What gets me is that underneath all that southern pride and prejudice is an acceptance of a racist, abusive system that built the so called "southern gentility." I know people who try to claim that having pride in your great Confederate ancestry is simply about having some kind of familial loyalty, but to me, it's failing to acknowledge that your family member fought for a brutal, violent, and downright disgusting system that still has re-repercussions in our society today. To me being proud of your great-great-great-whatever, the Confederate so and so is like having pride in your great grandfather the Nazi concentration camp commandant. It's just not something I could be proud of, ever. But in the United States we've glamorized the Old South to such a degree that people forget that the South has a lot of really nasty history, that's pretty damn recent. The whole veneer of Southern-Gentility-and-aren't-we-sweet-have-a-mint-Julep just sets my teeth on edge.

Whoa... sorry, that went a bit past regular book sporking. But thanks for giving me the chance to vocalize what bothered me so much! (Other than the Obvious Mary Sue being Obvious.