Ohio isn’t all flat, but the parts with major interstates are, hence most people’s impression. South central Ohio (where I’m from) and southeastern Ohio are hilly.
My uninformed impression of Vermont is that it’s small, verdant, and liberal. New Hampshire, by contrast, is small, rocky (the Granite State, don’tcha know), and conservative.
I’ll divide my impressions of states into the good, bad, and neutral. You might want to note that I’ve never been west of the Mississippi.
The good states:
New York - I first think of silos and farms upstate, and then my mind goes to the city.
Alaska - big ass mountains with bush pilots flying everywhere.
Washington/Oregeon - a bunch of people wearing flannel.
Utah - perfect mountains and ski towns.
New Hampshire - I just picture the Old Man of the Mountain’s face falling off and rolling down.
Maine - pine forests with small rural towns.
North Carolina - beautiful mountains and the smell of burning Hickory wood.
South carolina - rednecks, hills, and firework stores on the side of the highway.
The other west states: the beautiful national parks.
The “bad” states:
New Jersey- Nothing but highways, suburbs, gas stations, and people talking with the NJ accent :eek: .
Texas - assholes with cowboy hats in the rural areas and then severely polluted cities.
Neutral:
Ohio - I can’t think of anything except an image of the Wright brothers sitting in a shop experimenting with airplanes and bicycles. Also I remember making fun of Ohio (perhaps wrongly) because their state quarter’s only claim to fame is that it’s considered the birthplace of flight. I’ve always felt that’s NC’s claim.
Kansas - just nothing for hundreds of miles of perfectly flat land. I also think of marijuana growing on the side of the roads like a weed… is this true? I got that idea from my cousin who was at an army base and told us that.
Deep south states: I just picture those tree-lined scenic roads like in Forest Gump.
Merkwurdigliebe you done good, except there wasn’t any call for bad-mouthing our fellow states of Alabama and Tennessee. By the way I’m a Methodist too; not by birth but thru marriage.
You’re referring back to Alabama in regards to Mississippi shows a lack of understanding of both states. Your statement regarding Alabama is not only unoriginal but not factual. There are bible thumpers in Alabama and Mississippi, but they exist in all other states as well, except possibly Massachusetts (home of the open-minded Puritans). As to your other remark, I’d challenge you to give a cite on that which doesn’t date back more than 30 years. Fact is that Mississippi is now prosecuting one of the KKK members for his offenses back in 1964 (his original trial was dead-locked because one woman refused to convict a minister).
I’m not sure where to start with this, but I don’t want you to say I cherry-picked your post.
“poorly educated, Christian conservatives”
[ul][li] poorly educated - Alabama acknowledges the need to improve their educational system, as does Mississippi. I wouldn’t call it “poor” and also would point out that even Sen. Kennedy thinks education needs improving nationwide.[/li][li] Christian - what state isn’t predominately Christian?[/li][li] Conservative (including "slam dunk red state’) - It seems this could be said of many other southern states, many western states (not on coast) and several mid-western states.[/ul][/li]
Football is important, even in Mississippi, but the universities have high academic standards. The only one I can attest to is Auburn, which has very high requirements for admittance. I’m sure the Univ. of Alabama stands on par with Auburn. The rivalry between them is probably the basis of your statement.
"Is the black population not marginalized (more so than in other states)? - Yes more than in Vermont, Iowa, North Dakota, Wyoming and many other states that have very small numbers of blacks. In the part of Mississippi that I live in the answer to your question is “no”. That is true in the parts of Alabama that I am familiar with. If you go to the Delta region of Mississippi, you may prove me wrong. The poorest part of Mississippi was chosen for the largest casino area (south of Memphis) and is now doing quite well. I’ll let someone from Alabama tell you more about conditions there.
“Creationism” is not considered as a given. Some believe in it, most avoid the subject and some like me believe in evolution.
“Gov. Wallace” Gawd, the man has been dead and buried for years. Before that happened he repented for what he’d done regarding segregation. Even his enemies admitted that he never was anti-black, but rather an opportunist, which I’ll agree was just as bad. “Judge Moore” - I have no defense for him, but would point out that the crowd outside the courthouse was made up of people from places that surprised me (I couldn’t believe they traveled that far for such sillyness).
My family moved to the south in 1949, so I’m a displaced yankee. Down here we have a saying “The South will rise again”. Many outsiders think we are refighying the civil war but we mean that we are rising in things that count. I originally lived in Atlanta until 1961. If you only knew how much different it is now than then. That is true across the south, so don’t tell me how it was, because that is history. You hear? (Georgia expression) 
New England states freak me out. Not the big cities so much, but the rural areas. Maybe it’s too many Stephen King novels, but when I’ve been there I would meet people who were born and raised in one small town, and who hadn’t even been to the neighboring town just twenty minutes down the highway. I find that really Children of the Corn-ish. Gives me shivers just thinking about it.
By the way, do the several mentions of no speeding in Ohio refer to the Ohio Turnpike? I guess I’ve heard of Ohio being notorious for speed traps or something, but I’ve never really seen it myself. I’m not from the part of the state with the Turnpike, so that’s why I’m wondering if it’s all on that road.
Those were the first stereotypes that popped into my head, not necessarily an accurate depiction of current reality in those areas. I’m sure the image in my head is not an original one.
No cite is needed or possible because I can’t cite to my own imagination. I wouldn’t expect people to cite that California is full of wannabe movie stars and surfers, and I can’t provide a cite that everyone in Missouri looks like Dick Gephardt.
In Minnesota that’s only for nine months of the year. During the other three, it’s hot and humid with swarms of rabid, flesh-eating mosquitos (we cal these two seasons “winter” and “road construction.”)
(It’s really sunny and 72 here all year. We just tell people that it’s cold and we have mosquitos to keep all the weirdos out.)
You’re right, there are fewer Packers fans in Iowa and Minnesota! 
(I kid, I kid!)
Those are fight’n words!
I grew up in Dayton. Sorry.
I find it utterly fascinating that there are no first impressions about Virginia! Which I think is kind of nice, living there and all.
Here was mine…
Oh, you just saw the Potemkin village we put up to discourage Texans from moving in.
I’m from Texas and I have neither a goofy hat nor a gun. However, my brother the vet/cowboy has both a goofy hat AND a gun, but he does not wear it on his hips. He keeps it in the glove compartment of his truck, where it belongs He has a very large dually, diesel truck that always has a horse trailer hooked up to the back and cow poop all over it…I’m not helping things, am I?
Maybe it’s because I’ve lived around Austin most of my life, which is VERY different from the rest of the state, but I’m just scratching my head trying to figure out why y’all think we’re all backwards, ignorant, rude assholes. I can’t say I have that impression about any state, much less my own. The contempt and hostility from some posters is disheartening. Anyway, a few off-the-cuff thoughts about other states:
Louisiana: Hot, steamy, dirty. Falling into the ocean.
New Mexico: Poor, brown (the landscape, that is), desolate.
Montana/Wyoming/Nebraska: Empty. Beautiful scenery.
Minnesota: Cold. Lots of water, very strong Old World influence.
Utah: LDS! And lots of sand.
New Jersey: The Garden State, right? Are there any gardens there?
Pennsylvania: Amish-land. Yes, I know (from reading the Dope) that the Amish live in other places, too, but that’s just what comes to mind.
Florida: Hot, steamy, dirty. When I visited last year, though, I saw how beautiful it was, like Houston could be without all the smog, and more trees.
Washington: Liberal. I’m surprised to learn from this post that the majority of the state is conservative.
I don’t fault anybody who hasn’t been here for thinking Alabamians are
slope browed chest beaters who still use their appendix on a
daily basis because that’s how we’re portrayed. It would be similar
to me thinking that all Californians (or at least all southern CA’ns)
are airheaded, self obsessed, excessively vain and generally loopy liberals (never mind that they recently elected a Republican governor) or that all New Yorkers are either nasally irritating unfriendly boisterous cretins or else ultra-liberal intellectuals who still have their party favors from Leonard Bernstein’s Black Panther fundraiser.
When I worked in hotels in the late 80s and 90s I was always surprised
by people who asked such questions as “are there any places in
Montgomery [a city of 250,000] where you can buy supplies for a
computer?” (lemme see- that’s one of them TV looking contraptions
hooked up to a typewriter, ain’t it? Kind of like THE ONE I’M
USING TO CHECK YOU IN!") or who wanted to know “Does Montgomery have
restaurants that serve things other than fried chicken?”.
I am from Alabama and I just returned to work at the University of Alabama. In this relatively small city (metro area 100,000) you’ll find restaurants of all ethnicities (including a sushi bar in the University cafeteria) an art-house movie theater, scholars and students from all over the world, several art museums, a gay bar, and lectures on all subjects imaginable (this month includes a Jewish folklorist lecturing on the short stories of Sholem Aleichem and several Elizabethan scholars speaking in honor of an exhibit here). The campus is one of the most wired in the nation, the Business School is considered one of the best at any public institution in the nation, and there are lots of other accolades that could be lauded on the campus; we simply are not all rubes. Unfortunately, the resident of Tuscaloosa to receive worldwide press in recent weeks is this fellow, though the fact that nobody is willing to co-sponsor the bill and he’s being lambasted in state, local and school papers as the pandering mongoloid that he is go unnoticed.
But for some specific questions (and again, I’m not faulting the original poster for his preconceptions):
That demographic is most definitely well represented here, but this is not their sole homeland. They are not a majority so much as they are a very vocal and, most importantly, very well organized significant minority. They alone would not be enough to sway most elections, but when added in with people who are already voting Republican (for monetary or otherwise more intelligent and informed reasons) they can swing it, and hence they have to be courted. They are not, however, as prevalent and predominantly as the media (who absolutely just llloooooooves to give them airtime) would suggest.
Yes, but this is far from a uniquely Alabama problem.
In a word, no. While there has not been a black governor in AL, there have been many black mayors (even of B’ham, the state’s largest and
wealthiest city) and other politicians. Blacks are found in all professions, there is surprisingly little prejudice against interracial marriages, and hate speech (of the racial variety) is absolutely not tolerated in public places here. It’s really not Mississippi
Burning anymore.
By some, most definitely, but again, that’s not a uniquely Alabama problem. And what you don’t see on Daily Show and CNN is the huge numbers of Alabamians cursing a blue streak whenever the Bible-thumpers get some asinine soon-to-be-overturned-but-not-before-throwing-fuel-on-the-furnaces-of-the-stereotypes
legal victory.
Actually, the state SAT scores aren’t bad at all. George Wallace’s
“segg-er-gation now…” speech was 40 years ago; he’s been dead for
several years and had long since publicly retired and had even long since recanted and, most believe- sincerely apologized for
his earlier actions. While we are indeed the state in which Roy
Moore placed a “washing machine sized” 10 Commandments statue in the
Supreme Court building, we are also the state that impeached
and removed him for doing so. (Most of the mobs seen in the media
footage of that incident were constituted of non-Alabamians who came
here in chartered buses from all over the country to show support.)
Like those comments about California and Missouri connotes the same impression as the one you labeled Alabama & Mississippi with. But I do appreciate your making it clear that you do not believe it to be true.
It was nice to see my statement confirmed.
Thanks Sampiro for coming to my aid so competently.
Is quoting yourself allowed?
I’ve never been to any of the Southern states, and based on occasional Pit threads, my impression is that they are largely filled with extremely religious people. And they love George Bush.
Also, a cross country drive showed me that South Dakotans REALLY don’t like abortion. They much prefer Wall Drug.
Isn’t Hawaii full of fat spam eating surfers?
You and I must be the only people in Texas that don’t have a goofy hat or a gun.
Besides not being ether of the above, I don’t have a red neck, talk like a hayseed, act like a good ol’ boy and brag to everyone about how great Texas is, or throw around millions of dollars I inherited from my grand-daddy who was an oil man back in “aught-six”.
And I’m apparently the only one in the whole damn state like that. :smack:
That’s because of the electoral college- the all or nothing red blue maps would imply that all southerners love Bush like Germans love Hasselhoff and St. Peter loved da Lawd, but in maps of votes by counties you’ll see that every southern state had pockets of Kerry support (especially in population center- in Alabama, strangely enough, the Kerry counties formed a perfect unbroken line across the middle of the state). From these same maps you would think that California is overwhelmingly pro-Bush as well- most of the state is red (though the little inklings of blue happen to be home to 15 million+ people). Then when you look at the
tri-color map you’ll see even more disparity. While Bush carried the southern states, his strongest allegiances are actually the midwest and west.
Bush received 1.176 million votes in Alabama, a clear majority, but Kerry, a non-charismatic Yankee whom even the most ardent Democrat would need political Viagra to get much of a woody for, still received almost 700,000 votes. Had the Democratic candidate been more likeable and less wishy washy and actively campaigned in the southeast (which Kerry-Edwards, which will possibly go down as the worst managed campaign in history, didn’t) it’s very conceivable he could have swung the election down here or at very least finished neck in neck.
New York–There’s the huge, thrilling metropolis, and there’s rest of the state, about which we know nothing.
Ohio–Warm-hearted people, or maybe that was just my relatives.
Texas produces some of the most melodious accents in the US.
Florida–I stopped at a hardware store in central FL. I sheepishly said, “You can tell by my accent that I’m not from around here.” The clerk laughed and said, “Everybody here is from someplace else.”
Tennessee–Everybody from there longs to go back.
Maryland–In Salisbury, even with a map, you’ll get lost.
Michigan–Tough, hard-edged people.
At least a couple of Gulf Coast States have reps for kowtowing to polluters. Like I should talk. My own home town of Anderson, IN is the home of two spectacular pollution events, one of which happened yesterday (and is still burning.)
New Jersey–New York humorists would have us believe that Jersey is an industrial sewer. I don’t believe it, but I know little else about NJ.
