Salon’s complete list of this year’s Oscar winners poses the musical question: Why in God’s name did Gladiator win Best Picture?! In actuality, Best Picture should have been Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, but, well, the Spike Lee bit will tell you why it wasn’t even nominated…

I saw Bulworth on DVD today and highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. In terms of laugh-out-loud moments, Warren Beatty’s speeches and rhythm-impaired raps, are sheer genius. America would be a lot better if all of our politicians went insane from staying up for six days straight every now and again…

Mark Strauss’s article Let’s Ditch Dixie: the case for Northern secession [Slate] is some of the most repulsive anti-Southern bigotry I have seen in a long, long time. It’s quite amazing what kind of virulent parochial, racist, classist tripe Northern liberals are willing to spew as long as the target is Southern whites. Consider this immortal passage:

The South is a gangrenous limb that should have been lopped off decades ago. More people live below the poverty line in the old Confederacy than in the Northeast and Midwest combined. You are three times more likely to be murdered in parts of Dixie than anywhere in New England, despite a feverish devotion to law-and-order that has made eight Southern states home to 90 percent of all recent U.S. executions. The South has the highest infant-mortality rate and the highest incidences of sexually transmitted diseases, while it lags behind the rest of the country in terms of test scores and opportunities for women.

Now try rereading the above with The black race substituted for The South. This horsecrap sounds like it came straight out of a Klan or Aryan Nation speech. He repeatedly uses slurs about fried chicken, NASCAR, and other things that are too white trash for his tea-sipping PBS-watching ass. Way to show your progressive class solidarity, brother.

Look, I am a relatively privileged white male in the South. I am not oppressed, no matter what the thugs in the League of the South may want to claim. But, this is pure hatred. And after this Strauss has the shamelessness to say that cutting off the South will get us a more leftist country. Well, gee, Marky, if the country is going to be full of snide little faux liberal elitists, who sums up the cultural differences between South and North as, and I quote, NASCAR fans against PBS viewers, then I’ll be glad to see you gone.