Hijack: Odesio, who were you before the name change?
I wouldn’t call that baiting as much as humanly possible. Hillary for President? NASCAR sucks? Country/Western is rubbish? RUBBISH? That is so British and just silly–I wonder if the locals didn’t think that these cars were the victims of vandalism, not out to make provocative statements. If they had really wanted to draw some fire, they would have scrawled Jesus sucks or worship Satan or Get Whitey etc.
The lady at the filling station was out of line. Those cars would have garnered some stares up here in northern IL, but I doubt any station owner would have called in “the boys”. IMO, it had to be staged. I confess to making jokes at the expense of rednecks and hillbillies sometimes, but I know that southern courtesy is deep and gracious. I really don’t think her ire was genuine (and really, where are there “good ole boys” on call like that?).
I am glad they gave their cars away in the end. The show was entertaining and silly–that sounds about right for Top Gear (from what I’ve seen of it).
Hey, is that story about Arab, Alabama true - that the guy who painted the water tower misspelled AHAB and they just re-named the town Arab?
Quasi
What about the other 12%?
Hmmm…there’s a song in there somewhere, if someone were inclined to write one!
Actually there may be a grain of truth to that–this is what Wikipedia has to say about it, although I can’t vouch for it’s accuracy.
Am I the only one reminded by Bill O’Reilly’s shock that a black owned restaurant was populated by well-mannered, polite, friendly individuals? Sounds similiar to this woman’s experience and her feelings on said experience.
Ogre, I grew up in Huntsville, and my husband spent his teen years in Grant, which looks to Arab as the nearest metropolis, and it wasn’t that many years ago that people were only half-joking when they said that black people should be careful not to let the sun set on them if they were on Sand (or Gunter) mountain.
It’s gotten much better–for one thing, the Hispanic influx means that blacks and whites can hate “illegals” together (that’s tongue in cheek, but the arrival of so many Hispanics really has transformed the issue). I wouldn’t say that racism is “worse” in the area, but there is a distinct pattern of race relations there–as there are most places, as every place has it’s own history. The race relations of the area are worth studying, IMHO–the absence of much plantation slavery in those hills, as well as the isolation and poverty of the area have created a unique and interesting dynamic.
That said, I doubt this girl knows any of that. I assume she picked it for the name–if she wanted to make a point about race relations, Scottsboro certainly has the more notorious past.
If place names are important… I wonder what kind of experiments you could run in Girly, Alabama, which is in the same neck of the woods…
How dare you use Yankee math and claim to be a good ol southern boy!
Really, I go thru Arab all the time. The people there are quite friendly and have always been civil and polite to me. Even when I stop at the store in SCA garb.
Sure there is racism out there, but it is not near as blatant and overbearing as it once was. The older generation seems to bear it more than the younger generations.
Osip
Yeah, if seeing cars with that fairly inoffensive stuff written on it makes you want to throw rocks, then I think you’re the one with the problem. Manlove rocks (or whatever it was) and Hilary for President are things you could expect to see in a lot of places anyway.
I also think it was probably staged.
I wouldn’t necessarily assume it was staged, but from the woman’s comments, she must have known she was being baited, especially considering the fact that there was a cameraman in the parking lot. Filming her. The exchange probably happened over a longer time and was edited to make it look like getting “the boys” was a response to seeing the cars in the first place, rather than her (correct) perception that she was being harassed for a viewing audience.
Not that threats of violence and rock-throwing is an appropriate response, but it’s predictable enough, if you stop at enough gas stations to find someone to take the bait.
Why are you pitting it? Shouldn’t you to welcome this ignorance-fighting experiment?
I went to school with Muslims who were perfectly willing to eat pork. One girl was the daughter of immigrants and had grown up in this country. She was typically westernized in a lot of ways. She was always dressed modestly and kicked it up a notch when she went to Lebanon to visit her in-laws, but I remember one story she told me in particular that made it quite obvious she didn’t care about maintaining a halal diet. She was invited to a barbecue by a male friend before she married and he, being rebellious, took great delight in telling his family that he had brought a Muslim over for dinner.
She got really pissed off by this because, and I quote, “Damnit, those ribs looked really good.”
Alright, that really made me laugh out loud. 
But yeah, I live in Alabama (although, granted, in Tuscaloosa, not some tiny village), and I see women going around in hijab more frequently than you would expect.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I wouldn’t be surprised. It is pronounced to rhyme with Ahab. (I grew up near a town called Eclectic that was originally Electric [named when electricity was first beginning to appear in homes]; supposedly the confusion was started by my great-grandfather, a doctor who hung a shingle advertising “S.R. Milner, Eclectic Medicine” (meaning among other things he treated men, women, animals, and injuries as well as illness).
One of many irritants in that is his comment “Bible bashing redneck deeply Christian part of the Union”.
Dude: if you’re gonna slam it get it right: Bible BEATING redneck deeply Christian etc… Bible BASHING is actually antonymous with what you’re going for.
I’m always baffled by stories like the OP. What did they think- that she would be stoned, gang raped, have her head shaved, drug into church by her feet and forcibly baptized? And if she did think that would happen, then why in hell did she attempt the experiment? Southerners may be many things and many of those many things not good (clannish, bigoted, hypocritical, etc.), but generally speaking they could teach the real “Burka Babes”.
Are you aware that there are blue eyed Muslims? Or that one of the most famous traditionally attired Muslim girls ever in the west was remarkable for her gorgeous green eyes?
I can top that: I was at the Sam’s Club in Tuscaloosa when I lived there when an Arab family, women in traditional attire and males identifiably Middle Eastern even if they weren’t with hijab and veil wearing women*, were speaking in their native tongue and- I swear this happened- the conversation went like this:
I have no idea what they were talking about, but the only English in the conversation was nine eleven and the rest was some form of Heathen and laughter. This was in the middle of Redneck Tuscaloosa where people were laying in stores for a game weekend. There were odd looks very definitely, and some suspicious and pissed off glances (including my own- dude, that’s just stupid to do), but not one person so much as confronted them about it.
*True story, and funny as hell (if only to me): I was at either that or another Sam’s Club once when a hijab/veil wearing Arab woman showed her SAM’S CLUB I.D. card and on it- you guessed it- a picture of her veiled and in the hijab. I would have loved to have been there when that was made. (Montgomery, where I live now, has a lot of Arabs due to the military base and a couple of large businesses here that have Arab investors or Middle Eastern business interests [most notably the Blount family businesses- they built the Shakespeare Festival/Fine Arts Museum and made many millions in business with the bin Ladin family consulting on the Riyadh airport and various other massive Saudi building projects.)
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? I have polled a number of people on this topic, and they all agree with you and me that bible thumping (sorry, dunno about beating) = obnoxiously promoting the bible; and bible bashing = criticizing the bible.
And … apparently we are WRONG! This very matter came up in a thread a couple of months ago and the majority said that “bible bashing” is proselytizing. I was sure a quick Google search would disprove them.
How wrong I was.
Some cites:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Bible-bashing
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-4-2006-95181.asp
Pretty strange, huh? Oh sure, you can find a few references to “bible-bashing” in which the meaning is “criticizing the bible” but they are quite scarce.
Hmm. Weird. And yet “Obama bashing” would definitely be somebody who hated Obama.
Here’s the YouTube of the "An Arab in Arab"- it’s a bit longer than the CNN version. Incidentally, the girl in the hijab was accompanied by a much older man (Akbar Ahmed, no less). Locals discuss the name of the town as well.
How about “Obama fisting”?
By the way, that video made me smile. Big tip of the hat to those folks for upholding Southern hospitality.