I grew up down South, and while if I never cross the Mason-Dixon line again it will be too soon (I may make an exception for New Orleans), I am more than aware of Dixie's contributions to US culture. Insofar as the US has a native artistic culture that isn't Jewish, it is largely Southern. Never mind Janis Joplin, listen to ---snip----
[WS:] Yeah, I did cross the Mason Dixon line last week for the second time in my life (although technically MD is south of it, the DC/Balto area is nothing like the South) going on a business trip to Atlanta. A weird place indeed - it reminds me of cities in former British colonies in Africa - a downtown business/government center surrounded by slums and suburban villas of colonial functionaries. Of course it was quickly pointed to me by a hotel concierge that Atlanta looks like that courtesy of William Tecumseh Sherman who burnt it to the ground during the Civil War.
But unlike in DC/Baltimore, people I met were very nice and polite. I took public transit from the airport to downtown and later from the conference hotel to the Martin Luther King memorial - and I was quite surprised by occasional passer-bys greeting me on the street, and everyone I asked for directions being very polite and helpful.
But more to the point, the Southern concept of political organization - as a confederation of sovereign states - is far closer to what European Union is today than the imperial Yankee state is. If it were not for their "peculiar institution" - I would probably have a far greater sympathy for the South for that reason, their rural idiocy notwithstanding.
Wojtek