Steve M. unearths some interesting statistics about attitudes towards banksters: southerners hate them as much to slightly more than the rest of the country, despite the fact that the south is far to the right of the rest of the country, ideologically. Presumably, this is simply straight-up anti-Semitism.
Please tell me whether you think each of the following descriptions apply or do not apply to Wall Street bankers and brokers:
A. Greedy
Everyone: 80%
Southerners: 81%
Tea Party Supporters: 62%D. Dishonest
Everyone: 65%
Southerners: 68%
Tea Party Supporters: 47%E. Overpaid
Everyone: 77%
Southerners: 78%
Tea Party Supporters: 58%
El Cid
Good visual here on the concentration of income in the hands of the top 1, the top 0.1, and the top 0.01% of income-getters.
The Point O Ones number just about 15,000 and their category begins at just over $9 million and average income is $27 million.
Holy shit, but they must be creating a lot of jobs, like, jobs must be seeping out of their pores. They can hardly go to the bathroom without shitting out several hundred jobs.
They’re like gods walking among us; while bitter and foolish mortals, jealous of their power and beauty, tempt divine retribution.
Napoleon
I don’t know if that is snark or not, and I do think that a lot of what you see out of the South (and the Republicans) is driven by racial and religious resentment, but bankers’ were not popular in the South since before the Civil War. I don’t think that is anything new and dates way back to a time when if you were Jewish you were not going to be working in the higher levels of the important banks.
Mino
The last line of his post is a pretty conclusion.
Spaghetti Lee
Pretty hilarious. Those are some large numbers for self-described Tea Party supporters, but I assume at some of them think it’s good to be greedy, dishonest, and overpaid.
Morbo
Come on, Doug, 3% margin of error.
Plethded
Why can’t democrats and republican rank and file hate bankers for the same reason? The bankers control BOTH the democratic and republican party leaderships.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
But what’s with the Tea Party? I thought they were populists, too. Did they figure out where their funding is coming from, so they just fell into line like good little authoritarians?
Short Bus Bully
Won’t matter. There’s no traction down there for OWS because of the perceived LAZINESS of the protesters and the push-back from the pride of the 53%’ers (I’m NOT lazy!). I see my friends, who are not low information voters, getting on this bandwagon and it’s really pissing me off. They wrap up the entire 99% movement into one sentence: “They are too lazy to find work and just want a hand-out.”
Makes me want to beat the shit out of someone.
That easy to digest sentence is going to be the end of the 99% movement. Everyone except white working ‘Murkins is lazy. End of fucking story.
srv
65% of Tea Party supporters also have an unfavorable opinion of OWS.
Go figure, they just hate everybody.
32% of women have not heard of OWS. Seems like some outreach needed there.
Dougerhead
@Napoleon:
I guess it’s oblique snark.
4tehlulz
Obviously, this shows that the Tea Party is just another tentacle of the
JapaneseZionist conspiracy against our freedom.Otherwise, how do you account for the Tea Party liking Lloyd Blankfein so much?
Brachiator
WTF?
The difference between “Everyone” and “Southerners” varies by at most 3% in these three questions, and you think that this is significant? Or that the presumed approval of Tea Party people (outside the south?) indicates that they are a beacon of social enlightenment?
amk
So once again confirming teabaggars are an astroturf racist movement of rich, white rethugs.
kindness
Obviously the Teahaddists have their heads up their collective arses.
El Cid
@Napoleon: A long time ago, Southern white yeoman farmers and smallholders and even plantation owners worked very closely and respected their local financiers, but resented large banks in part because they were concentrated in the North and set quite unfair terms of financing.
Combined with the tariff policies and subsidy policies of the federal government to protect fledgling industry in the Northeast, those same white Southerners profiting off the brute exploitation of African and the not nearly so brute exploitation of even other poor white Southerners saw themselves (correctly) as being manipulated and constrained by Northern finance.
It goes back a ways.
Spaghetti Lee
@Short Bus Bully:
Any resident of a federally-subsidized red state who complains about other people wanting handouts ought to shut his damn mouth. If it wasn’t for tax dollars from Californians and New Yorkers pouring in, the South would be a fucking wasteland.
Dougerhead
@Brachiator:
Teabaggers are much more prevalent in the south, though.
Corner Stone
@Dougerhead: It’s gotten impossible to do good snark around here.
cat
To understand the teaparties favorable view of banks you have to remember the demos of the Teaparty is upper middle class older white people.
They knew their bankers or their bankers were in the Kiwis (whatever the local small bussiness group) with them and so they identify with their bankers as being one of them.
When I say banker I don’t mean the tellers. The majority of the population interacts with tellers, your stereotypical upper middle class small bussiness person interacts with the tellers and the bankers.
Chris
Brachiator, the question at least for me isn’t about whether 3% of the South hates bankers more. It’s why the South hates them AS MUCH as the rest of the country but is STILL so far to the right of the rest of it. That’s what piques my curiosity at least.
MTiffany
Not everyone in the South is a gun-toting, bible-thumping, gay-bashing, woman-hating, neoconfederate luddite.
That being said: if you’re in the room, silence is assent.
Short Bus Bully
@Spaghetti Lee:
Totally, TOTALLY agree. But try explaining that to them!
According to the emails they get in their aol accounts they are the rugged individualists kicking ass and taking names while everyone around them drags down their Galtian legitness.
It’s like a zombie sickness or something.
dollared
+1
Anti-semitism comment is weird.
Chris
Spaghetti @ 16, HEAR HEAR!
El Cid
@Spaghetti Lee: How dare you demand consistency and the internal logic of argument from white Southern politics? Have you no respect for our peculiar
institutionways?Martin
@dollared: Gotta follow Doug pretty closely to get that. He’s simply squaring the Kristol/Bobo circle there, both of whom declared OWS to be an anti-semitic movement due to their assertion that Wall Street was greedy and dishonest (therefore anti-semitic, because when you put greedy and dishonest together you automatically conclude Jew? I can’t pretend to follow Kristol/Bobo logic on that one).
Doug is just drawing the obvious conclusion based on VSP logic.
mary
I don’t think it is anti-Semitism. Much of the South, like the midwest, is rural. The banker is not the farmer’s friend. Even when things are going well, there is an adversarial relationship.
Steve
The two biggest demographic groups in the South are white folks, who are overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, and black folks, who vote Democratic. For example, in Alabama, 94% of the 2008 electorate was either white or black; 88% of whites voted for McCain and 98% of blacks voted for Obama. Outside the Deep South things are less dramatic, but the overall concept is the same.
Without calculating out the exact numbers, I think it’s safe to say that a big chunk of those conservative Southern white voters are Tea Party supporters. As we’ve just seen, the Tea Party, despite the claims that they’re principled anti-bailout folks whose motivation has nothing to do with the black guy in the White House, is much less anti-Wall Street than everybody else.
So let’s assume DougJ’s snark is right and a big driver of anti-Wall Street attitudes in the South is anti-semitism. Well, Southern voters on the whole are just as anti-Wall Street as the country as a whole, but the Tea Party contingent is not. That means the non-Tea Party Southerners must be more anti-Wall Street than average, in order to make the average come out the same as everywhere else. So did we just prove that Southern blacks are massively anti-semitic? Be careful where you point that snark!
Brachiator
@Dougerhead:
Point noted. Kinda begs the question about what the categories “Southerners” and “Tea Party Supporters” mean.
But I’ve been having fun with all kinds of lazy and faulty analysis, masquerading as polling and statistics today. For example,
@Chris:
The 3%, in a single question, is not significant. The part of the survey mentioned doesn’t really address attitudes, or allow for any meaningful conclusions to be drawn.
But yeah, the question about why Southerners are often confused about so much, is interesting.
John M. Burt
southerners hate banksters them as much to slightly more than they hate the rest of the country.
FTFY.
El Cid
@Brachiator: Usually people seem to use “Southerners” to mean “Southern whites”, perhaps because black or Latino or Asian people in the South don’t come to mind when people use the term “Southerner”. I suggest we always endeavor to clarify, because Southern African Americans are Southern too. And likewise affect generalized stats and surveys on politics.
SenyorDave
@El Cid: Great point, El Cid. I was in lower Manhattan two months ago and I just missed stepping in a pile of job-creator shit.
SectarianSofa
@El Cid:
Yes. Other than your comments, the braciator comments, and whatever I’m forgetting, this is the worst thread ever. I’d blame DougJ for putting up such a crappy survey, but I don’t know his name any more.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Yep. Good points.
As an aside, I remember looking at some voting results that excluded Asian Americans because their numbers were too small statistically to be accurately reflected (I think these may have been some exit poll results).
jonas
@El Cid: Was just going to say this. There are an awful lot of Blacks and Latinos in the South.
Jude
Presumably, this is simply straight-up anti-Semitism.
I hope you were being snarky there, because, if not: Go fuck yourself.
Seriously–I grew up in Mississippi, and poor people there (of whom I was one) HATE them some rich bankers. The fact that they might be Jews doesn’t even enter into it for the people I knew. They hate rich motherfuckers in New York that have all the money when they don’t.
As to why they continue to vote for the people heavily committed to giving more money to the rich motherfuckers on Wall Street, well, you’ve gotta turn to racial resentment for that.
Also, as other have noted, there’s not really any statistically significant differences in the data you have listed.
So I hope I’m reading this wrong, and that you were just dicking around. Because if not, you’re a stupid asshole. And I say this as someone who generally likes what you write.
SectarianSofa
@Spaghetti Lee:
Unles you’re counting Texas as the South. For the survey, I’m sure the definition of “Southerner” is in the fine print there somewhere. Nope, I don’t see it.
Here’s the original survey … http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/10/24/rel17e.pdf
Villago Delenda Est
You’re channeling Bill “I’m always breathtakingly wrong, and proud of it!” Kristol. I’d see my doctor (or exorcist) about that, stat.
SectarianSofa
@Jude:
I’m guessing he just doesn’t give a shit about the South, based on some color-by-numbers-drawn flawed gestalt impression. This is like some kind of retarded Village analysis. (And I also say that as someone who generally likes what he writes.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Jude:
It’s snark. It’s a reference to a thread from last night, where Bill “I’m always breathtakingly wrong, and proud of it!” Kristol was implying strongly that OWS has a strong undercurrent of antisemitism. The implication itself is antisemitic, but Bill’s too fuckheaded to realize it, of course.
shortstop
@Short Bus Bully:
Even worse than that — most of the OWS protesters are white working Americans.
After Obama shellacked McCain by seven points, too many people went around with straight faces insisting that only people “on welfare” or who were “getting a free ride” voted for Obama. To hear these fuckers tell it, only a handful of Americans actually have jobs. And they’re doing their best to make it so.
SectarianSofa
@Villago Delenda Est:
Too much inside baseball for me. I surrender.
(Actually, the post still sucks, because of the insignificance of the poll and glib presentation of it.)
Jude
Oh, alright.
Then I withdraw my prior criticism and offer apologies to Doug J or whatever he wants to be called now.
I’d be less inclined to say shit like that if I didn’t see similar, honestly-held opinions from other alleged liberals.
shortstop
For the love of Dixie! All of you missing the joke are pikers, not remotely up to WyldeEyedPyratt’s flatfooted standards.
SectarianSofa
@MTiffany:
Since I’m already cranky… what does this even mean?
SectarianSofa
@Jude:
I’d be less inclined to believe it if every time someone mentions some ‘backwards’ state, everyone falls over themselves to righteously condemn everyone there, and tell them to rejoin the Confederacy or some shit. (Not helped by Rick Fucking Perry and the like, sure, but get some perspective. Dig a little deeper into the data, at least.)
SectarianSofa
@shortstop:
I agree with you. And DougJ is a troll, also, too.
shortstop
@SectarianSofa: What’s your point? There are some cherished traditions here. Haw.
dww44
@Short Bus Bully: Being a Southerner and an AOL user, I take issue with generalizations that seek to equate those 2 facts with being on the far right of the political spectrum. Now, maybe, if I communicated in Comic Sans MS font, the conclusion might be fairer.
@MTiffany: I don’t assent in silence either, but as a real minority (lifelong white Democrat) here in the South, I observe that it is also too easy to lump everyone on the right in the same teabagger pot. Not true. I have a couple of lifelong Republicans friends who are disenchanted with the ever rightward tilt of their party. Not enough yet to depart the party or the voting, but still….
Mary
Don’t they know that Charlotte is the new Wall Street?
Someguy
It’s unfair to call white Southerners anti-semitic, when they do such a good job of hating damn near everybody pretty much equally, including each other. If that isn’t the epitome of fairness and the complete absence of bigotry, then I don’t know what is.
Cue hateful liberal Southern redneck response in 3…2…1…
Brachiator
@Mary:
And Charleston is apparently the new San Francisco.
Who knew?
dww44
@Someguy: Have you ever spent time in the South? Seriously, have you? Southerners of any stripe don’t have a monopoly on hate and hateful rhetoric, as you have amply demonstrated.
In my 30 year job with a national firm and who had occasion to attend many a conference and a class in NYC, along with people from all over the USA, I can assure you that prejudice and bigotry are not the sole provenance of the South. How else do you explain the far right takeover of so many Mid-western and North eastern states last November?
Making generalizations about regions and peoples to support one’s own beliefs about them is generally not conducive to respectful debate and it certainly doesn’t promote mutual comity.
LittlePig
Oh good grief. They are Yankees.
(seriously, everything goes back to antebellum times down here)
LittlePig
And it seems like there must be a lot of Tea Partiers in Wisconsin for that Charlie Foxtrox up there to have occurred. PROTIP: Wisconsin is NOT in the South.
Corner Stone
@Someguy: GFY!!
What, too late?
Dougerhead
@Jude:
I was snarking on Kristol’s claim that OWS is motivated by anti-Semitism.
Tom
The time is right, I think, to start calling the Republicans the Greedy Oligarchs, again and again. “GOP” might take on an even smellier taint than it already has.
Corner Stone
@The Dougerhead: I’m telling you man, as much as I love you, I think it’s time for you to take your talents to South Beach.
This place is fucking poison for a writer with your natural ambitions. I cry to myself a little each time I see one of your “Derrr, really?” posts here. And then to see some subtle flower of snark get gang tackled by the overtly PC civilitarians who have overrun this once proud snarkhole.
I just think you’re wasting some of the prime of your contra writing style life. And that kind of breaks my heart.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
There’s a big difference between snark and wit. Wit is much more difficult to carry off well, but is much more entertaining.
Snark is often just fast and lazy. To even get the joke in the snark here, you would have had to read the earlier lead post about Kristol.
It’s kinda like a bad comedian saying, “Now, in order to get this next joke, you had to have attended yesterday’s performance.”
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: This isn’t a bastion of wittiness. Not sure why you mention it.
Snark is itself a form of reductionist comedy, IMO, and relies on a basis of knowledge by the target audience to be effective.
Just like DougJ’s multiple forays into the WaPo jungle weren’t particularly funny to people not in on the joke.
If I wanted wit I’d watch an NCIS marathon.
OzoneR
@Chris: .
because n*gg*rs, gays and abortion, that’s why.