The South’s Billboard Holy War

[riversedge]

Not a sight I want to see!


http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2015/01/14/the-south-s-billboard-holy-war/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1421232312768.cached.jpg



Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
Samantha Allen


01.14.15

The South’s Billboard Holy War

There’s a weird war happening on Southern freeways. Evangelicals and atheists are taking up dueling billboard space, leaving us wondering: what’s the point?

For those who live in the American South, the news that white supremacist billboards are appearing in and near Birmingham, Alabama does not come as a surprise. Last summer, a billboard reading “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-White” appeared on I-20. Earlier this month, another on I-59 warned that “Diversity Means Chasing Down the Last White Person.” The secessionist group League of the South claimed to have made the former, and the latter, owned by a private citizen, appears to take its talking points from the white supremacist White Genocide Project. But alarming as these billboards may be, they are, unfortunately, par for the course below the Mason-Dixon line.

I didn’t pay much attention to Interstate scenery myself until I moved to the South five years ago. Now, it’s hard to keep my eyes off the roadside. Not only are there countless cars bearing Confederate bumper stickers, there are also prominent Confederate flags flying over I-75, one north of Tifton, Georgia, another just outside of Tampa, and others scattered throughout the region. Alongside I-95 on the way into North Carolina, there are dozens of billboards featuring a racist caricature of a sombrero-wearing Mexican named Pedro, who urges me to stop at the infamous eyesore of a tourist trap known as South of the Border. One of these billboards features a large three-dimensional sausage and promises, “You’re always a wiener at Pedro’s.”

If I drive west on I-40, I will eventually pass a 19-story tall cross outside of Amarillo, Texas because apparently some local Christians interpreted “Everything’s bigger in Texas” as a commandment rather than a cute regional saying. And wherever I roam in the South, doomsday proclamations and manipulative anti-abortion messages about fetal heartbeats are so commonplace that they barely register anymore. The “I’ll Be Back” billboards, however, are particularly arresting. My favorite—if I can call it that—is an absurd, poorly Photoshopped mélange of Jesus, troops, tanks, and helicopters below the emblazoned reminder “I’m Still in Control,” with an explosion in the background completing the mise-en-scène................

[phantom power]

1. Religions are memetic organisms that compete for territory in brains

so the idea of waging this war via billboards isn't too shocking. Any communications channel is a potential resource.

[Erose999]

2. If Jeezus is "still in control" then he's doing a pretty shitty job, lol.

[starroute]

3. In all fairness, South of the Border's "Pedro" goes back to the 1950s

It may be a vestige of an earlier era of racist stereotypes, but it's not connected with the current upsurge of Confederate nostalgia and white supremacism.

[VScott]

4. "Chili today...

hot tamale...

[img][/img]

The "South of the Border" road signs are iconic.

First time I saw them (and the shithole of a tourist trap), was back in the mid-late 70's
when I was stationed at Ft. Bragg N.C., and some of us would take a road trip to Myrtle Beach
for the weekend.

About the only thing worthwhile about the place was the fireworks emporium.

Nothing says being young and wreckless like dropping a weeks pay check on roman candles, buzz bombs
star shells, etc, the heading out to the sandpits with a couple of cases of beer for a good old fashioned
fireworks fight.