Jackson Free Press

Mississippi keeps cropping up out there on the weblogs (called "blogs," we're talking about Web sites that update daily with news and politics coverage) and—almost universally—in a familiar context. I saw our fair state mentioned last week on the Democratic "inside baseball" site DailyKos, in a completely gratuitous mention that's par for the course: "Don't fear, however. CT is a safe Dem state. There's as much chance of Bush taking the state as of the Dems taking Mississippi."

The actual discussion notes that presidential candidate Joe Lieberman is losing ground to Howard Dean in Connecticut polling of Democrats and that, oddly, in "electability," John Kerry could beat George W. Bush, but Bush would beat most of the other candidates. The electability numbers in these polls, argues Kos, are a red herring, as it seems mostly to be a response to name recognition. That logic plays out in the Connecticut poll, which manages to reach the conclusion that the only Democrat (Kerry) who could beat Bush in a solidly Democratic state is one who will definitely not win Connecticut's primary. Look for some clarification down the road.

Meanwhile, Mississippi is also mentioned by conservative (and gay-rights) blogger/pundit Andrew Sullivan, a hawkish regular on the 24-hour news talking-heads circuit. Sullivan's Mississippi moment comes in a quote about leaving same-sex marriage to the states, so that Massachusetts can set its laws without concern for how those laws would play in the South:

"[T]hat's the point of federalism, isn't it? It can be tried out in one state before it is tried out in another. The flip-side of leaving Mississippi alone is that we should also leave Massachusetts alone. Deal?"

In this example, class, Mississippi is a stand-in for "the South." I have a feeling we'll be hearing that a lot this election. Get ready—they're gonna be down here with microphones and clipboards rounding up negative opinions about gay marriage and civil unions. Train wreck a'comin', film at 11.

Another thread that some took up last week—only tangentially Mississippi-related—is the notion of Big Government Republicans: do they exist and, if so, why? Sullivan, for instance, links to The American Sound: A Journal of American Ideas—an electronic publication that collects essays by congressional Republicans. (According to the site, the journal was last published in 1998 and is now, once again, up and running electronically.) And, as you can imagine, there's nothing like a publication that lets congressmen write their opinions without regard to length.

One article that has caught some blogger interest is by Rep. John Boehner of Ohio (R), who writes: "Critics point out that in his first three years in office President Bush has yet to push for a cut in real spending in any area of the federal budget; compare this to the first three years in President Reagan's term where spending was curbed by an average of 23% in those areas that were cut, and by 11% across the board (and this was with a House dominated by Democrats)."

He also notes that the federal payroll has increased to 12.1 million workers. The blame for most of this, he says, is the slow undoing of past liberalism—Republicans, even when controlling two-thirds of government, can only hope to slow its growth, instead of stopping it altogether. That's got some bloggers wondering—is the Republican Party still the party of small government?

Boehner points to one mistake that the Republicans have made that has also had wide discussion on the Web this week: "[We] allowed the president to slap tariffs on steel that do more harm to U.S. manufacturing than to help steel makers." Steel tariffs have been a point of order among many bloggers as the World Trade Organization recently decided that the U.S. steel tariffs are illegal and, thus, the European Union and other are justified in passing retaliatory tariffs. The E.U. may target foodstuffs such as Washington apples; China may retaliate as well.

Indeed, the steel tariff decision is an important one for Bush (which may even have played out by the time you read this). The tariffs have hurt U.S. industry due to the inflated prices for steel and they've angered many allies. However, if Bush elects to drop the tariffs, we may see U.S. steel companies go out of business and thousands of jobs lost. Those jobs, of course, will be lost in important swing states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio that went narrowly for Gore in 2000 and that Bush was hoping to pick up this time around. Of course, others say those states were already lost to Bush and that he's given himself a headache by going off his free-trade-for-all message. We'll see.
— Todd Stauffer, Nov. 26, 2003

Todd Stauffer is author of "Blog On: The Essential Guide to Building Dynamic Weblogs" (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2002), and the publisher of the JFP.

Previous Comments

ID

64093

Comment

It's hardly just bloggers. This little habit of referring to Mississippi when needing a comparison has always been irritating, but seems to be becoming not only a national pastime, but a worldwide habit as well. It usually goes like this, "if we don't watch out, we'll be doing as badly as Mississippi," "thank God we're not like Mississippi," or "we aren't doing so badly, just look at Mississippi." I've seen recent articles in the world press favorably comparing S. Africa to Mississippi, a Canadian province to Mississippi, and articles in the national medial comparing various areas or states to Mississippi (as the benchmark of being the lowest of the low) on any number of subjects from race to overall health to economy. Lately those references appear almost daily. In weeks in which something like the hiring of Croom by MSU hits the media, there are floods of such articles. It's getting to the point that I'm thinking about reserving a place on my site for "Mississippi Dissed" article links. Maybe it will spur us to straighten out what's wrong with Mississippi. The real problem is that there is a grain of truth in all this bad press, and we all know it. Makes us overly defensive. Nothing gets your hackles up like defending yourself when you know you're not altogether right. If we could deal with our past history and outdated attitudes in an honest way, it might just cause the rest of the world to deal with their outdated attitudes as well. I don't mind beating this (live and kicking) horse again to say that I think a good place to start would be a repudiation of racist organizations like the CofCC by our state leaders. Our leaders repudiated the KKK (no comment on sincerity here), how about giving the KKK's stepchild the same treatment? I'd like to see a state "leader" who is really a "leader" and not just a political follower. If we voters start demanding that they stop supporting this organization with their presence, money and membership, the bad press will eventially force them to act responsibly. Isn't it about time that we behaved in such a way that the chip can finally fall off our state's shouder?

Author

C.W.

Date

2003-12-06T12:37:37-06:00

ID

64094

Comment

Yep, C.W., talk about the bigotry of low expectations. Mississippi certainly gets treated unfairly in the national press; it was true back during Jim Crow as well when the national media regularly committed what's called in the biz "Afghanistanism" by ignoring the race problems in their own back yards, or "ghettoes" perhaps is more accurate, but lambasted the South for our problems. Now, we had the problems, and our media, led by the then-rabidly-racist Clarion-Ledger, was a master at the technique. Remember when Delay Beckwith was arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers, and the Jackson papers called Beckwith "California Man" in their headlines, although he only lived in the west a couple years when he was little and grew up here. It is a human instinct, I suppose, to stereotype. Immediately upon leaving Mississippi in 1983, I went to Washington, D.C., and started running into faulty assumptions about the state and me because I'm from here (especially the Neshoba County part. Lordy.) My entire adult life I've defended the state against folks who think we're all a bunch of dolts with a contempt for knowledge and no running water. No doubt, too much of the national media look down their noses at us, assuming the worst, and run to seek out a Klansman the second they arrive in the state. Gag.

Author

ladd

Date

2003-12-06T12:58:32-06:00

ID

64095

Comment

On this end, though, we haven't done everything we can to counter these impressions and reverse the potential damage to our economy (and our collective self-esteem). I think the media "perception" of Mississippi is a complicated problem and one we should all tackle instead of rolling our eyes at it and simply getting defensive, and thus allowing it to perpetuate, and ultimately hurt our economic development and contribute to our brain drain. Mississippians should challenge inaccurate perceptions every chance we can. At the same time, it doesn't help us when we do stuff to perpetuate the stereotypes (like defend racist symbols, or use them in political campaigns). I truly believe that public demonstrations -- such as this blog, for instance, which is getting a lot of traffic from past our borders -- will show that, just like anywhere, else, Mississippians are smart and have varying opinions and like to discuss issues. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't hurt to show that most Mississippians do not have a contempt for education and diverse ideas; too often, a handful of folks try to give that impression by attempting to drown everyone else out. We just can't let that happen.

Author

ladd

Date

2003-12-06T13:00:10-06:00