Big City Professor Comes to Town

We just had a big city college professor visit Stump County. He gave a talk on intolerance. He seems to think that we are intolerant and that the world and Stump County would be a better and happier place if we would change.

The Stump County Chronicles are a satire about an imaginary county located in rural Virginia. Stump County, population 999, is filled with imaginary people who are struggling with real life problems as they attempt to move into the 20 century. The writer, Half Whitt, is imaginary. He works for the imaginary newspaper, The Sneezeville Sentinel.
Trying to contact Half Whitt? Send letters to editor@southsidemessenger.com, or mail to The Southside Messenger, P.O. Box 849, Keysville, VA 23947 and we’ll pass it along!

First he wanted to talk about race. We told him we haven’t had a race problem in Stump County since the county fair in ‘82. It rained and the track was so muddy the horses couldn’t run. Then he called us ignorant hicks. He doesn’t seem very tolerant of our ignorance. We may be ignorant but we ain’t stupid.

He says we must be tolerant of other folk’s lifestyles and choices. He says if a guy wants to marry a sheepdog it is a personal choice. He says if a guy has problems with drugs or alcohol it isn’t his fault. He says if a guy won’t work it is the Gov’mit’s fault. He says lots of things like that.

He told us we shouldn’t hate anyone. He says he only hates people who hate people. Then he told us he hates liars and he said, “I hate ex-president Shrub because he got us into a war and he lied.” I asked him if he hated Yo Mama because he lied. He said “Yo Mama didn’t lie, he was just mistaken and you are a racist if you say anything different and I hate racists.”

I asked him if it was all right that I hate paying taxes. He told me, “You should consider it a privilege to pay taxes to help support me and all of my friends while we work to correct the wrongs in the world and stamp out hate.”

It turns out he hates ignorance but not stupidity. He hates people who eat meat, people who raise meat, people who don’t agree with him, Republicons, preachers, Christians, gun owners, people who smoke tobacco (marijuana is okay), loggers, hunters, trappers, conservatives, tea bagger folks, millionaires who don’t give him money, businessmen and women, farmers and a couple of dozen other kinds of folks and he especially hates folks that hate other folks.

I told him I hated being called an ignorant hick just because I don’t know everything he knows. I told him he was ignorant about many things that most kids in Stump County know. He can’t trap a skunk, skin a coon, milk a cow, build a barn or a fence, train a coonhound, play a fiddle, cook redeye gravy, plant a garden or fix stuff.

He says he hates people who call him ignorant and he left. None of us hated to see him leave.