You know, the Alabama thing. The scarlet A.

It's been at least 17 years since the acerbic political operative branded the state as two metropolitan areas - Pittsburgh and Philadelphia - with "Alabama" in between.

Yet some pundits still dial up Carville's old chestnut whenever the political spotlight shines on Pennsylvania.

Enough already, some say.

"It was out of place then, and it's out of place now," says Philadelphia public-relations executive Larry Ceisler, a Western Pennsylvania native long riled by the line.

Even Carville, in an interview last month with Politico.com, said the description might be passe. "I am sure everything changes over a period of time," he said.

Enter Vince Fumo, bombastic speed bump on the highway to absolution.

In remarks that almost no one took seriously - but many found troubling - the state senator last week declared that, given the chance, Pennsylvania legislators might vote to reinstate slavery.

Cue the banjos.

Fumo's remarks, which he deemed a deliberate exaggeration, have received little media attention outside Pennsylvania.

But coming on the heels of a contentious, high-profile Democratic state primary in which race, class, God and guns were all marched out, might l'affaire Fumo conjure the ghost of Carville anew?

In interviews last week, a number of political observers didn't think so, and disputed that Pennsylvania has a backwater image.

"I don't think people have a distorted view of Pennsylvania," Ceisler said. "We had a lot of national press here [during the primary], and I think we did very well."

Gov. Rendell, in touting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama, created a racial stir of his own during the campaign. Rendell bluntly noted that some of Pennsylvania's "conservative whites . . . are probably not ready to vote for an African American president."

While his comment drew some heat, exit polling in Clinton's 10-point victory seemed to affirm Rendell's view.

In exit polls, about one in five voters said race was among the top factors in making a primary choice. And whites who considered race a major factor went for Clinton by a 3-1 ratio.

But that's hardly unique to Pennsylvania, said J. Whyatt Mondesire, head of the state NAACP.

"Racial-pattern voting is all over the country," Mondesire said. "I think a lot of those states where Obama won the primaries or caucuses are going to stay red states because they're not going to vote for an African American."

Asked why Pennsylvania so frequently wears the "politically backward" tag, Mondesire, a newspaper publisher and former reporter, laughed.

"Because we're close to New York; it's easy to come down here and run stories about it," he said. "And also, when you compare it to New York and Washington, D.C., which are media centers, we are still a very white state. Only 11 percent of the population is African American."

Obama supporters note that their candidate finished 6 points better among whites in Pennsylvania than among whites in Ohio.

He might have fared better - as would have the state's image - if not for his remarks about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion.

Those words struck many as condescending, said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. The comments also belied the fact that there are fewer rural vs. urban divides on issues among Pennsylvanians than some might assume, he added.

"We have a lot of voters who are culturally conservative," Madonna said, "but on the other hand, it's not just a bunch of rubes out there in Podunk, Pa., that hold these views."

In 2002, the Center for Opinion Research at Millersville University reviewed the results of nearly 20 statewide polls to compare the views of rural and urban residents.

Some results were surprising. Roughly the same percentage of rural and urban residents - about 20 percent - believed that abortions should be outlawed, and opposed equal rights for women and homosexuals.

Guns and capital punishment had more rural supporters than urban, the study found. But rural residents were stronger supporters of government intervention in community problems and less likely to believe that competition is key to fair prices.

Among those not swayed by such findings is former Philadelphia Daily News columnist Sandy Grady, who writes for USA Today. In a recent column, Grady noted Pennsylvania's lack of female and minority statewide officeholders, and suggested a sign be posted at its borders: "Welcome to Pennsylvania - You are now in the 19th century."

His column said the state was "trapped in amber between the Civil War and the 1960s civil rights revolt, which it managed to ignore," and said that until Clinton and Obama, the best way to be elected here was to be "male and pale."

In 1991, Grady was among the first to report Carville's "Alabama" remark, back when Carville was helping to orchestrate Democrat Harris Wofford's huge upset win over former Gov. Dick Thornburgh for the U.S. Senate.

Carville's exact phrasing, and precisely when he first said it, has been lost to time, Grady said in a telephone interview. Not even a team of USA Today fact-checkers could nail it down, he said.

"He said it many times during the Wofford campaign, and probably changed it a lot," Grady said. "My memory of the original quote is that the only thing between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is cows. What he meant was that it was rural, not necessarily racist - though it is."

Carville did not respond to a request for an interview for this article. But he told Politico.com that the makeup of the central and northern tier of the state - churchgoing and culturally conservative - simply had reminded him of Alabama.

No slight intended, he said.

Carville admitted, however, that his quip "has become part of the lore of Pennsylvania politics."