Ted Turner's Better Half

I confess I have a love-hate relationship with Ted Turner.

On the one hand, the man's politics are simply odious. He is the poster child for authoritarian globalism and the United Nations uber alles.

On the other, he is the media genius responsible for my favorite cable channel, Cartoon Network. Twentysomething animation addicts like me certainly owe the man a debt. If only our payments weren't going to the U.N.

My ambivalent feelings toward old Ted used to cause me concern. I doubted my own libertarian ideological purity. That is, until I realized that there are, in fact, two Ted Turners.

The first is the one we all know and love to hate. The second is the one who realizes, despite the first's globalist ambitions, that regionalism matters.

I know the second Ted exists because his newest cable TV channel is something called Turner South.

In part, Turner South exists to give Ted another outlet for Atlanta Braves baseball games, but much of the channel's programming is aimed at appealing to distinctly Southern sensibilities.

There are shows about Southern cooking, shows about Southern music, shows about Southern sports, and on and on.

Frankly, much of it doesn't appeal to me. I've lived in the South my entire life and, apart from owning my own Caribbean island, can't imagine living anywhere else. But the appeal of country music and NASCAR racing remains lost on me.

Nevertheless, the South is also the birthplace of jazz and the blues. It was home to William Faulkner, and it is still dotted with the grand, gothic ruins of days past, despite the efforts of New South scalawags to pave over the place.

More to the point, we have fried catfish and barbecue, even if the folks in South Carolina perversely slather mustard sauce on their pork instead of good old Alabama vinegar sauce.

I'm not certain if Ted No. 1 knows exactly what Ted No. 2 is up to. While the first is trying to unite a world that dares cling to its local customs and traditions, the second is reinforcing local cultures and traditions. And not just any traditions, but those of the most politically incorrect people on Earth, Southerners.

If the folks in Hollywood and New York get wind of what Ted Mark II is doing, they may have his head on a pike. After all, we know that our bicoastal culture czars regard loving Dixie as very near a capital offense. It's at least a hate crime.

There are plenty of reasons to distrust former Sen. John Ashcroft, and we'd all be better off if the Justice Department he is soon to lead were boarded up or turned into squash courts. But the fact that he dares show respect for heroes like Robert E. Lee isn't one of them.

Now here is Ted Turner, consciously or not, admitting that, no, the South isn't just like the rest of the country. It's different. And some of those differences are worth preserving and even celebrating.

Yes, I know Ted puts the same "Beastmaster" movies on Turner South that he puts on every other network bearing his name, but you get my point.

And, if the South's culture is different, why should anyone be surprised to find its politics are different, too?

Now I'm not saying its politics are perfect. It seems some strains of Yankee Puritanism have taken deep root in Southern soil. Purtanism is like Yankee kudzu. As a result, I can't buy Tennessee whiskey on Sundays, and I have to drive 15 miles to another county to buy it at all. But since this is exactly the sort of local outrage the federal government doesn't seem interested in ending, I don't see why I need the feds at all.

So, the next time you're channel surfing, stop on Turner South and reflect that at least half of Ted Turner's brain actually does work properly.

And if you're lucky, Turner South won't be showing Patrick Swazye in "Road House" for the billionth time.

January 22, 2001

Franklin Harris is an Alabama native and a barbeque fiend. He writes for The Decatur (Ala.) Daily.