Balls and the Southern Vote
Carpetbagger Tobacco Ad circa 1882
Two of Great Grandfather’s favorite sayings were “the poor will always be with us” and “Dixie is the land of shiftlessness and insolence”. Zebadiah Balls, my Great Grandfather, was pressed into service for the Union during what he dubbed “the War of Southern Aggression”. He subsequently made one of the greatest investments in Balls family history by hiring a substitute soldier to serve on his behalf for a mere $300! O’Malley, the poor young Irish lad, didn’t last long and grim news of his murder at the hands of Dixie traitors soon arrived. Henceforth Zebadiah always carried a photo of O’Malley in his vest pocket, and often quipped “there but by the grace of $300 go I” when showing the picture to friends and family.
Immediately after the war, Zebadiah sent business associates down south to snatch up vast tracts of land and tobacco farms at bargain prices. Great Grandfather took immense joy in hastening the decline of what he referred to as “that ungodly inbred society below the Mason-Dixon line”. He embraced the pejorative term “carpetbagger” by establishing several businesses in that name throughout the south. Always a forward thinking business strategist and opportunist, he added to his vast fortune by marketing cigarettes to children.
That said, there are several interesting characteristics about our contemporary southern brethren. As in the rest of the world (case in point – Germany and Greece), there seems to be a clear inverse relationship between climate and work ethic. Getting work out of a crew in Mississippi is more difficult than getting a liberal to stop raping the wealthy! Also of note in the south is their apparent distaste for institutions of higher learning. Stumbling upon a top-rated University in the south is about as likely as chancing upon a golden nugget in my stool (which, by the way, has happened once or twice)!
Nonetheless, Balls has a deep appreciation for the propensity of my southern friends to vote my way every election day! All Balls has to do is run a few low-budget ads mentioning a homosexual here or a threatened fetus there to mobilize millions of blue collar southerners to gleefully support cutting capital gains, slashing regulations on business, ending the estate tax, expanding offshore drilling, etc., etc.! Unlike my Great Grandfather, Balls is grateful for political allies wherever they happen to live in this great country of ours. Perhaps Jethro and Balls can do-si-do down to the polls this November and together usher in the age of the glorious flat tax! -Balls
