There has always been more to New York City than the "people who run things." Ever since the heyday of Jacksonian Democracy, an on-again off-again alliance has existed between ordinary Southerners (that is, most of us) and New York's working people. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, this coalition was famously described as one of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." Later, it elected Franklin Roosevelt to four terms. Later still, it reassembled to elect Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Most Southerners who know New York (I lived there for five years) know that there's a kind of outer-borough New York guy (it's almost always a guy) we get along with just fine. He is working-class and usually Irish, Jewish or Italian, but these days sometimes black or Latino. He is what historian Paul Fussell called a "high prole," largely defined by his skills and "pride and a conviction of independence." When Mr. Fussell identifies disdain for social climbing, fondness for hunting and gambling and sports, and unromantic attitudes toward women as his other traits, Southerners should recognize the Northern variety of what we used to call a "good old boy" (before the label escaped captivity and lost all precision). "A solid, reliable, unpretentious, stand-up, companionable, appropriately loose, joke-sharing feller," in the description of Roy Blount Jr.