When particularly troublesome criminal elements struck in that area, elected officials often would assail Charlotte as the incubator of "spillover crime" that seeped like poison across the state line. Every four years, though, South Carolina exacts its revenge on the evil Queen City with an assault more unmerciful than the point of a palmetto frond to the eye.

As the third test in the young presidential nominating season, South Carolina's Jan. 21 presidential primary has turned that state into a potential political launching pad for a shrinking field of Republican hopefuls.

But media markets — like criminals — follow maps about as neatly as a crayon-wielding toddler does lines in a coloring book. That's why television and radio stations in Charlotte are still the favorite resource for campaigns and political action committees looking to influence voters just across the state line.

While South Carolina might still lay claim to being a living history in Southern decorum, the attack ads by carpet-bagging campaigns are about as genteel as Sherman's stroll through Dixie. Even though we North Carolinians don't vote in our presidential primaries until May 8, we get to experience the fallout of the race now.

Call it, spillover slime.

Thanks to this toxic trickle, we now know that frontrunner Mitt Romney is a "vulture capitalist" who flip-flops more than a freshly caught bass on the floor of a boat on Lake Wylie. However, we're still trying to confirm reports that Romney, a Mormon, decided to run for president after discovering a divine message scrawled on a gold legal pad in a Staples warehouse in Utah.

We now know that Newt Gingrich is a nutty professor with a hair-trigger temper and a personal history that makes Kim Kardashian blush. We also hear that Gingrich might have once ridden in the same Capitol elevator with Nancy Pelosi (although he didn't inhale).

We now know Ron Paul is the political equivalent of the crazy uncle you love to listen to at family gatherings, but wouldn't trust to babysit your kids (or run the country).

We now know that Rick Perry is from Texas. And we now know that we don't know who in the heck this Rick Santorum fella is.

But we do know that the crazy Saturday Night Live lady with the glasses isn't running this time. In fact, she seems to have disappeared completely. It's like she moved to Alaska or something. But, hey, the slime lords probably would have made up some crazy story about her, too, like her teenaged daughter got pregnant or something.

This is politics in South Carolina, the state that gave us U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks. It was Brooks who in 1856 became so enraged with anti-slavery U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner that he beat his head to a bloody pulp with a cane before calmly walking out of the chamber. Brooks resigned, but hardly disappeared in disgrace. He was elected to the same seat again in the next election before dying at age 37. Sumner would recover and serve in the Senate for nearly two more decades.

Given the political venom being spit like tobacco juice in South Carolina — and beyond — this week, maybe we ought to just give canes to all the candidates and let them go at it, Preston Brooks style. I know I'd like to take a swing at my TV and radio every time I hear a South Carolina attack ad.

To my old friends south of the border: Thanks a lot. Consider me slimed.