OMG! It turns out I was right about the Deliverance thing! I just looked it up on Wikipredia. Even though it was a pure guess that Deliverance was set close to Charleston, South Carolina, and Banjo picking hillbillies might be working at the 787 plants there, it turns out I was about as close as you could get. From Wikipedia's entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance ):

"Deliverance was shot in the Tallulah Gorge in Tallulah Falls, Georgia and on the Chattooga River, dividing the states of Georgia and South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot as well in Clemson, South Carolina. Since the film's release, more than thirty people have drowned attempting to recreate the canoe trip along the section of the river where the film was shot."

It turns out it was shot only 250 miles from Charleston! Perhaps if the union ran ads with banjo picking inbred albinos from Deliverance building 787s, they could have prevented the significant work that went there from being sited there by sheer public pressure. Such advertising would be about as fair as those 2004 Swift Boat ads, and should therefore have been allowed on TV. I guess the union just needs to be thankful that they clutched 787 final assembly and delivery out of Charleston's hands courtesy of moi (per Boeing).

O.K., so I was right about a somewhat tasteless comment. Nothing of great import there. In fact, there probably isn't a great amount of pickups with shotguns hanging in the back windows with confederate flag bumper stickers in the 787 Charleston plant parking lots. Probably not even any hillbillies working there. Or inbred albinos. Or people that can pick banjo that well.

Come to think of it, I worked with a guy on the military side of Boeing up here in Seattle that looked and acted remarkably like Jethro from "Beverley Hillbillies." I think he even used a rope instead of a belt to hold up his jeans. He was a nice guy, and a friend. Not sure what happened to him. I bumped into him years later at a fair near here. He was obviously from the South with his drawl, but I never remember asking him where he was from, specifically.

Just because someone that reminded me of Jethro worked at Boeing up here doesn't necessarily mean any such people like that work on the 787 in Charleston. I hate to stereotype people, and I appologize if I offended anyone. I think I was just voicing my displeasure with Boeing's outsourcing decisions by bringing that unfortunate but not probably true analogy up. As Boeing blames me for 787 final assembly being here in Washington State, I guess we got as much 787 work up here that Boeing was even unwilling to give us.

There are still deep stereotypes of Southern people in these Northern Climes. Inbreeding is a frequent stereotype I hear. So is the Deliverance banjo boy as a model of people in the South. I'm sorry I let myself use those stereotypes.

People in the South are probably not any more racist than us in the North this far after the Civil War. They probably also don't fly the Civil War flag any more than anybody else in the country, as that is equally tasteless and racist everywhere in the country. That Senator that kept a noose and a Civil War flag in his office was likely an aberration (I don't think he was even born in the South). Southern people don't vote Republican because they are one issue bible thumping voters or are afraid Democrats will take their guns away or because they are racist. They likely just do so for the only reason sensible people vote Republican--they earn six figures and Republicans keep their taxes lower than Democrats would, and they believe people should stand or fall by themselves in life, with no help from the government. It must be a prosperous place, indeed, where all races of people get along just as well as they do here. At least that's as optimistic view of the South as I can muster. Maybe its not entirely accurate, but certainly more accurate than the Deliverance thing.

So, even though I was geographically correct, that doesn't mean I was culturally correct. So, Southerners, please accept my appologies. I know there are good people down there, as well as bad, just like here. You don't have to look farther than this website to see we have our problems up here with corruption. I hope that is not an issue down there, and all inspectors down there are actually allowed to do their critical jobs and are appreciated for doing so. That would be a refreshing thing, indeed, to see for once.