The Lie of Northern Sophistication

Every so often something will remind me of an old conversation for no apparent reason. One of those conversations recently came to mind when I was out enjoying God’s great outdoors. Back in the 90s, I lived in North Carolina and had a friend from the Boston, Massachusetts area. The topic of radio shows came up, and she mentioned rather proudly that she listened to Howard Stern every morning. What she said next took me aback. She pointed out with typical Y**kee smugness that, “rednecks aren’t sophisticated enough to get it.”

I had listened to Stern’s show on multiple ocassions at the behest of coworkers before this conversation and found it repulsively purile and needlessly vulgar. I didn’t really have the understanding of things then that I have now, so it just seemed like kind of a rude thing to say and told her there was nothing sophisticated about bathroom humor which, of course, proved her point in her mind. So began the train of thought that brought me to this writing.

Howard Stern’s celebration of the crude and inappropriate is well known and it would be unnecessary to detail it here. He is a pioneer in the “shock jock” style of radio host. He is also just an example of what the twisted Northern sensibility holds up as “sophisticated.” Art is a window into a culture’s soul and works like Piss Christ and dung paintings of Mary are quintessential examples of what fills the Northern “art” museum.

HBO’s most lauded, praised and “sophisticated” show was Sex In The City. For those readers fortunate enough to be unfamiliar, it is a cavalcade of all things the Northerner holds up as sophisticated, worldly and educated. The show is about a group of highly promiscuous women in the Yankee capital (New York City) wearing expensive clothes, drinking a lot, and absolutely obsessed with talking about sex and everything related to it in the most intentionally disgusting and foul manner. It should come as a shock to none that the show was written by a homosexual male who wrote the show about homosexual men and just changed the main characters to women. Other shows on HBO and other such “premium” channels can be seen reveling in needless nudity and such prolific use of profanities that understanding what the characters are saying becomes difficult.

Northerners have an almost inexplicable fascination with vulgarity. They take pride in their overuse of foul language. You’ll never meet someone more proud of their limited vocabulary than a Northerner who uses the f-word so much it sounds like they have Tourette’s Syndrome. They tend to use other unseemly language with equal abandon but that most vulgar of words has a special place in their hearts. This is how unintelligent middle schoolers imagine grown-ups talk, and for some reason they seem to continue to think this is sophisticated. It is the opposite of common sense, which would dictate that sophistication entails the ability to get the same point across with out debasing oneself.

When we look at the books the Northerner reads by reviewing the New York Times Best Seller list we see trashy romance novels and formulaic spy thrillers filled with unbelieveable Mary Sue characters. In the much misnamed “non-fiction” section there are books on white fragility or “why whites object to being genocided,” why whites are bad, and Black Lives Matter drivel. Even their non-fiction teaches them nothing. It is convoluted lies written by people bent on making us hate ourselves and further our own destruction. This is not sophistication. It is garish, gaudy and with out substance.

It is pitiful, in a way, to see so many people so deeply misguided. They genuinely think that something that comes from that great Northern hellscape of New York is somehow more sophisticated than something from another place. These poor deluded souls see mean spiritedness, foul language and the prideful display of ignorant vulgarity to be things worth praise and admiration.

Since we know that the lie of Northern sophistication essentially amounts to how 13 year olds talk when they think adults aren’t around, one may wonder what actual sophistication is. Thankfully, the answer is rather simple. It is good manners, which is familiar territory for those raised Southern and can easily be learned by those who were not. It is knowing how to get a point across without using the language of dullards. While the ocassional cussword can be used to emphasize a point, sophistication is knowing that it must be rarely done in order to maintain potency and never in polite company. Another aspect is education. Being educated is far different than getting a college tuition receipt with the word “diploma” across the top. It is reading books and accumulating knowledge.

In short, it is being a gentleman and being the best man that we can.

-By Atilla