Lest anyone underestimate the nature of the opposition in the South, read on.
I live in rural north Mississippi, the buckle of the Bible Belt, an area where 60,000 people congregate on a town of 10,000 for college football in the fall, or in bygone times to prevent an African-American from enrolling in the state's leading university. Except that bygone hasn't completely gone by.
I live far enough out in the country that I have to drive "to town" to get to a grocery store. Through poor planning on my part, I had to waste the gas to do that this morning. (More after the jump) . . .
About halfway to town is a gas station/convenience store/barber shop, and I stopped there, Obama sticker on my back bumper, to get some (don't tell Baby) cigarettes. I pulled in and parked in the haphazard way that country folk do, and went inside. I noticed the guy behind the counter was surly this morning, but didn't think much about it because he's always surly, as I told him to keep the penny's change and headed out the door.
"It looks like someone ran up behind your car and slapped a sticker on it," he said, to which I agreed.
"You better be careful where you park."
Not having been literally threatened by anyone for a number of years, I was a little slow on the uptake, said only "No, man, this is America," and left.
Now, I stop in this place fairly often, and am familiar to not only to the guy behind the counter, but his three cronies who were drinking coffee in the area to my back, though we've only rarely spoken. I've had a Dem bumper-sticker of one kind of another on the car since I bought it in 2003, and never had a word said about it. The bigots are crawling out of their holes.
Which is good. Now we know who they are.