Carolinian TPM Reader BW ain’t a fan of either Carolina. (I don’t like badmouthing states and I don’t attach myself to BW’s views. But for pure rant quality I thought I’d pass it along.)
I live in SC and work in NC. I have a completely objective view of the Carolinas. I hate them both equally. Yep, NC is different from SC, but nothing to be particularly proud of – given you’re weighing varying degrees of ugly. NC is the stuff you wipe off new baby who is still on a diet of mom’s milk and mashed peas. SC is what you deal with after a full-blown introduction of steak and potatoes (or in this case, shrimp and grits).
SC makes you yearn for the less aromatic alternative, yea even speak wistfully of it. Still, you wouldn’t want to pop the lid off the veggie-based diaper pail and share the contents with friends. Baby shit is baby shit after all.
True, there’s a lot to hate about SC – monster pickups, bad roads, non-existent park and rec departments (which is probably good, since the last thing you’d want your kid grabbing at 102 degrees is a piece of steel playground equipment), Baptists, stars and bars flags, in-your-face racism, ankle shredding Palmetto, Baptists, wretched trees, alien-weed lawns, Baptists, melted and re-frozen ice-cream, bad pizza and worse beer, poisonous snakes, clouds of biting black gnats, civil war subs, corruption on every level (just look at Union, SC – nearly the entire city government is either indicted or in jail), Aryan compounds, alligators in your duck pond, Baptists, and I could go on and on (and do, until someone – usually my wife – slaps me out of it). Just remember, not all of SC is swamp – much of it is jungle. As my 88 year old father said on his first visit to SC, “I’ve seen some rich get richer and poor get shit places, but this one takes the cake.” While it’s true that SC is worse by degree (and I’m not talking about temperature, it’s hotter than hell in NC right now, too), all I have to mention to those proud NCer’s who want to divorce themselves from the nightmare that is SC and appear somehow more progressive are two facts. Until the last presidential election, NC was as deeply red as any red-state, and secondly, the NASCAR museum. I rest my case.
