So I’m in the car the other day listening to the radio and, like, there’s this commercial, right? And it’s this guy with a thick-as-a-brick Southern accent who’s supposedly calling some random person to find out if they’re a “real Southerner,” asking them to pronounce “y’all” and wanting to know if they’ve got Bama Jelly in the ‘fridge. So of course, to make the ad funny, the woman who answers is total Brooklyn-down, who can’t seem to manage “y’all” at all and has never even heard of Bama. She says she’s from Florida–obviously a retiree in, like, Naples or Boca or someplace very Golden Girls–and he tries to convince her that to be a true Southerner she’s gotta talk the talk and always have the jelly on-hand. Hahaha, end of commercial.
What’s wrong with this picture?
- The woman, sassy as she is, never hangs up on the freak. Nor does she take his number off the caller id and have him prosecuted for harrassment.
- Bama Jelly is, like, the total crappiest jelly ever. For real. The most generic, insipid toast spread line, bar-none. It’s the condiment equivalent to “cheese food.”
- Bama Jelly is made by Welch’s which is based in Concord, Massachusetts, ground-zero for Yankee carpetbaggers.
- Who cares about definining what is and isn’t “Southern” anyway? Is this part of some conservative, nationalist/regionalist movement, not unlike what the 1990s saw in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where we’re all trying to decide who belongs where? If so, should we prepare now for an impending wave of regional cleansing? Should I stock up on Bama to avoid persecution by the mob? “Please, don’t hurt us! We’ve got the jelly! And we looooooove it!”
Yeah, I know it’s just a commercial. But it’s irritating. I guess it’s particularly annoying to me because New Orleans is so much about what constitutes “real” New Orleans culture. We’ve done such a good job of preserving ourselves that it’s all we can do. You can’t make a movie about New Orleans without it being all jazz and gumbo and red beans and Mardi Gras…. It’s one of the very few gripes I have about the city I otherwise gladly call home.
sturtle [dot] com 