No one glistens as well as a Belle

Or so Hollywood seems to think. It's not just the genteel Steel Magnolias who appear shiny and sweaty in all southern bred movies, it's the entire population of the region. I was flipping the channels tonight and happened upon A Time to Kill. An enjoyable movie mind you, I don't discount that, but Yankees...please read carefully - We have air conditioning. It's too hot not to. It's life threatening. Even most of the poor have a/c available to them. I don't get angry at these stereotypes being propagated in the media. Really, they amuse me. I just wish more research went into the southern culture and lifestyle before someone decided to make a movie and base it down here in Mississippi or our sister state Alabama. In movies and on television we fall into pretty specific categories. The Southern Bitch. She's wealthy, married well, and most likely a widow or cheating on her husband. She's vindictive and will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Then there's Bubba. Bubba is really sweet, but really stupid. He "don't talk real well." There is always the crooked sheriff or corrupt man who controls the whole town. Apparently, according to the media, none of us wear shoes or have any education to speak of. We are all racist, ignorant bigots without teeth, who rant and rave about change and anything different in our lives. Many of the men have greasy mullets and the women don't know that platinum blond is not a good color for a brunette. We can barely read or say our alphabet and may not even know the name of the current president. We are all bible-thumping, gun toting morons. Why does the media cling to their old ideas of what "The South" really is? It's because they cannot handle the truth. Their fiction is not our reality. Most want to feel a superiority over us. Not that we care. We don't particularly want more strangers poking around, feeling all enlightened and cultured because they have experienced something of what the true south is. The south the world won't let you see.