Posted 8:44 AM by Scoobie Davis

Sullivan’s Sophistry
In his 9/3 post titled, SOUTHERN HYPER-LIBS, Sully excerpts a letter from a reader who agreed with Sully’s having put Howell Raines on the couch---attributing Raines’ political views to being “a guilt ridden southerner who wishes to expunge himself of the original sin of having been born in the South.” Sully is compiling a list of Southern-born pundits who fit into this facile pigeonhole. I have an alternative explanation: many of these scribes saw the demagogues of the South, first George Wallace, then Jesse Helms, and rightfully viewed them as the kind of trash they should repudiate. Sully’s view of the motivation behind these pundits is not the only thing that is reductionistic. The South is not what Sully thinks it is. Sure there are vestiges of the old South, such as when Trent Lott and soon-to-be-private-citizen Bob Barr hung out with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens as well as the purge of mostly minority voters in Florida. However, the South is progressing and the pundits Sully cites are an example of this.