West Virginia Shenanigans

I was just perusing CNN.com and came across this little nugget of nastiness:

"Police chief stopped man from saving gay friend"

Apparently, police chief Bobby Bowman of Welch, WV is being accused of pulling a man off his gay friend while trying to administer CPR during a heart attack. The victim later died in the hospital.

I have no idea about where the truth lies in this matter, but no matter what the outcome, it probably won't surprise me. For all of its Democratic leanings, there is a strong streak of social conservativism that runs through southern West Virginia, which is funny, since everyone there is so poor relative to the rest of the country that our fine social distinctions become moot when we move out into the wider world. Every one of us from southern West Virginia is a poor hillbilly to the rest of America. That's assuming, of course, that a given American even knows that West Virginia is a separate state from Virginia. I've run across an appalling number of people who don't.

Between this and the slaughtered pets thing, the good ol' Mountaineer State is going to start getting an even worse reputation than it once did, I fear.