I have a long history of being conflicted about Hollywood’s long history of using a Southern accent as shorthand for ‘stupid’.

The practice continued just this past week with a bouncy little video online entitled ‘This Song is Dedicated to the Last Undecided Voter’, modeled on the final 2020 Presidential ‘debate’.

You don’t have to watch the whole thing, as the titular last undecided voter appears about 25 seconds in, with requisite dimwitted drawl.

I myself spotted the liability of a Southern accent as early as high school and began then trying to at least tamp-down my own.  Half a century later, mission accomplished: I’m told that I have an ‘Atlanta accent’.  Not too hot, not too cold…

There are, mind you, beautiful natural Southern accents.  A boss of mine once, a gentleman (truly) from South Carolina, spoke in a sort of precise melody.  Not so much as a single sign of tinkering.

Unfortunately, the ‘other’ reputation of the Southern accent is kept alive by the likes of House of Representatives member from Georgia, Doug Collins.

If you followed the televised impeachment proceedings, you will recall Collins’ carnival barker/cattle auctioneer delivery, a perfectly realized redneck rat-a-tat-tat.

Some decades ago during four years sustained living outside the South, naïf-like I endeavored to be an ‘ambassador’ for ‘It’s not really like that’ in the South.  Shortly upon returning, I realized it was exactly ‘like that’.

Now, today, I realize the entire country is exactly ‘like that’.