The chapter dedicated to education in Better Off Without ‘Em is titled “The Three Rs of Modern Southern Schools—Revenue, Resentment, Resegregation.” It attempts to explain why southern students historically rank at the bottom of virtually all traditional measures of academic performance. High school graduation rates. SAT scores. Basic literacy. Rebel states reliably dominate the lowest strata of all these categories. There are empiric reasons for the less-than-robust classroom performance of Read more...

7 types of baseball ballpark eaters A taxonomy of dining-types around the Big Leagues Even if you hate hot dogs. Even if you fear all the nitrates, hormones, cow lips, anal flaps and sawdust pumped into them. Even if stuffing a slippery, pink, semi-rigid flesh pole approximately six inches in length into your mouth incites repellant sexual imagery, there’s one place in the world where you’ll not only eat a Read more...

Among the many properties destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was Beauvoir, the seaside Mississippi estate where disgraced Confederate president Jefferson Davis (he was indicted for treason and stripped of his American citizenship following the Civil War), lived out his final days. Beauvoir is where Davis spun out his outrageously bullshit post-war history of the Confederacy, giving rise to, among other notions, the ideas that slavery had nothing to do Read more...

You hear a lot about southerners wanting to re-fight the Civil War. What you don’t hear is that far more of them want to re-fight the wars of the 1950s and ’60s. I include a few examples in BETTER OFF WITHOUT ’EM, but the batshit du jour from the southern GOP is a fresh case in point. Recalling the good times paranoia of Joe McCarthy, Florida U.S. Representative Allen West Read more...

In BETTER OFF WITHOUT ‘EM, I nominate South Carolina as the most dysfunctional state in the country and outline the “7 Deadly Sins of Southern Politics,” among them willful obstruction of government. South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s recent appearance on The Colbert Report underscored my arguments. It also offered a funny and fascinating look at why her state, and the South as a whole, dominate virtually every state-by-state breakdown of Read more...

When putting together BETTER OFF WITHOUT ‘EM, I gave a lot of thought to accurately presenting “The South” in terms of its most significant cultural totems. In the end, I decided on chapters critiquing the region’s six most important societal pillars: religion, politics, race, education, economics and SEC football. Football was in some ways the trickiest inclusion. I’m feeling somewhat vindicated about the selections, however, after reading a definition of Read more...

"Better Off Without 'Em" is now available for pre-order on iTunes. http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/better-off-without-em/id477112443?mt=11 The book will be released in all formats in August 2012.

To answer a few questions that occasionally show up in my email inbox:Yes, this website is still active.Yes, I am at work on a book about the American South.Yes, the projected title is "Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession."Yes, the scheduled publication date is August 2012.Yes, I suck for not being on Facebook and rarely updating this site.I'm at work on all of the above.Genuine thanks Read more...

Given my contentious appearance on the Alabama-based Paul Finebaum show back in August—see previous post—I may have been obsessing about this season’s Pac-10/SEC crash course more than most.But maybe no more than Kyle Sponseller, whose summer 2010 blog post (link also at bottom) I came across this week during my obsessive rounds for more Duck vs. Auburn info. I hope Sponseller had the wherewithal to plunk some Vegas futures money Read more...

Earlier this week I appeared as a guest on an Alabama-based sports radio program hosted by Paul Finebaum, a well-known sports media personality in the South. I’ve received so many emails as a result of that appearance that, rather than reply to each individually, I’m posting this blanket response. 8/6/10 Dear Paul Finebaum Listener: First, a thank you for taking the time to drop me a note. I honestly appreciate Read more...