news-record.com

A bunch of geographers at Kansas State University have strayed across the boundary into morality and concluded that we who dwell in the Bible Belt are a bunch of sinners -- worse even than those drinking, gambling, cavorting folks out in Las Vegas, which everybody calls Sin City.

I don't deny that we Southerners do our share of sinning, but it's not all our fault. As the French would say, cherchez les Yankees.

Many years ago, I lived in Fort Mill, S.C., and had a secretary who was not long out of high school. She recalled her class's post-graduation trip to Myrtle Beach. The kids called that jewel of the Grand Strand "Sin City." Women walked the beaches in bikinis that exposed their navels, and you could actually order beer and wine at a restaurant.

But you have to remember that Myrtle Beach, along with many another idyllic locales across our Southland, is a magnet for Yankee visitors. They come from all points of the compass and bring their sins with them.

Jim and Tammy

My sojourn in Fort Mill preceded the arrival of PTL, an organization headed by Jim and Tammy Bakker, two advocates of sin-free living. At least one of them didn't live up to what they advocated. Maybe Fort Mill became Sin City as well, though Jim did his cavorting in a hotel at Clearwater Beach, Fla. His fellow cavorter was Jessica Hahn, a church secretary who later turned up topless in Playboy and has since used other forums to display her assets in public.

I suppose it is needless for me to point out that Florida is not the generic South. It was formed when a piece of Long Island broke off and drifted southward, accumulating sand the way a rolling snowball accumulates snow. It eventually lodged against the coasts of Georgia and Alabama. Not incidentally, Jessica Hahn is a native of Long Island.

Also not incidentally, Jim and Tammy's roots are in Muskegon, Mich., not in virtuous Dixie.

Jim's frolicking with Jessica Hahn wasn't his only sin and maybe not even his most blatant. He and Tammy sold lifetime memberships to Heritage USA, the "Christian" theme park they established at Fort Mill. They promised buyers free lodging for three nights a year at a luxury hotel at the park. They used the money to build one 500-room hotel, but it wasn't enough to accommodate all the people who pitched in a grand apiece. It did help Jim pay hush money to Jessica, who was threatening to go public with their Clearwater encounter.

So their greatest sin was more monetary than carnal, and that's a sin widely practiced up North, especially on Wall Street. Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme basically promised investors more than it could deliver, though he never offered rewards in the name of Christianity. That was a distinctively Southern touch that Jim and Tammy borrowed from their good neighbors in the Carolinas. Madoff was born in Queens, N.Y., which is safely north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Seven deadly sins

The Kansas State researchers sought to measure violations of the "seven deadly sins" -- lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. Those sins are hard to measure, since nobody has yet invented a device called a sinometer. So the Kansas findings are questionable at best.

If we Southerners are more lustful than folks in other regions, you have to chalk it up to the superior pulchritude of our women folk. If we're more gluttonous than Northerners, it's because the temptation is stronger down here. If you're not constantly surrounded by grits, country sausage, candied yams, cornbread and succulent barbecue (bring me another helping, Miss Peggy) you're not constantly tempted to be a glutton.

As for greed, I would argue that the greed exhibited by Bernie Madoff and the Bakker couple more than offset the modest amounts of greed we practice down here.

Now about this sloth business: The dictionaries define sloth as a disinclination to action or to labor. If that means we don't like to work, you got that right. We can turn our chickens, hogs and cows loose and they'll produce plenty of eggs, drumsticks, sausage, milk and beef. We can throw a few seeds into our fields and they'll eagerly produce corn, tomatoes and watermelons.

Sloth redefined

Those Yankees at Kansas State tried to pin the sloth rap on us by redefining the word. They identified it as failure to live up to one's potential. They judged us by comparing our employment rate with our expenditures on arts, recreation and entertainment.

One could argue that when you're born Southern you've already achieved a potential that is beyond the reach of most other folks, so why exert yourself? Besides, unemployment itself can be a worthy goal. It frees up your time for fishing, hunting, NASCAR, tractor pulls and other cultural activities. Those things keep us busy so that we don't have to live up to our potential for fighting.

As for wrath, we ain't mad at nobody, long as you don't steal our winning football coaches and long as you let us write our own version of 19th-century history.

Envy? If you're Southern, what does anybody else have for us to envy?

 Readers may write to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com.