Kathleen Geier at the Washington Monthly rightly notes that this Scripps story about the Exalted Cyclops of the Memphis Klan, headlined “KKK plans rally in Memphis Saturday to celebrate white peoples’ rights”, reads like a piece in the Onion:
[Cyclops] Edward curses sparingly, drinks rarely, and keeps his hair clipped short — his tribute to his old-fashioned Christian values. With a voice to match his hulking frame, Edward issues commands, not requests, and rarely bookends his sentences with “please” or “thank you.” […]To Barker [another Klansman] and Edward, the Klan’s agenda is pretty simple: Send the immigrants back where they came from, silence the homosexuals and the communists (known as liberals today), promote sobriety and abstinence, end abortion, and discourage the mingling of races in a way “God never intended.”
While Edward and Barker don’t dispute the Klan’s racist history, they deny they’re interested in harassing black people.
In fairness–because, after all, who deserves fair media treatment more than the beleaguered and misunderstood Klan–the story also includes some quotes from “the other side”, a professor who’s written a book about the modern Klan. And it does make note of some unpleasantness in South in the 60’s.
Geier faults the writer and editor of this piece, but I do not. This piece is exactly what happens when you take the last 40 years of journalistic teaching and practice and apply it to a subject like the Klan. There are always both sides to the story, objective journalists must report them, feature stories are not regular journalism and should try to carefully reflect the “truth” of the subject being featured using their own words, and the only permissible judgments that can be made in a story come out of the mouths of quoted sources. At Scripps, the View from Nowhere fought the Klan, and the Klan won.
JPL
Discourage the mingling of races in a way “God never intended.”
Praise the white lord!
Cassidy
Heh. Jesus was a Jew.
russell
I couldn’t get past “Edward the Exalted Cyclops”
Seriously, WTF.
c u n d gulag
@russell:
Yeah, I thought for a second maybe that was the name of that squid which was able to pick World Cup winners a few years back.
Then I found out it was some white guy, who makes that squid look like a Phi Beta Kappa.
Baud
Your analysis of journalism would be spot on if the media refrained from making moral judgments about liberals. They don’t, so we in fact have two journalistic standards in this country, in which our side always gets the short end of the stick.
WereBear
Gimme that old time religion!
If god did not intend for the races to mingle, why did he make so many of them so hawt?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Considering that Jesus of Nazareth was likely short of stature, dark complected, and had black hair and a black beard, he would be one of the people whom Edward would be going after.
bago
When Doctor Who steals From Mass Effect, you know we have reached a nerd singularity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTsD2FjmLsw
They used this song in the latest episode at least three times.
Now you have to understand that Mass Effect borrows from a plethora of sci fi franchises itself, which is why you get the moon patrol joke 20 hours into the first game. Which leads to EDI in the second game. Voiced by Six of Battlestar Galactic fame.
The bladerunner/party DLC is taking me off on a tangent, but sometimes it’s nice to take some time off from politics and have a nerdgasm.
Linda Featheringill
If the Creator had wanted the races to remain separate, intermingling would not produce offspring. There would be no “hybrid” children.
If the Klan’s god is too stupid to figure that out and too weak to enforce his wishes, he’s not much of a god, is he?
p.a.
When he says he wants to send the immigrants back, someone should ask him to specify a time-window and defend his choice. Maybe he will self-deport.
MattF
It’s this whole “good vs. evil” thing, too controversial for journalists.
the Conster
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s miraculous that their god believes everything they do, and hates everyone they do. It’s almost like they made god in their own image!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Linda Featheringill:
I’m just impressed that this Exalted Cyclops knows God’s intentions. Whatta guy.
WereBear
@MattF: Is Satan evil incarnate, or just misunderstood? Film at eleven!
Marc
And who says the Klan should be recognized for their service to the community, and who claims the Klan has been falsely blamed for much of the violence done in their name. Other side? What other side?
This woman teaches at UT Knoxville, the state’s flagship public university.
Walker
@bago:
Are you sure this was used in the episode? I have listened to that soundtrack a million times and usually catch its reuse (Believe it or not, Alaska State Troopers regularly uses Garrus’ theme as well as Infiltration from the ME: Combat Soundtrack). I did not catch this at all.
Patrick
@Marc: in fairness, it’s the grand wizard Barker and not the academic Baker who brings up the whole community service bit and undeserved blame malarkey.
Walker
@Marc:
There seems to be some confusion in that article by who said what. There is both a Baker (the academic) and a Barker (the KKK person) and it is easy to mix up their quotes in the article.
Joey Maloney
An amusing counterprotester from Memphis.
Walker
@bago:
Okay, I just did a quick Google search. It appears that there are sections of the 11th Doctor’s action theme that sound a lot like the ME2 song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcFo1wCZVaI&feature=youtu.be
There was some discussion about this on the BioWare forms when this theme was first introduced in season 5. Whether the relationship was intentional was never conclusively resolved.
As I said, I would not have been surprised if the music had been borrowed. Alaska State Troopers shows that EA is clearly licensing the soundtrack for usage in media. Plus, I swear that the AMC channel theme sounds a hell of a lot like the Shadow Broker theme.
Ben Franklin
In a sight-challenged culture, exalted cyclops, is King.
JPL
Most members hide their affiliation with the klan. Why is that?
Davis X. Machina
@the Conster:
Xenophanes, fragments B15, B16
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@russell: I can’t wait until Odysseus shoves a spear into his eye.
quannlace
If any of these losers had a DNA test of their genetic background, I think they’d be mightily surprised.
Where is short hair mentioned in the Bible?
arguingwithsignposts
Way to stand up for your rights there, buddy!
Roger Moore
@Linda Featheringill:
I think you’re misunderstanding what he’s saying. He’s saying that there should be mingling of the races the same way there was back in the good old antebellum days. You know, where it came about by white men raping their black slaves and treating any offspring as chattel. That’s racial mixing that the Klan can support.
Amir Khalid
Exalted Cyclops. Imperial Wizard. Grand Dragon. Hey, I can make up titles for high-ranking KKK peeps, too. How about Awesome Patootie, Stupendous Panjandrum, Ickle Darling, Fulsome Orifice. I invite more suggestions from the Juicitariat.
David
On Terry Gross the other day I learned that the symbol of the burning cross was purely an invention of director D. W. Griffiths for the 1915 film Birth Of A Nation.
Southern Beale
Love this part, about how “Saturday’s demonstration to show that white people still have rights.”
Yes us poor oppressed white people. How we suffer.
/sarcasm
Roger Moore
@Southern Beale:
The oppression will never stop as long as non-white have any rights.
WereBear
In the sixties, when the church people around me got all yammery about long hair on men, I would bring up Jesus (who had hippie hair) and even Samson.
They would get mad and say “It was different in Biblical times.”
These folks are so screwed up.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
Wasn’t the short-haired, clean-shaven look a Roman Empire thing?
WereBear
Indeed it was. But that would be waaaaaaay too much historial accuracy :)
Speaking of which, TCM is running Ben-Hur.
Redshirt
Storm should be leading the X-Men, not Cyclops. I suspect Professor X is racist. Cyclops is a whiny ass pouty laser baby.
RaflW
“silence the homosexuals and the communists (known as liberals today)”
WTF. Liberals are just communists with rebranding? This is journalism?
nancydarling
Arkansas State Senator Jason RAPErt of zygotes are persons fame is getting upset at people who are belligerent and insulting on twitter. He tweeted this
Now I am pretty sure that the only people who got whipped for rudeness (besides helpless children) were not melanin-challenged like Jason of the unfortunate surname.
Ugly ids gotta swim, freak flags gotta fly.
Davis X. Machina
@Amir Khalid: Beards came and went, and early Romans were bearded. There’s a legend that Scipio Africanus Minor (mid 2nd century BCE) was the first prominent Roman to shave every day.
By the last century BCE/first century CE, beards were associated with Greeks, professions dominated by Greeks (medicine, higher education), and with philosophers, so with rebels against the existing order generally.
Much more on the topic from the estimable Laudator Temporis Acti blog, Michael Gilleland proprietor.
RaflW
Also, too, I’m sure the UK doesn’t want them, but I’m all for sending these fucked up descendants of immigrants immigrants back where they came from.
arguingwithsignposts
I’m not really finding the difference between those two things. Anyone explain?
Marc
@Walker: Oops. To late to go back and correct my first comment. Thanks for catching that.
OTOH, it’s still troubling that I can’t tell the academic from the Exalted Cyclops by their comments alone. Her quoted statement is as scarily neutral as the Scripps article, and this is what the website for her book (I checked it before posting my first comment) has to say about the Klan:
I’m all for trying to understand the origins of racism, but… “condemnation might be deserved”?
I’m still not sure two sides were represented in that story.
Roger Moore
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s what he’s saying about a PR campaign. They’re trying to rebrand their racism as being just about white unity and white pride rather than being about dominating the other races. I’d wish him luck on that, but when you get down to it, I’d really rather that people like him go DIAF.
RSA
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t forget ranks like King Kleagle, Grand Goblin, and Imperial Klonsel.
Roger Moore
@Marc:
This. If you really want the other side of the story, you go to the Southern Poverty Law Center or some similar organization that monitors the Klan’s activities.
Marc
@arguingwithsignposts: It sure was nice of the reporter to respect the Klan member’s wishes not to suffer any public shame for being a Klan member.
MattF
@Marc: So, here’s a bit of context wrt Klan rallies in Memphis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Riots_of_1866
Ted & Hellen
I’d say that at least in this case, the Klan members condemn themselves with their own words.
Who needs a faux pious reporter compromising the story by restating points that have already been made, and more powerfully, by the facts and quotations laid out before the reader?
Show, don’ tell, remember?
pokeyblow
The teabaggers have one brilliant idea after another. The latest: flood poor neighborhoods with free guns.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/31/group-wants-to-give-guns-to-poor/
Also, the photo of these fatasses cracks me up.
Amir Khalid
@RSA:
I concede defeat. Not in a million years could I hope to come up with titles as silly as Klabee, Lictor (eww), or Kligrapp (WTF?!) Kleagle just makes me think of a Banana Split.
Todd
@pokeyblow:
I did once harbor a fantasy during the initial OWS phase when the NYPD was tear gassing hippies of driving a load of guns to hippies just to even stuff up a bit.
ruviana
@Amir Khalid: Awesome Patootie made me LOL! Fulsome Oriface is going to be my band name.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
What’s wrong with “Lictor” as a title. It’s a very traditional one, dating back at least to Roman times.
handsmile
@Marc:
Following up on Roger Moore’s comment above (#43), here is an account of preparations for the Memphis KKK rally from the SPLC’s “Hatewatch” blog (a blog well-worth regular visits and one that really should be added to John Cole’s own “Blogroll”):
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/03/29/on-eve-of-memphis-klan-rally-officials-prepare-for-kkk-mayhem/#more-10540
For information on the radical right in this country, the SPLC’s “Hate and Extremism” site is invaluable for its comprehensive scrutiny.
http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism
Mike in NC
@pokeyblow: No place does crazy quite like Texas.
Trakker
@pokeyblow:
OMG! These people are armed?? And they are going to GIVE guns away to people who live where gun violence is already high? I assume this is the latest idea of the right who want to rid America of the “takers.”
schrodinger's cat
But how do these people know that Jeebus wuz white? After all he was born in the middle east.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Kinda goes with the CNN coverage of the Steubenville rapists.
Anyone else remember the Chad Mitchell Trio’s song “Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood Klux Klan,” from the last time the KKK tried to whitewash its image?
Jay C
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because they read it in the Bible! And the Bible is infallible! And the pictures in the Bible show Jesus with blond hair and blue eyes! So it HAS to be true!!
MikeSchilling
The story quoted both sides and said there was a controversy. What else do you want?
schrodinger's cat
@Jay C: He most probably had brown eyes and dark hair. Besides he was Jewish.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: Lictor? I hardly knew her!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Amir Khalid: Agreed on the actual titles, although I thought your suggestion of Fulsome Orifice was excellent.
nellcote
This article complements a surprisingly soft pedeled KKK doc that was on the History Channel the other night. Co-incidence?
gene108
@Joey Maloney:
If the South can have Jefferson Davis parks and roads, I want a Benedict Arnold park.
Sure both are traitors, but at least Arnold was a pretty effective general before he turned traitor.
Davis, on the other hand, was totally fucking incompetent in both realizing the problems secession would cause, not fighting against it and not being able to run the CSA worth a damn.
Also, too how can you talk about the KKK and forget to mention the thousands of lynchings that were done to terrorize people, in the name of defending the white people’s rights?
Yutsano
@Jay C: The Bible is a picture book after all. No one reads the words in red anyway.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Everyone knows strawberry blonds, like Jesus, love basking in the hot desert sun, when it’s a 110 degrees out during the day. Their pale skin, light hare and blue eyes were just meant for that kind of climate.
sidhra
@russell: And his pet, Eric the half-bee.
muddy
After all the immigrants get sent back, Europe is going to be mighty fucking crowded.
Maude
@schrodinger’s cat:
#58
No, no, no, no, no.
He was blonde. He was Christian.
Don’t confuse matters, here.
They think that and it the truth, according to them.
ETA, spell fail. You can’t argue with belief.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@gene108:
Finally, an explanation of how the bunny fits in!
the Conster
I’ve decided that if I could be anyone in history, I’d be William Tecumseh Sherman with the knowledge that I had only one shot at these motherfucking traitorous asshats.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Don’t you realize that the words are in red to indicate those parts are optional?
ruviana
@the Conster: And as a bonus you’d get that awesome middle name!
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: That makes sense, since it’s the dirty fucking hippie that’s talking during those passages.
aimai
@pokeyblow:
The article that you link to is quite pro-gun. It states *as a fact* that guns are used for defense (successfully) between 100,000 and 2 million times a year and that they result in accidental deaths only 600 times a year. It links back to a business week article that simply quotes the highly suspect Nash/NRA self reported study of how many times people will say they have used their guns in self defense:
Johnny Coelacanth
@russell: “Edward the Exalted Cyclops” to the tune of “Rudolph the Rednosed Raindeer.”
pokeyblow
@aimai, the article is posted on foxnews.com, not exactly a reputable source.
WereBear
@Davis X. Machina: Oooh, thanks, neat stuff.
I always figured it was dependent on how your culture’s razor supply was going…
Origuy
@David:
Not entirely. The Scottish Highland clans used it as a signal that clan warfare was on, to summon the clan warriors. The KKK never used it until the movie, though.
Steeplejack
@Marc:
Mental exercise. Yes, I totally see her point.
aimai
@pokeyblow:
Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that you had linked to the wrong source or anything, I was just interested in how subtly their internal links are deceptive.
Mandalay
@aimai:
That range is so massive that it is meaningless to even cite the numbers (unless you have an agenda to push).
It is also worth pointing out that all the surveys used for those numbers were done in the early 1990s.
Mr Stagger Lee
@gene108: According to the textbooks to homeschooled or Christian school children, provided by none other than that great Southern Institution Bob Jones University. here is a small tidbit about that misunderstood civic organization.
– “the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross… In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”
Bruce S
I hadn’t really thought about this before, but I think that reading the article I (tentatively) arrived at the conclusion that those public spaces shouldn’t be re-named. They should become landmarks – via estensively inscribed plaques or visual exhibits – for the legacy and impact of white supremacy throughout our history. Why not have a space where people are reminded of the perfidy of traitors and murderers like Forrest and Davis. I would even submit that these narratives should be “nuanced” in the sense that the fact that such characters were “mainstream” heroes among Southern whites for over a century – and to some extent still are be fully acknowledged. What does that mean regarding a century and more of regional “culture”? I would welcome a space where these facts can be recognized and contemplated – and how better than to re-purpose landmarks that are evidence of the perversity and extent of the Confederate and neo-Confederate legacies. That would be a fight over history even more worth having than simply erasure of their names in retrospect.
Tehanu
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:
What a wonderful song that was, along with all their other social comment songs (not to mention just the plain beautiful singing). I’ve been a rabid fan of the Chad Mitchell Trio for more than 50 years — you can find reunion concerts on YouTube btw, up to just a few years back. They still sound great.
@ruviana:
Actually, Sherman’s family always called him “Cump” or “Cumpy” — short for Tecumseh. The “William” came later as a formal baptismal name but nobody called him by it.
Jay in Oregon
@Linda Featheringill:
If you have inbreeding long enough within a given population, I think you start to see what God’s intentions are regarding mingling of bloodlines.
Cermet
The Klan was the world’s first modern and major terrorist group; why in the hell aren’t these Amerikan murdering and anti-constitution ass wipes not being tracked down, either water boarded until insanity or locked away in the dark for life? These ass wipes are just the same incompetent slave torturing General Lee (almost single handily lost the war for the stupid rebels) who murdered more Americans than all our other wars combined.
Jay in Oregon
I’m reminded of this exchange from John Scalzi’s The Human Division, between an alien emissary and the leader of a rogue “wildcat” colony of human supremacists.(“Xig” is their slur for extraterrestrials, which I thought was a nice touch.)
Woodrowfan
Actually, if you look at the books website she’s quite clear that the Klan was 9and is) a hate group.
However,Baker doesn;t argue that the Klan were correct. She’s arguing that to understand the KKK you need to understand their worldview. It’s pretty standard academic prose, including the “might be.” Baker’s specialty is understand how intolerance shaped American nationality. it’s a real stretch to say she agrees with it. But then, I’ve actually read some of her work, and didn’t just give one webpage a cursory glance.
Vince
@quannlace: It’s mentioned at least twice, once in the Old once in the New, but I don’t know where offhand. In the Old Testament, probably in Leviticus, it says that it’s a sin to shave the corners of your face. That’s why Orthodox and Hasidic Jews have long beard and long hair. In the New Testament, but not in the Gospels, I believe Peter says that it’s a sin to have long hair.
scav
They’re not really trumpeting as a strong selling point their history of Anti-Catholicism now, are they? Anti-Black, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Communist, all run up the burning flag-pole and saluted! but Catholicism being viewed as necessarily un-democratic and a threat to a man’s control of wife and children? And to omit that little detail on Easter, the little hoodie-sporting scamps, and just after a new Bishop of Rome emerged as revitalized arch-enemy. Sad to see them forgetting elements of their fine and multi-faceted heritage.
Turgid Jacobian
@Mandalay: More than that, if you take the results seriously, they imply an epidemic of defensive woundigs that NEVER materialized.
Bruce S
My reading of history tells me that the only way that “God intended” mingling of races – according to the Gospel of The Confederacy (aka “Southern Baptists” whose only rationale as a distinct denomination has been to sanctify racism) – was rape of slaves by their masters.
Librarian
@Amir Khalid:Ralph Cifaretto: “Look at Kirk Douglas’s fuckin’ hair. They didn’t have flattops in ancient Rome!!!”
Interrobang
@WereBear: My Jewish Publication Society Five Books of Moses Torah mentions the Israelites having pierced noses, too. Long hair, pierced ears and noses…sounds more like Burning Man than burning cross to me.
Marc
@Woodrowfan:
In much the same way that the Scripps article is pretty standard journalistic prose.
cmorenc
Not that the contemparary KKK is anything but a bunch of peckerhead bigots running around who are dumb enough to blunder into doing something dangerous, but they are predominately a bunch of obnoxiously offensive clowns running around in sheets who are more nuisance than the kind of threat they were 50 years ago. The far greater contemporary danger is posed by the Aryan Nations, comprised in troubling proportion by malevolently bigoted psychopaths, many of whom are predatory or violent criminals (not to be confused with the Aryan Brotherhood, which is a white supremacist prison gang).
Woodrowfan
@Marc:
Of course if you actually read any of her articles or books you’d know that Baker is in any way a Klan supporter nor does she make excuses for them. But hey, she didn’t denounce them loud enough in a single paragraph so get out the pitchforks.
Fred
@Baud: Where I come from that end of the stick was something other than short but the word did begin with SH.. .
AHH onna Droid
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: and didn’t speak English!
But enough about bottom feeder unreconstructed racists. Im more interested in ‘nice, respectable’ upper middle class suburban racists these days. The pernicious racism that never gets called out.
Sheetheads are well aware of what we think of them.
Marc
@Woodrowfan: I would hope the Scripps Howard News Service writer isn’t a Klan supporter either, but her posture of neutrality utterly fails to hold the Klan accountable for its actions or its views.
Academic writing has similar pretenses to objectivity (and similar incentives for contrarianism, for that matter). At least the Scripps piece doesn’t say the Klan is “mischaracterized and misunderstood.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@schrodinger’s cat:
Unless he was a Sephardic Jew.
Patricia Kayden
@muddy: I wonder if European countries actually want those Ugly Americans back.
The KKK will never be a respectable organization. They should just pack it in and join their local T’Bagger org. They would be accepted and embraced by Republicans who think just like them but aren’t stupid enough to join the KKK.
Lurking Canadian
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think he probably looked like a young Yasser Ararat, but what do you mean? Are the Sephardim not usually dark of hair and eye?
If you really want to piss off a Klansman of course, you tell him Jesus was black. I don’t think that was likely, but it’s worth it to see the reaction.
JGabriel
Whoa. I just read that Klan article, and: Ho-leee shit.
If it weren’t plagiarism, the Onion’s most satirical move would be to publish the whole article as one of its own, with no further comment:
Aw, isn’t that cute. Seriously, though, that is a perfect Onion article ending.
Jeepers.
.
JGabriel
pokeyblow:
I used to think it was ironic when Republicans advocated that everyone should have guns, while simultaneously cutting the social services many of those potential gun owners rely on.
Now, I’m just grateful we’ll be armed when the revolution comes and we square off against the Koch Bros., et. al., and their GOP lackeys.
Tata
@Vince:
Peter was Jewish and would not have said anything of the sort. Paul is a more likely source.
gelfling545
So you say you believe in an omnipotent deity who “didn’t intend” something to happen. Either the deity seriously messed up on the planning & production end or can’t do anything to put a stop to what s/he didn’t intend to happen so how is that omnipotent? Or maybe the warranty has expired. Anyway I think we can leave the deity out of this conversation or it gets embarrassing for the “believers”. Maybe your god did intend all of this to happen and is testing your charity and you’re coming up short.
gelfling545
@Tata: That would be Paul in 1 Corinthians but both were Jewish so most likely neither said anything of the kind. A lot of later, cultural stuff got added & attributed to various apostles long after they were dead.
Lurking Canadian
It would have been very like Paul to say that it was not a sin not to have long hair.
All you need then is one inkblot to explain the error.
Vince
@Tata: Damn, I knew it was one or the other. Guessed wrong.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Either the Aryan Nations or simply the broader militia movement, the ones who’ve ditched the antiquated things like burning crosses and swastikas but maintain the same ideology under a “respectable” format of libertarianism and Christian values.
THE Pale Scot
I’m the first to say WHITE FLOUR!
PanurgeATL
Paul says everything but that it’s “sinful”; he says (well, translated) that “nature” tells us it’s “a shame to him”. (I don’t think the word “embarrassment” appears in the Bible; who knows if that might’ve been what Paul really meant? In that case, we know it’s contingent; Paul could only be speaking of his time and place.) For all that, what counts as “long” is left open, but certainly the idea of “long” as “longer than a crewcut” needs to be toppled.