The nature of the South is changing faster than the stereotypes are. Much of the South now looks like San Jose. Is it still southern?

But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.

Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don't have labels for middle-class Southerners.

I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

There's an ethic that says: 'You don't run off to the church for the sacraments of salvation, you establish a personal relationship with God. You don't run off to the courts for justice, you settle it yourself. You don't run off to labor unions to sort out your work relations, you can take this job and shove it if you don't like what you're doing.

I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.