Mississippi: 51st in everything

Published on 9/7/07 in Culture

Ranking 51st is fitting for the only third-world state in the union.

Yesterday, my wife and I spent three hours driving through Mississippi en route to Texas and realized we couldn't tell which housing FEMA provided and which trailers were purchased with bad personal credit.

Yes, Mississippi sucks. Merely looking at a map of the U.S. makes it hard to gauge just how crappy this state really is -- one needs to dig deeper, beyond lackluster test scores and the single largest collection of interstate potholes that would put any former Soviet backwater to shame.

Once inside its state line, one needs less than a minute to understand why Mississippi will never rank higher than 51^st in anything that matters. How can Mississippi rank lower than 50^th in any intellectually honest poll? Simple. As an unincorporated territory of the United States, even Puerto Rico has to be better than Mississippi in any category that ranks states from best to worst.

Sure, Mississippi might have the most historians still writing that the Civil War was an internal squabble over economics (a number 1 ranking for sure). But having the most C-student historians in any subject isn't cause to call in sick and head to the closest pond with a pound of live bait for some celebratory fishing. Counting the number of confederate flag stickers claiming "heritage over racism" was a fun exercise until we lost count.

As we sped through the state in a rented Pontiac Vibe (real Detroit muscle), the biggest shock came when we stumbled upon an NPR affiliate while aimlessly searching the radio for anything other than country music and songs about freedom costing more than $1.09. We were overjoyed to hear some intelligent programming and wondered aloud how Mississippi Public Broadcasting found enough in-state members to fund the station. We were genuinely stumped.

Then we lost the signal and realized it must've been a fluke. We were probably picking up NPR thanks to all the aluminum litter dotting the interstate.

So we settled on a country station and catalogued the varying homespun clichés country music relies on. We found only five variations on a theme, all of which seemed to resonate with every family of five stuffed into the single cab pickup trucks passing us, which are: finding your faith after a life changing event, getting your first truck, losing your virginity on a dirt road, imbibing delicious light beer that makes you do things you later regret, and rabid patriotism without need for questioning anything but your gut feeling. Each song sung over the same slide guitar with the kind of twang that is as exaggerated as a Matthew Lesko infomercial hawking government grant money.

However, the country music proved to score the rest of our trip quite well. We found each successive town to be a better backdrop than the previous for the next Mad Max movie. Thanks to all the rust, economic desperation, obvious class/race oppression, and other familiar thematic elements, Mississippi should have a corner on any future dystopian movie that Hollywood produces.

It wasn't all bad and we even managed to find a few positives. Mississippi provides cut-rate muffler and radiator service. And if you need to buy or sell used tires, this is the state for you.

That's about it, though. Ranking 51^st is fitting for the only third-world state in the union. As we crossed over the Mississippi river into Louisiana, we wondered where it would fall in the scheme of state rankings. We quickly agreed it was at least 50^th.

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Bodero

NPR affiliate ... We were overjoyed to hear some intelligent programming

It's tough being the smartest person in the world, isn't it? Don't you just wish everyone realized how brilliant you are as often as you do? Written on 9/7/07

My Comment:

bgkimzey

It is hard to argue that NPR is not more intelligent than country music. Written on 10/7/07