Hey, Alabama, where have you been the last 33 years? The state's tourism agency decided recently that they will use Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" for an upcoming tourism campaign.

In addition to using the song for the tourism agency's 2008 $4.5 million marketing campaign, the agency will use the actual phrase/title "Sweet Home Albama" to market the state. Can you say progressive? Shit, even Hollywood used the title five years ago for a big budget Reese Witherspoon vehicle.

Apparently Alabama residents just hadn't voiced their opinion about it yet. A Birmingham company did some research and found that 71 percent of out-of-state residents and 65 percent of Alabama residents chose the phrase over the other choices given. No word on what those others were, but I'm guessing it was stuff like, "Alabama, Fuckin' A" or "Shit Yeah, Alabama," judging from the last time I visited friends there.

The tourism agency also plans to sell shirts and caps with the popular phrase on it. To do that though, they'll have to hand over $25,000 and six percent of sales to Universal Music, who owns the song.

I can picture the Alabama tourism agency's likely late-teens intern rolling his/her eyes in the form of a mass text beginning with "WTF," moving along to an explanation of the agency's plans and ending with, "we should totally use 'Crank That (Soulja Boy),' right?"

Anyway, the campaign symbol is a red, blue, yellow and white logo that also features the title of the song. They're really taking this one seriously.

Thanks for putting ‘em down old Neil, my deep South acquaintances will never get over it. I swear.

P.S. - DirtySouthMouth confession: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama and I hate this song.