SOUTH AND NORTH: Good opinion piece by John Shelton Reed on the South's perception of the North and the North's of the South. One paragraph I liked:

Most Southerners who know New York (I lived there for five years) know that there's a kind of outer-borough New York guy (it's almost always a guy) we get along with just fine. He is working-class and usually Irish, Jewish or Italian, but these days sometimes black or Latino. He is what historian Paul Fussell called a "high prole," largely defined by his skills and "pride and a conviction of independence." When Mr. Fussell identifies disdain for social climbing, fondness for hunting and gambling and sports, and unromantic attitudes toward women as his other traits, Southerners should recognize the Northern variety of what we used to call a "good old boy" (before the label escaped captivity and lost all precision). "A solid, reliable, unpretentious, stand-up, companionable, appropriately loose, joke-sharing feller," in the description of Roy Blount Jr.

Via the MCJ.