We're firmly into backlash-lash now. But I advise those trashing Alexandra Pelosi's selective bias to check in with Real Time tonight. Meanwhile a Mississippi native writes:
I have three words for all those folks saying how filled the state is with professionals and college grads and worldly types: WHITE CITIZENS COUNCIL.
And as for Faulkner – who was cited in the defense of the state – has that person ever read his books? They are a literary equivalent of Pelosi's film. And as for Welty, has the correspondent never read Miss Welty's "Where is This Voice Coming From?" about the assassination of Medgar Evers published in that bastion of East Coast liberalism The New Yorker?
Miss Welty: "That hot … night when Medgar Evers, the local civil rights leader, was shot down from behind in Jackson, I thought, with overwhelming directness: Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place. That is, I ought to have learned by now, from here, what such a man, intent on such a deed, had going on in his mind. I wrote his story — my fiction — in the first person: about that character’s point of view, I felt, through my shock and revolt, I could make no mistake.” It was, she later told me when I was driving her home from her friend Frank Hains's house, the only story she ever wrote out of anger. "I was mad at Mississippi."
These two great literary figures were never afraid to turn their gazes directly at whom they lived among. Why should we?
Another writes:
The question about whether the clips are representative of the state or not is a good one, and one that's always hard to answer. But there is at least one obvious and objective measure we can think about: politics.
Whether or not these people are typical of Mississippians in general, their views are certainly represented plentifully by the state's elected politicians. That's never an exact fit, of course, but I'd feel safe guessing that the number of Mississippi politicians who think they have to represent tolerant, bookstore visiting constituents is far outweighed by the number of their politicians who honestly believe their job is to be accountable to the kind of folks the video captures.
Like it or not, politicians do have to represent the people who vote for them, and while few public figures in the state will be as crude as the folks in the video, I'd trust their public positions and statements to be a good indicator of the fact that these folks aren't far out of the Mississippi mainstream.
Another notes:
To be fair to Ms. Pelosi, the documentary was intended to take a look at why poor people vote for conservatives. As the video notes, Mississippi is both the poorest and most conservative state, so it makes sense both to focus on Mississippi and to focus on its less well-to-do residents. This wasn't intended to represent all Mississippians.
Another:
I was born and raised in rural Mississippi. Yes, I used to see people like the men in the video all the time – damn near on a daily basis. I'm not excusing them at all, but videos like that are not beneficial for progressive causes.
Picking out the uneducated, toothless, old white men gives the impression that they represent bigotry inMississippi. They are just the face, though. If you want to see the heart of bigotry in Mississippi, you have to go into the fancy country clubs, the prep schools, the fraternities, the churches, the haberdasheries, etc. Well off, well educated, well dressed, well spoken people harbor opinions that wouldn't have been out of place in the 1880s. The language they use ranges from sophisticated and subtle to downright jaw-dropping (usually after a few drinks). If you want to hear the word nigger, don't go snooping around trailer parks and truck stops; just walk by a group of men in seersucker suits at an Ole Miss football game.
The Dish 