Going South of the Border

A short while back, Feddie complained that there were no southerners in Barack Obama's cabinet. Now the final tally is out, and there will be one, lone representative of Dixie: former Houston Dallas mayor Ron Kirk as the US Trade Representative. Southerners don't seem mollified. Consider the reaction of Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston (R):

"Southerners need not apply," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "It's hard to believe that there wasn't anybody qualified for something from the South."

There are a bunch of ways one might play this. The first is to note that Kingston basically is calling for southern-based affirmative action -- right down to the rhetoric, which comes almost straight out of the LCCR's playbook.

Or, one might take John Cole's tact, which would be to note how difficult it is to find qualified southern politicians for elevation when they keep electing people like, well, Jack Kingston:



Hey -- the problem isn't that there are no qualified southern politicians. It's just that none of them are White. White folk want in on the meritocracy, they gotta start raising their game.

Or finally, you might go with my original instinct: wouldn't, under previously forwarded lines of analysis, any southerner who accepted a cabinet position with Barack Obama automatically be an "insult" to the region? I forget if it is better or worse that Kirk is a Democrat, but presumably the fact that he's Black makes it a moot point anyway.