Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Casting a Spell

Hoosiers cannot win for losing with the mainstream press. The Washington Post et al. have been making fun of Dan Quayle for thirteen years because he can't spell. Now the New York Times is making fun of John Roberts because he spells too well.

And just in case being a Grammar Nazi isn't enough to derail the Roberts nomination, the Washington Post has decoded a 20-year-old first draft to conclude that Roberts is a crypto-secessionist (Hat Tip: Bench Memos.) You could stand in rebel territory and hit the Washington Post Building with a well-pitched rock, so I'm surprised I have to inform the staffers that Southerners do not call the Civil War The War Between the States, they call it The War of Northern Aggression.

2 comments:

Kathy Hutchins said...

Maryland, my adopted home, was nominally a Union state during the Civil War but southern sentiment ran quick and deep, particularly here in the southern counties and on the Eastern Shore. (One evening when we were relatively new to the neighborhood, I got lost coming home from the grocery store and ended up in Dr. Mudd's driveway.) Maryland's state song (not the state song in 1861 -- the state song now) is an absolute doozy. They only teach schoolchildren the first verse these days, and don't offer too many specifics about the despot, or the fact that the patriotic gore / that flecked the streets of Baltimore / was occasioned by an anti-Union Army riot.

Hunter Baker said...

Hey Kathy, I'm a completely legit Southerner, but I don't call it that. I think the folks who do have an unhealthy obsession with the Civil War and have very unrealistic dreams of some Southern utopia where slavery withers away like the Communistic withering away of the state.