Does Southern speech suck?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

One of my colleagues sent me the following inquiry. Can anyone help? I am
momentarily (?) stumped.

> One of my students wants to look at negative attitudes
> towards Southern speech for her next writing project but,
> although we can
> find plenty of linguistic analyses of it, we cannot find any emotional
> editorials either declaiming or supporting Southern speech. Any hints
> you could give us?