not my point here. Hanks' fellow Republicans demanded his withdrawal from the race after this came out. But wait. We already have hate-mongering, gay-bashing, radical pseudo-Christian Bill James holding a seat here. Why aren't the South Charlotte Repubs demanding James to resign? James has spewed forth perennial hatred and unfounded arguments against poor children, black children, and GLBT's with no empirical evidence whatsoever to back his claims, yet he goes largely unchecked. Perhaps it's a matter of media framing after all, to which I say, Charlotte Observer - you are a pusillanimous collection of conciliatory infidel weenies (giving host to Op-Eds by Walter Williams' bullshit grants you a hot spot in Hell*). If this is the New South, send me back to 19 65. Apparently we missed the point somewhere.
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Of course, and in this case unfortunately, there is no Hell. But whatever