I took umbrage to a snarky article in the New York Observer about Alabama and took pen to paper to complain. I still laugh, re-reading the letter, which the Observer printed on its trademark pink paper in its entirety.
TO THE EDITOR:
The May 13 New Yorker’s Diary ridiculed Birmingham, Ala., as the kind of place where the people have “beautiful drawls, but [one] could see how, if you lived there, you might blow your brains out. “The writer’s impression after visiting Birmingham was that it was an”impossibly dead, deserted Southern town.”
I am from Birmingham and if I didn’t get a kick out of The Observer ridiculing everybody else ona regular basis, I’d cancel my free subscription.
Ms. Leman’s chief complaint with Birmingham is its citizens are too happy. By her own account, she was treated with respect and hospitality, which apparently is déclassé. Her piece implies that if we are happy in Birmingham, we must be missing something; our tiny sphere is too limiting; we are too stupid to recognize Birmingham is a typical failed Southern town where the talented rot in their own bliss. This is the sort of insidious New York City horseshit and condescension that causes polite Southerners to mutter “damn Yankee” and begrudge the North. Worse, Ms. Lemann is a traitor Yankee-sympathizer from NewOrleans who has no business writing a New Yorker’s Diary piece, anyway.
There is life beyond the Hudson River. And therein lies the main difference be- tween the educated Southerner and the educated New Yorker: The educated Southerner knows the North, but the educated Yankee at best only knows the romanticized South. So for God’s sake, Nancy, take a Prozac and cut those of us “robust . . . dapper .and impossibly handsome fellows who wear seersuckers and khaki pants a break.
MORGAN MURPHY
Manhattan