Bias against the South ---Neal Boortz

[Rebel]

I’ve encountered this for years … in spite of my ratings success … and completely ignoring some markets where my show on tape delay garners higher ratings than Rush Limbaugh (my hero – PBUH) live – many station owners and managers just won’t take the chance on my show because they consider it to be “Southern.”  By that they mean that since I’m syndicated out of Atlanta, Georgia the quality of my work just has to be inferior to other talk show hosts who broadcast from the exalted bastion of New York City.  Anti-South bias is nothing new to me – we’ve been fighting it since the first day of syndication.  That leads me to this article from the Wall Street Journal, written by a man named Thomas Geoghegan, who describes himself as “a lawyer in Chicago.”  That should tell you about as much as you need to know.  But Mr. Geoghegan wrote a piece about Boeing’s decision to build a plant in South Carolina.  Here’s what he had to say ..

    Why is Boeing, one of our few real global champions in beefing up exports, moving work on the Dreamliner from a high-skill work force ($28 an hour on average) to a much lower-wage work force ($14 an hour starting wage)? Nothing could be a bigger threat to the economic security of this country.

    We should be aghast that Boeing is sending a big fat market signal that it wants a less-skilled, lower-quality work force.

First … let’s state the obvious facts that Geoghegan conveniently overlooked.  Let’s take the F-22 Raptor jet aircraft.  Where is it built?  Marietta, Georgia.  How about some of our Navy’s finest fighting ships?  Pascagoula, Mississippi.  Piper Aircraft?  Vero Beach, Florida.  Then there’s that new Mercedes MS350 I purchased from Mercedes Benz of Buckhead?  That was manufactured by the fine people of Alabama.  The BMW SUV I traded in on the Benz?  That was made in South Carolina.  The surgical instruments used by most of the world’s orthopedic surgeons?  Naples, Florida.  Yeah, Mr. Chicago lawyer, those “less-skilled, lower-quality” workers from the south really are sucking it up big-time in the manufacturing world.  Has it ever occurred to Mr. Geoghegan that the high-wage workers of Seattle may not be worth more or better skilled, but are the benefactors of a union-mandated workplace?

Not to mention Gulfstream in Savannah, Nissan in Canton, Ms., Kia in LaGrange, Georgia, and Hyundai in Alabama.

[JohnnyReb]

Shhhhhhh....don't let this get out but this time when the civil war starts we'll have manufacturing...

[whiffleball]

Toyota in Georgetown, KY.

[Ptarmigan]

Rush Limbaugh is from Missouri, which is "Flyover Country".

[Karin]

No kidding, JohnnyReb.