There are so many ways South Carolina is better than North Carolina. Politics, for sure.

They have a woman governor. She walks down Charlotte's Trade Street and nobody notices.

We have a womanizing rich governor who walks down darkened Florida hallways and Argentinian alleyways to the sound of clicking spiked heels without telling his citizenry he left the state and tries not to get noticed, but does. He always has company.

Their lieutenant governor may not exist. Nobody has ever heard of him, or her. Our lieutenant governor drives 100 mph in Chester County, crashes a plane, and compares poor children to stray animals. He offers to take a lie detector test after one of his political hacks claims to have slept with a lady named Nikki Haley who wants to be governor.

Haley just happens to be a Sikh-turned-Methodist libertarian-conservative favorite of Sarah Palin. The allegation against Haley came after a conservative blogger also claimed to have been close to her. Then a state senator straight out of the Confederacy called Haley and President Barack Obama "ragheads."

Then the same state senator said as loud as he could he was proud to be a "redneck," and that if you took all the rednecks out of the South Carolina Republican Party, there wouldn't be anybody left to fix the tobacco tractor.

The lady who was attacked, Haley, of course won in a landslide June 8. She won the runoff Tuesday against a furniture store owner, a congressman nobody had heard of.

She became a new political star after her own party's punks attacked her. We do not allow men to gang up on women in South Carolina, and the story made news around the world.

North Carolina had a Democratic U.S. Senate runoff Tuesday. Nobody knew who ran. North Carolina even has one Democratic U.S. senator already that nobody ever heard of.

They had John Edwards as a senator years ago, but instead of embracing him and his wanderings, North Carolinians always said when Edwards ran for president and was bound to lose: "But he was born in South Carolina. You claim him."

We did, happily, claim him. Edwards then chased everything that moved and imploded.

Tar Heels turned red when that happened, covered their faces. We bought extra copies of the National Enquirer to see what the baby looked like.

South Carolina had no Democratic Senate runoff Tuesday because on June 8, an unemployed former Army man facing a felony pornography charge named Alvin Greene won easily. Greene did not campaign and defeated a former judge and state legislator who was allegedly a fit candidate. Greene beat him like a mule by 20 points on June 8.

Good. If the other guy - allegedly named Rawl - had won, he would have lost in a landslide to a libertarian-conservative incumbent senator named Jim DeMint and nobody would have paid us any attention.

Now, the world will watch us for months. Will DeMint challenge Greene to a debate? Will Greene be awake if that happens? Will Greene notice if he is convicted?

Greene's inscrutable ways have made worldwide news, again thrusting our great state onto the international stage for something other than the shameful Confederate flag that flies on our Statehouse grounds and the fact that we started the horrible Civil War because some whites in South Carolina adored slavery.

Sure, the South Carolina Democratic Party may be a joke, a shambles, when somebody like Greene is your Senate candidate. There is no Obama this November to bring the young, the excited and so many black voters to the polls for Democratic candidates - when there actually are Democratic candidates.

Alvin Greene might be a joke, but he is our joke.

See, North Carolina people turn red easily. Especially in supposedly cosmopolitan Charlotte, where the pundits and media like to look south and feel embarrassed from the comfort of their offices that they rarely if ever leave. They poke fun at us, then eat lunch consisting of a Lean Cuisine and bottled water. Charlotte is so boring its bigshots sue its banks. Our bankers sometimes steal, get caught and go to prison.

When Jim Black, North Carolina's speaker of the House up there, got caught accepting a paper sack filled with cash in a men's room, those Charlotte and North Carolina people were embarrassed. They were worried not just that Jim took bribes, but Jim hadn't washed his hands.

When their bigshots were caught in an upscale hooker scandal, some in Charlotte even didn't want to know who the customers were. Too embarrassing.

North Carolina had one congressional contest between a conservative Christian zealot and a former TV sportscaster Tuesday. It was a race to see who bored people most. The sportscaster won, and their boring state slept right through it.

We have Nikki Haley on national TV smiling like a bookie who gets suckers to bet three-horse parlays beating back accusations as if they were Myrtle Beach sand flies and people already talking about her national reputation. We have Alvin Greene on national TV saying almost nothing.

Nobody from North Carolina has been on national TV since Duke won the NCAA Tournament.

We all could laugh a little bit because both Haley and Greene are ours. Don't listen to snobby editorial boards and conservative kooks in suspenders and liberal hacks wearing bowties who are embarrassed by this stuff. Embrace our attention.

We have two national candidates in a small, relatively poor state. No other small state, or even a big state, has even one.

In South Carolina, we have no shame. We make news, even if it is for all the wrong reasons.

And we refuse to commit the one sin that has no redemption, that North Carolina commits each and every day.

We refuse to bore.