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B E A R I N G S
The Image Makeover
My friend Jen had just arrived from New York and could barely suppress her amusement. “I’ve been reading a lot about Atlanta in the papers recently,” she said. “Insurance scams, people running through security, and now an assassination. What the hell’s going on around here?” It’s true. My hometown is having a tough time. Maybe we’re just not adjusting well to a post-Sept. 11 world. Maybe our capacity for fortitude is somehow diminished. Atlanta, after all, is the most forward-looking town around, having elevated boosterism to an art form. All the pessimism and darkness that come with a far-away war against a hard-to-find enemy just don’t jibe with that mojo. Whatever it is, three Atlanta incidents have made the national news lately, a sort of Trifecta of Trouble that don’t make me, or any other citizen, too proud. It’s unfortunately a serious problem. Having spent years, decades even, trying to undo centuries of bad cultural karma — some of it very deserved — Atlanta and the South are shooting themselves in the foot with the publicity equivalent of a 12-gauge shotgun. The first tempest featured the allegedly unwitting shenanigans of Michael Shane Lasseter, the football fan in a hurry who shut down the local airport (it happens to be the world’s busiest) because he forgot his camera. Afraid he’d miss the flight to see his beloved Georgia Bulldogs — actual alumni of UGA make a point of stressing that he did not, in fact, go to their school — he brushed past security guards. The ensuing debacle cost tens of millions of dollars and countless headaches, not the least of which belong to Lasseter himself, who’s now on the wrong end of a civil lawsuit and the butt of some pretty damn funny jokes. Nevertheless, more than anything we all were relieved that it was him, or someone like him, instead of someone really dangerous — though it did, of course, worry us that he was caught more or less accidentally. He wasn’t even hiding and it still took the Atlanta police, airport security and the National Guard almost six hours to track him down ” at the airport. The next installment in the Trifecta came when we learned that a Georgia couple had been scamming their insurance company, claiming the wife had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks. A nefarious scheme to be sure, and (with apologies to Scooby Doo) they would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for the rocks in their head. When an insurance rep inquired about the case with local law enforcement officials, one of the deputies noted he had seen the wife toodling around town, very much alive. Whoops. This, of course, looks doubly bad. Not only was this duo greedy and heartless beyond description, they were undone by their own stupidity. So now we have a story that paints Georgians as hard-hearted and dumb-assed. These first two both have an indirect connection to Sept. 11; in fact, neither would be possible without the terrorist attacks, and certainly neither would get national play without the connection to the new world order. But the third leg of the Trouble stool began nearly a year ago, when the sheriff-elect of Dekalb County, one of four counties that comprise the better part of metropolitan Atlanta, was gunned down in his driveway. Flat-out assassinated. A fruitless investigation ensued until late November, when former Sheriff Sidney Dorsey — widely suspected as corrupt and a whispered-about suspect in the killing — was formally charged with murder, along with several associates. Also uncovered was a plot to kill several other county officials, including the county’s district attorney. Excuse me — What year is it again? Do I live in Montana, circa 1835? Or Chicago in the early 1900s? None of these incidents paint a pretty picture of this booming metropolis, the one that once declared itself ‘too busy to hate.” Atlanta has long bragged about its smarts, and that’s been borne out. Martin Luther King, Jr. hailed from here. Titans of industry roam the halls of the downtown dining clubs. Entrepreneurs like Ted Turner plant seeds that bloom into industries of their own. Taken together, this Trouble Trifecta, though, has me worried. Could all of a city’s collective accomplishments be undone by a handful of stupid people? Since the end of the Civil War, which a miniscule part of the population has vowed to never forget (and those folks are generally easy to pick out — the crazed eyes give them away), the South, generally, and Atlanta, specifically, have fought a more modern war, one that even cultural elites in New York and L.A. would understand: the image makeover. Bottom line is we’re incredibly insecure and worried about how the rest of the country views us. We as a city have gone to great lengths to secure our place as, if not one of the world’s great cities, at least one that you don’t hate to live in. The airport and the diversity of industries with either headquarters or major offices here make the city as close to recession-proof as any major city could be. On occasion, we have faltered. That “city too busy to hate” stuff launched decades of hucksterism that culminated in the 1996 Olympics, the ones that we promptly commercialized to the hilt. The ones where the city seemed less upset about a bombing than about the fact that the crooked head of the International Olympic Committee failed to declare them “The Best Olympics Ever.” Part of that growing up has been a not-so-subtle rejection of a lot of our Southern heritage. History resides uncomfortably in the Southern consciousness. If pressed, most of us would just as soon forget most of the pre-1970s era ever happened. “Sophisticated Southerner” is a contradiction in terms for most of us, and many a comedian — Brett “Grace Under Fire” Butler and Jeff “You Might Be a Redneck “” Foxworthy leap to mind — have made more than good livings perpetuating the worst (or best) of Southern stereotypes. Only in the realm of literature has the South managed to rise above stereotypes in the world of pop culture. But even then, while Flannery O”Connor or William Faulkner explored the elegant nuances and rhythms of Southern life, writers like the late Lewis Grizzard reveled in its coarser side. More recently, John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil captured the minds of legions of readers and film-goers who were fascinated by Savannah’s eccentric characters. Think back to the notable Southern characters throughout the history of TV and movies. The only relatively bright one I can come up with is Matlock (and his smarts were of the “aw shucks’ variety) and maybe those mischievous Duke boys, Bo and Luke. (Their nemesis, Boss Hogg, and his lieutenants, Enos and Roscoe, count among the worst stupid Southerner caricatures). And so maybe we’ve come full circle: Life does imitate art. The local sheriff thinks so much of himself that he’s willing to go to any lengths to stop anyone who dares to stand in his way. Sheriff Sidney Dorsey: the new Boss Hogg. It actually fits in an uncanny way. Dorsey’s assisted by two of his own henchmen. He’s all fired up by the fact that this other guy, Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown, might uncover all the greed and corruption that has plagued the department. So, filled with a hubris limited to those with more than a couple screws loose, he offs him. As reporter Jim Galloway pointed out in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, Dorsey’s unfortunately right in line with the cultural stereotypes surrounding sheriffs in the South. And like, most stereotypes and clich’s, there is some element of truth in them. So where does this leave us? Unfortunately, once again taking up the grin-and-bear-it mantle, stressing that we’re not all like that; and feeling an odd camaraderie with folks from New Jersey, the ones who wince through The Sopranos the same way we cringed at The Dukes of Hazzard. Pop culture makes strange bedfellows. Jason Kelly is a writer based in Atlanta whose work has appeared in numerous national publications. He’s the former editor of digitalsouth, a magazine covering business in the South. He recently wrote “The Great TV Debate” for PopPolitics.
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