When I first moved out here, people were trying to tell me about the rivalry between Cal and Stanford, both very fine academic institutions which support me in very different ways (but don’t think I don’t have a rooting interest). And I asked “Do you know anyone who’s been shot over Cal-Stanford? Divorced? No? I don’t think you take your football seriously. You see that flag that’s half Cal, half Stanford, and says “A HOUSE DIVIDED” on it? You know what that flag would say in Alabama? POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS.”<\/p>\n
I thought about this in the wake of Alabama’s national title, and the hue and cry over Cam Newton, and the unabashed glee from my house at the travails of the athletic department at the Penitentiary<\/s> University of Tennessee, and then looked a little wider, and had one of those shuddering realizations.<\/p>\n
The Southern form of rivalry is one in which it is less important that you succeed than that your rival fail.<\/i><\/p>\n
I don’t know whether this is something rooted in economic privation, although that would make sense. If you can’t make any headway getting up the hill, you may still wind up higher relative to your rival if they take a tumble and wind up beneath you. Easier to sit there and wish something on the bad guys than to get up there and do better yourself. Either way, this is something that has to be taken into serious consideration when examining the state of Southernization of national politics (which has happened, and don’t let anyone tell you different) – when everything hangs on demonizing the other, how much simpler to cut down the other than to raise yourself…<\/p>\n
NB: I was at one point going to do a detailed breakdown of how the GOP nationalized campaign was a one-for-one recapitulation of the standard forms in Alabama from 1914-58, complete with Big Mules and Yankees and the class-for-racial alignment, but it is frankly too goddamn depressing to contemplate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first moved out here, people were trying to tell me about the rivalry between Cal and Stanford, both very fine academic institutions which support me in very different ways (but don’t think I don’t have a rooting interest). And I asked “Do you know anyone who’s been shot over Cal-Stanford? Divorced? No? I … <\/p>\n