Well, I can always laugh at myself as long as it's meant to be a joke. It's one of the traits you have to learn to survive public schools in the US :) The stuff they throw out on the Civil War threads is seldom a meant to be a joke and the Southern-bashing gets pretty viscious.
When I jump in to defend to integrity and honor of someone like Robert E. Lee, someone new to those threads usually ends up calling me a Southern redneck who is probably a fourth generation member of the Ku Klux Klan.
It's funny when they find out that I'm a Cuban American instead of a Southron American. :-)
"The stuff they throw out on the Civil War threads is seldom a meant to be a joke and the Southern-bashing gets pretty viscious."
That's the difference. I think half of her comment was joking and the other half was half-joking due to lack of education on the matter. I don't think she was intentionally trying to be mean. On the civil war threads, a lot of the people genuinely hate the whole idea of The Old South and anyone who defends it or people who militarily defended it.