Kathryn, that Kos diary about the planned protest over Levin’s book is priceless. So you’re supposed to show up wearing a “Heil Hannity” T-shirt? The organizer also suggests, “We need LOTS AND LOTS of video cameras. (Because I’m a target I won’t bring any electronical equipment myself).” [sic]

But hey, aside from the irony of a semi-literate protest in a bookstore, they want this not to be a matter of screaming “Nazi!” in a crowded bookstore, they want this to be a civil protest where they run around calling people Nazis. That’s because “the bookstore is a quasi public place so they are bound by certain laws and New Jersey is not Alabama.”

Oh now I get it! If they were staging a protest among the inbred hill-folk down in Huntsville, the gloves would be off. But while I expect this kind of casual denigration of the South from Kos diarists, even the leading lights of liberalism™ seem to think it’s just fine. The one unintentionally hilarious thing about this is that when I clicked on the link to Daily Kos, there was an ad right next to the diary for Krugman’s new book, “The Conscience of a Liberal.” Basically, the ridiculously reductive premise of Krugman’s book is that the reason why conservativism post Goldwater has been ascendant is, well, I’ll let him explain it: “It’s almost embarrassing. I talk a lot to political scientists, and you go through the numbers and the polls. And it all boils down – almost everything else goes away, except for five words: ‘Southern whites started voting Republican.’”

Now, let me go out on a limb here and say that while race has certainly been an animating force in politics, perhaps another reason the South started voting Republican is CONSTANT SNEERING by Ivy-League professors in New Jersey about the South’s culture and assumed prejudices based on often arbitrary generalizations and geographic distinctions. In sum, if you eat at Waffle House instead of IHOP, you are apparently a racist. Heck, bashing the South is how you establish your liberal credentials. Even Hillary Clinton, former first lady of Arkansas, was bashing Mississippi recently. What gives? Why do liberals think it’s a good idea to attack the South so blithely?