That's pretty disingenuous Joe - Margaret Mitchell, Faulkner, Poe, Flannery O'Connor... ALL upper class Southerners, antebellum or not. Disagreeing with the politics is one thing, but trying to forget and/or minimize their contributions to the fabric of American culture because of old regional hatreds is absurd and unhinged, especially in a time when that hatred is institutionally unidirectional and fundamentalist.
[–] Joe_McCarthy ago (edited ago)
Except that I was specifically discussing the Old South - which was the context in which the Southern upper class was being discussed on this thread. It offered a particular cultural-organizational-economic model that preceded whatever came after it. That Dixie's plantation system produced little in the way of enduring high culture is not insignificant - particularly given that idle gentlemen are often the stuff of such culture bearers.
Flinging accusations of sectional hatred is merely a distraction. A somewhat typical one from touchy Southerners, I must say. It is not endearing and I've noticed it with Germans and some other groups; Jews being one of the more notorious.