Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

White supremacy is terrorism.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / This Week In Blackness / Old White Guy Discovers Slavery Was Bad . . . in 2013

Old White Guy Discovers Slavery Was Bad . . . in 2013

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Stop the presses everyone! Washington Post columnist and seasoned journalist, Richard Cohen has a confession to make, After watching 12 Years a Slave, Cohen learned that slavery was . . . wait for it . . . really, really bad!

I sometimes think I have spent years unlearning what I learned earlier in my life. For instance, it was not George A. Custer who was attacked at the Little Bighorn. It was Custer — in a bad career move — who attacked the Indians. Much more important, slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks. Slavery was a lifetime’s condemnation to an often violent hell in which people were deprived of life, liberty and, too often, their own children. Happiness could not be pursued after that.

So, all this time you thought that Negroes were complaining about the golden years when we got to lounge around plantations, singing songs and perfecting our fried chicken recipes? Have you never heard of the movie Roots? Or Amistad? Hell, Glory?Even pop culture knows that Negroes were happy during slavery.

What were they using to immunize white kids in the 1940s, white privilege?

Oh wait.

Also on today’s #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness discussed a home invasion gone awry when burglars encountered the most bad-ass woman ever (37:45) and how “no it isn’t” is not a valid argument against the embedded racism of the confederate flag.

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And this morning on #amTWiB, The Morning Crew weighed in on the Coachella Valley High School “Fighting Arabs,” the whitest jobs in America, and white feminism keeps getting it wrong.

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(Cross-posted)

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  2. 2.

    Culture of Truth

    “OMFG slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks!!11!!”

    I know Cohen is a moron, but… really?

  3. 3.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    Next thing, he’ll be telling us the disinfectant showers in WWII were really Nazi death camps.

  4. 4.

    Mnemosyne

    I think a lot of people today underestimate just how influential the Dunning school of thought about the Civil War and Reconstruction was. It was part of the massive white supremacist movement of the early 1900s but, of course, was so very “scientific” and “forward-thinking,” discarding all of that old-style thought about black people getting screwed by slavery and the foreshortened end of Reconstruction.

    Cohen is right in the timeframe where he would have learned the Dunning version of events as a kid, but that’s no excuse for not having the basic curiosity to try and find out the truth after he was out of school. Especially as a purported journalist, FFS.

  5. 5.

    Lolis

    I got dragged to a UT football game in Austin last weekend and when I was walking out a guy was saying, “It makes sense that landowners and educated people only should vote … Slavery has a bad rap.” I gave him and his friend a nasty look that I think only his friend noticed. White people can be so embarrassing and awful.

  6. 6.

    Mike G

    I sometimes think I have spent years unlearning what I learned earlier in my life. For instance, it was not George A. Custer who was attacked at the Little Bighorn. It was Custer — in a bad career move — who attacked the Indians. Much more important, slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks.

    “And I’m starting to suspect that Santa Claus may not be real!”

    Is this guy allowed to cut his own meat?

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Slavery was a lifetime’s condemnation… in which people were deprived of… liberty

    I think I’m going to wait until Politifact fact-checks that assertion before drawing any firm conclusions.

  8. 8.

    James B Franks

    I have nothing but admiration for the fact he was able to take something he believed all his life and admit publicly he was wrong.

  10. 10.

    Gex

    Maybe he had spent too much time listening to Republicans. There have been quite a few Republican candidates and office holders who have asserted that blacks were better off during slavery. I know Michele Bachmann did. Several others that I do not recall did as well.

    You know how it goes. One side says this, one side says that. Who’s to say what’s true? Opinions differ.

  11. 11.

    Petorado

    What is it with right wingers and movies? Rand Paul goes overboard with movie citations as the perfect mirror for reality and now Richard Cohen finally has an epiphany about the horror of slavery after he sees a movie about it. For all their hatred of Hollywood elites, they sure rely upon them for their worldview.

  12. 12.

    ? Martin

    I call bullshit on the ‘unlearning’. South of Mason-Dixon, I have no doubt that much energy was spent hiding the truth, but Cohen grew up on long island. Roots was definitely on the local channels. The books telling the unvarnished truth about slavery were definitely assigned in school. He didn’t learn it because he didn’t want to.

  15. 15.

    Mike G

    @Petorado:

    They hate books, and newspapers are all ‘librul’, so TV and movies are their only outside sources of “information”
    Reagan was said to have awoken to the horrors of nuclear war after seeing The Day After.

    It’s horrifying that such narrow and shallow intellects are anywhere near positions of public power and influence, but more powerful and influential Repukes behind the scenes want incurious tools filling those slots.

  18. 18.

    MattF

    I think we’re getting into the land of cognitive issues here. Cohen retired about a decade ago, it’s time he stopped writing.

  19. 19.

    Hill Dweller

    @Baud:

    How long before #thingsRichardCohenjustlearned becomes a thing on Twitter.

    Chuck Todd is the center of the Twitter machine’s attention right now. Apparently he treated the President like shit during their interview earlier today.

  22. 22.

    Petorado

    @Mike G: Well then, in admiration of the profound impact of the original movie, I propose a series of “Twelve Years” movies to enlighten the Beltway crowd. “Twelve Years in Guantanamo” would be a good start. Followed by “”Twelve Years with a Disability,” “Twelve Years on Social Security,” “Twelve Years a Public School Teacher,” and so on. Imagine how blown away Cohen would be with his new-found understanding of the world.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @JustRuss:

    When film geeks get together, they talk about which famous film(s) they’ve never seen. GWTW is one of mine — never saw it, and probably never will. I just have zero interest in it.

  24. 24.

    Anniecat45

    Look. This is very easy to mock, but underneath it is something I’ve had to deal with for most of my adult life:

    How do you unlearn a world-view your family taught you from birth which was supported by most of the people around you?

    I’m 57 and I grew up in the South and the adults around me were stone racists and right-wingers. If there were any dissenters, they kept their traps shut; I think my mother may have disagreed with some of the garbage, since she and I moved out of the South when I was 9, but she sure never said anything out loud while we lived there. I started hearing other voices and other views after we moved, but it still took years to excavate the ideas that had soaked into me when I was a small child. If we hadn’t moved I’d probably be as much of a Tea Party loon as my relatives who still live in the South.

    I wish I could say that i was a critical thinker at age 5 or 6 and saw through some of the garbage, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t start really analyzing and thinking about this stuff til I was in my teens.

    It’s not enough to tell people their factual information is wrong. Things you learn as a small child sink into your being, become part of you, and it takes a lot of time and effort to dig them out and replace them with a decent outlook.

    Good for Cohen for at least admitting he was wrong. Most of the Tea Party crowd won’t even consider that possibility.

  25. 25.

    Heliopause

    My, the liberal blogs are sure making hay of this one today.

    One thing I’ve learned reading the liberal blogosphere over the years is that when the hive mind goes on one of its Richard Cohen Jihads it’s best not to go back to the original source and read what’s actually been written, because you’ll (1) waste several minutes of your life reading an uninteresting writer and (2) discover that the bloggers are simply misrepresenting what was written in order to score cheap blogging points, leaving you in the awkward position of looking like you’re defending Richard Cohen.

    It’s readily apparent if you read all of Cohen’s column, God help me, that he is not saying that he all of a sudden discovered the perfidy of slavery a couple of days ago, he’s rather trying to say that unlearning propaganda is a process, sometimes a decades-long one, but since he’s a weak writer he left the hive mind an opening to grab two or three sentences out of context and throw a hissy fit over nothing.

  26. 26.

    TheMightyTrowel

    OT: looking for some free computer advice…. turbulence + sleep deprivation + ginger ale meant that the left half of my laptop (Thinkpad T430) got splashed with soda. The computer was fine – still working normally – and I wiped it up fast and got as much out of the crevices as possible but a handful of keys and, most annoying the clicky mouse buttons on that side of the keyboard are now sticking slightly. How do I clean them? I’m leaning towards turning it off, unplugging it, taking out the battery (in case I hit a button) and using a q tip and a little warm water to dab at the affected areas.

    Thoughts? Help?

    (ETA: that turbulence, btw, was the edge of the super typhoon the last thread is discussing)

  27. 27.

    joel hanes

    If Richard Cohen lives for another fifty years, do you suppose that he’ll learn that Jim Crow was not an affectionate name for any random black guy ?

    And how old do you suppose he’d need to be to understand that racism continues to damage the lives of black people every day ?

    The sun is projected to go nova in only another few billion years.
    I doubt that’s enough time for him to figure out why the Native Americans seem so depressed and bitter.

  29. 29.

    shelly

    Maybe he had spent too much time listening to Republicans.

    Nah. He sat through too many viewings of ‘Gone With The Wind.”

    Slavery wasn’t really that bad cause Mammie sassed Scarlet and she eventually got a red silk petticoat.

  31. 31.

    Rathskeller

    @Anniecat45:
    Good for Cohen for at least admitting he was wrong. Most of the Tea Party crowd won’t even consider that possibility.

    I can commend him for that, but we’re also talking about someone in the year 2013, after living in a city steeped in history, and especially racial-tinged history, since the 1970s. it’s setting the bar so low to praise someone when they admit that they were wrong about things that anyone with any curiosity and intellectual honesty could have discovered decades previously.

    He’s never self-reflective, not ever. He’s not stupid in the traditional sense, but instead his limited thinking is emblematic of a purblind village journalist, who doesn’t believe anything he doesn’t hear at a party within the DC borders. He lives a fatuous life clotted with privilege, while he thinks of himself as Diogenes, fearlessly questioning the world around him. I am a white man of a certain age, and it makes me want to scream. What it does to his co-workers of color I can only imagine.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    When I managed to spit milk on my laptop keyboard (don’t ask), I was advised to unplug it, remove the keyboard as best I could, and rinse it with bottled (NOT distilled) water. Then let it dry for about a week to make 100 percent sure it’s dry.

  33. 33.

    MikeJ

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    I’m leaning towards turning it off, unplugging it, taking out the battery (in case I hit a button) and using a q tip and a little warm water to dab at the affected areas.

    That sounds like a good plan. Laptops are a pain to work on. You might be more thorough taking it apart and pulling the keyboard, but with laptops I try everything possible before removing even one screw on the case.

    Alcohol is sometimes better to clean with than water. It evaporates much more quickly, but as long as the water is only on the q tip water will probably be ok.

  34. 34.

    gogol's wife

    @cckids:

    I know. I was going to type hahahahahaha but I thought it would be flippant.

    This is just simply unbelievable.

  36. 36.

    WereBear

    @Petorado: What is it with right wingers and movies?

    It is my theory that their grip on Reality is so flawed and slippery that they literally cannot imagine or understand anything unless it actually happens to them; or is condensed into something like a movie that super-dramatizes it.

    They cannot draw conclusions. They simply can’t.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne: It’s worth seeing — some fine acting and incredible cinematography for its time. It’s important as a cultural artifact, providing fascinating insights into the myths our national culture invented about our history that resonate to the present day.

  38. 38.

    Cliff in NH

    @TheMightyTrowel:

    You are on the right track ..

    remove the battery, unplug etc..

    then use either a q-tip or folded paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol (make sure there isn’t enough to drip when squeezed)

    That should do the trick

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @WereBear:

    Ronald Reagan used to tell people, in all sincerity, that he had helped liberate the Nazi concentration camps even though he never set foot out of Hollywood during the war. But he really believed it, because the documentary footage that he watched was so vivid.

    @Betty Cracker:

    Meh. I know I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from throwing things at the screen, so I’ll continue to pass.

  40. 40.

    Scamp Dog

    @Heliopause: I took a chance and wasted a couple of minutes reading the column, and you’re right, it isn’t quite as bad as the blogosphere makes it. Still, it wound up reminding me that Cohen isn’t worth reading.

    Please, other Juicers, don’t make my mistake! Don’t waste your time!

  41. 41.

    Steeplejack

    @TheMightyTrowel, @MikeJ:

    Can’t remember where I first read it, but I use a 50-50 mix of distilled water and (90%) isopropyl alcohol for laptop screens and other light cleaning such as you describe.

  43. 43.

    Betty Cracker

    O/T: Chris Hayes is ably taking Mr. McMegan’s dumb libertarian arguments against transfats regulations apart on MSNBC right now.

  45. 45.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Scamp Dog: Too late.

    I was about to respond to Heliopause that it’s never a good idea to doubt any criticism of Richard Cohen even in a slight way and went and read the article — yeah you both have a point.

    The first section, which is the one people are quoting from, is basically his description of what he was told as a child. He then writes:

    It has been decades since the gauze was removed to show the horror of American slavery. I know more than I once did, maybe more than most and maybe more than I like. Still, McQueen does something daring.

    So he’s not saying that he just learned these truths now. On the other hand his writing is so terrible, and his thought process so muddled, it makes it hard to know what the hell he’s saying even after carefully reading the whole thing.

    Richard Cohen’s biggest problem, I’ve always thought, edging out his compulsive Very Serious Person Centrism as well as his other many flaws, is that he’s not very bright. He’s also a terrible writer. Okay, among his biggest problems are….

  46. 46.

    Gordon, the Big Express Engine

    @Lurking Buffoon: It is already happening. A few choice offerings. Twitter rules by the way…

    Chewing gum loses its flavor on the bedpost overnight.

    Bomb dropped on Nagasaki was atomic, not sex.

    Pilgrims and Native Americans didn’t get together to watch football.

  50. 50.

    YellowJournalism

    Hell, even GWTW, one of the biggest pushes of the slavery-wasn’t-so-bad myth, had moments where they mention the cruelty of slave owners. In one scene, Scarlett points out what a hypocrite one character was for being a slave owner.

  55. 55.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    Then let it dry for about a week

    I read that as “Then let it cry for about a week,” which would work just as well, I think.

  61. 61.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Oh, no you don’t. I’ll own up to the debts of white folks all day long, but I will NOT take responsibility for Richard Cohen.

  62. 62.

    I am not a kook

    @TheMightyTrowel: It’s a Thinkpad, so it’s a tool, not an iToy. That means you can take it apart as you wish. The keyboard will come off, just unscrew some screws in the bottom and pry and jiggle. Download the manual from Lenovo.

    Don’t worry, it’s easy. I love Thinkpads, I have 3 working ones, they are built like tanks – oldest is over 6 years old. When you get the keyboard off (screws and cable), you can probably just throw it into your dishwasher. Well, maybe not quite but you get the idea :)

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    dang. I’m on vaykay in DFW with a weak wifi, so I’m a little slow on the uptake right now. gonna go ahead and check out the thread 3 floors down

  64. 64.

    Marmot

    @Lolis: That’s terrible. On behalf of this town, I apologize.

    But I can’t help but mention that that kind of thing is far more prominent among football fans. Around here, they’re far more conservative, what with the jingoism and all.

  65. 65.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Betty Cracker: I confess to loving GWTW, and have seen it more times than I can count. Maybe when I was about 14 I bought into the “slavery wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be” thing* but I watch it, and enjoy it, because of the stunning acting, gorgeous music, and epic sweep of the whole thing.

    It’s really not a pro-slavery film (or book). Slavery is one element among many. It’s the story of a particular woman in a particular time and place. Mostly a love/anti-love story. Yes, these days I cringe at the scenes with Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) and the shuffling Pork (manservant to Gerald O’Hara) and so on, but Hattie McDaniel’s Mammy must have smacked 1939 audiences upside the face with her dignity and power.

    GWTW is as much about gender roles as racial roles. Please don’t let your 21st-century sensibilities get in the way of your respect for a true 20th-century masterpiece.

    BC, I replied to you but this is not directed at you. Obvs.

  66. 66.

    schrodinger's cat

    One final thought on GWTW, it is a fairy tale not to be confused with history. It is like Kipling’s stories set in India.
    @SiubhanDuinne: Love her or hate her Scarlett is a strong woman, a species unfortunately not that common in either literature or film.

  68. 68.

    lamh36

    @schrodinger’s cat: birthday went well thx. I’m in DFW now for the second half of my birthday week. I’ll be back in Louziana Sunday.

    I’m going all bones this trip so just the IPad and cell so I’m kinda resigned to whatever free wifi I can find when I need to charge my phone?

    thank you for asking.

  69. 69.

    LeftCoastTom

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    edging out his compulsive Very Serious Person Centrism as well as his other many flaws, is that he’s not very bright. He’s also a terrible writer.

    Which is a perfectly good reason for bashing the hell out of him, contra Heliopause, because his job is to be a writer. For the Washington Post which, despite its general suckiness, is considered a “Paper Of Record”.

  71. 71.

    lamh36

    @Belafon: well I lived in DFW until January ever since Katrina til I moved back to La. so I was finally able to come back to visit my friends. right now I’m near the Farmers Branch area but tomorrow I’ll be downtown near Parkland and then Saturday I’ll be on the South side and for a bit. On Sunday gonna try to visit my lil sis in Commerce.

  76. 76.

    Belafon

    @lamh36: When you pass through Rockwall (just on the other side of Lake Ray Hubbard), wave when you get near the CostCo. I live near it.

    Rockwall: If we don’t have what you want to eat, we’re probably going to get it soon.

  77. 77.

    Patricia Kayden

    @lamh36: My husband forced me to watch it. I’ll never do that again. Couldn’t believe the racist propaganda. Very interesting to know that several of the Black actors/actresses were one generation away from slavery and that Butterfly McQueen was atheist.

  78. 78.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    And I admit, I also have a weakness for Kipling of the period, and yes, that includes all the cringeworthy Empire stuff.

    I also admire a great deal of Church music and architecture and literature, despite my atheistic leanings.

  79. 79.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: Ever see My Boy Jack?

    Have you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
    “When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
    “Has any one else had word of him?”
    Not this tide.
    For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
    “Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
    Except he did not shame his kind—
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
    Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
    Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

  80. 80.

    lamh36

    @schrodinger’s cat: ooh I did not. I’ll try to check that out.

    the trio so far has been ok (just 6hrs so far…LOL).

    but I did get some distressing news right before my flight :-)

    Idris Elba Is Off The Market… And May Be Expecting A Baby
    I am devastated! Guess I’ll have to find me a new boo while I’m in Dallas. ..lol

    http://m.necolebitchie.com/2013/11/07/idris-elba-is-off-the-market-and-may-be-expecting-a-baby/

    A Life Lived N Fear Is A Life Half-lived

  83. 83.

    Citizen_X

    @Patricia Kayden: The film has been described as a “regression” that promotes the myth of the black rapist and the honourable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.[79] For decades it has shaped basic perceptions of black and white Americans, purporting to tell American history, but in reality is a “social propaganda” film offering a white supremacist version of the past.[78]

    [/Rand Paul]

  84. 84.

    lamh36

    @Belafon: I’ve been near/pass Rockwell many times when I lived here.

    when u hear car horns that sounds like “shave and a haircut…” it’s me…lol

  86. 86.

    Thymezone

    Richard Cohen has always been a complete horse’s ass. Sometimes it shows more than at other times …. like it did here.

  89. 89.

    Lurking Canadian

    I got into it not too long ago with some posters at Tor.com who were claiming “well, sure, American slavery was bad because of the racism, but there’s nothing wrong with slavery per se“.

    Some people just don’t see anything wrong with owning other people and using them as farm equipment. Some people are fucking broken.

  90. 90.

    Belafon

    @Citizen_X: The one thing I find interesting about the book/movie is the two main characters. I think Rhett represents the future for the South, and Scarlett is the South having to decide whether to stick with the past and its traditions or follow Rhett. It is very, very steeped in the myths of the South, and whitewashes a lot.

  93. 93.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It was Custer — in a bad career move — who attacked the Indians.

    Custer was a serving US army officer and the United States was at war with these Indians. What a frapping ignorant nimrod. You can accuse the US of abusing the Sioux Indian tribe, but you can’t blame it on Custer. Small wonder this Derptard needed a fucking movie to tell him slavery was a bad thing for a black.

  95. 95.

    PurpleGirl

    @Anniecat45: But the man is 71, he was born and raised on Long Island (as someone else upthread said). He went to Hunter College and Columbia University (Both in NYC, Columbia is even on the edge of Harlem). Was his life so insular that he lived through the Civil Rights movement, feminism, Vietnam protests, etc. as a zombie.

  96. 96.

    schrodinger's cat

    One of my favorite Kipling poems;
    If
    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

    If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  97. 97.

    El Cid

    There is no fucking excuse for this.

    This was a basic, formative part of this nation’s history, culture, and legacy of law & politics, and this fuckwad writes regular essays as though an expert in observing all those things.

    What a fucking dick.

    You have to see a fucking movie to grasp that human enslavement and associated cruelty was really bad?

  98. 98.

    raven

    Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan
    brown,
    For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
    Christian down;
    And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
    the late deceased,
    And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
    East.”

  99. 99.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Petorado: I’ve noticed that with the Wingnuts I know – they all treat movies like they are some kind of primary source material and on some form of entertainment and no nothing about history if it wasn’t in a movie. Heck, even Newt Gingrich is a major fan boi of Star Wars. If the Teabaggers really are basing their world view on movies that would explain a lot about their otherwise bizarre behavior.

  101. 101.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    And the dawn comes up like thunder
    Outer China ‘crost the bay.

    Fantastic wordsmith, Kipling. I cut my young teeth on the Just-So Stories, Stalky & Co., and of course the Jungle Books. I had a pair of grandparents who had been trained as public speakers (“elocutionists,” TYVM) and some of my earliest memories are of hearing them recite “If,” “Gunga Din,” “Mandalay,” and “The Ladies” aloud after family dinners. Honestly, I don’t think there was a political agenda — I think they just enjoyed the rhymes and rhythms and whimsies of the language.

  108. 108.

    schrodinger's cat

    OK coming back to south and slavery, I have been reading Light in August by Faulkner and it is a damn difficult read. A southern man, probably the same age as Cohen in my group said that the book was a pale imitation of reality and the reality was far worse than the book. So if Cohen did not know the truth it is because he did not want to know. As my grandma used to say you cannot wake up someone who is just pretending to be asleep. I am glad that Cohen is awake now.

  110. 110.

    ET

    Honestly though for the last few decades the southern whitewash of “war between the States” has been more ascendant. In that yes slavery was bad but only as an abstraction with none of those inconvenient details that would illustrate they why’s better than the were. I suspect that is what he wes referring to. After all there are many apologists who are still trying to push the “it wasn’t about slavery” narrative and that slaves did fight for the south of their own volition.

  112. 112.

    Citizen Alan

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    It’s really not a pro-slavery film (or book). Slavery is one element among many.

    It may not have been pro-slavery, but it pretty much demonized the freedmen and was fairly effective propaganda for the idea that blacks were unfit to participate in democracy at a time when Jim Crow was at its height.

  113. 113.

    Citizen Alan

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    My embarrassing secret of the day: For years, I was a big fan of “The White Man’s Burden” because I mistakenly thought it was meant as satire.

  115. 115.

    KS in MA

    @schrodinger’s cat: Scarlett isn’t a strong woman, she’s an asshole. You wouldn’t have her in your house. “Mammy” was right about her at the beginning, and Rhett was right at the end!

  116. 116.

    moderateindy

    Putting Cohen to the side, While slavery is a truly heinous proposition, it is not the reason that black people are so disadvataged in today’s society. Remember, many Chinese were also slaves. Not just Jim Crow, but the overt, and subconcious racism that still permeates our society is why black folk are where they are on the social and economic rungs on the ladder.
    I am surrounded by well educated suburban middle and upper middle class whites from the Chicago area, and am regularly dismayed by how many are horrible racists. Then there’s the kind of sub-concious racism that adds to the woes of African Americans. Things like qualified candidates not getting interviews because their name sounds black. This is often done by people that have no intention of discrimination, it has just seeped into our cultural psyche, that black people are lazy.
    One rather uncomfortable fact, even as crappy as black folk have it here, on total they are fortunate that their ancestors were taken from Africa, and brought here, as the average person’s life on the African continent over the past 100 years was exponentially worse than living here, even with all the garbage black people had to put up with.

  117. 117.

    Ben Cisco

    One rather uncomfortable fact, even as crappy as black folk have it here, on total they are fortunate that their ancestors were taken from Africa, and brought here, as the average person’s life on the African continent over the past 100 years was exponentially worse than living here, even with all the garbage black people had to put up with.

    This paragraph, the fact that it is totally unrelated to the matter at hand (except to remind us of one of the tropes the NeoConfederate apologists use whenever the topic comes up), and the fact that you felt compelled to include it, pretty much creates a dumpster fire out of everything else you said. Nice job.

  119. 119.

    shortstop

    @SiubhanDuinne: The book has multiple long passages, plus a few dozen one-off comments, characterizing black people as stupid, apes, children, unable to process simple information, lazy, easy to fool, hard to train, prone to wanting free stuff, etc., etc.

    Yes, there’s more to it than slavery, as you say, but it’s hard to enjoy the other themes when this is a recurring motif. Nor does Mitchell’s constant wailing about the “victimization” of southern whites–via the loss of their “property,” the lost ability to conduct their affairs as they see fit (i.e., run a slave economy), and the new right of black people to vote and serve in state legislatures–make it an easier read.

  120. 120.

    schrodinger's cat

    @KS in MA: Why because she does not conform to the society’s ideals of a what a woman should be? I mean if a man had done everything that Scarlett does he would be hailed as a hero. I did not say that she was likeable but she definitely is strong.

  122. 122.

    Lawrence

    Where did this cracker ass motherfucking cracker go to school, grade school, where he learned this version of American history? I understand why klansmen and confererade apologists and general purpose racists claim to believe this, and sometimes come to believe it. I’m a white man who grew up in Phoenix and no teacher ever floated this bullshit apologia in history class.

  123. 123.

    shortstop

    @schrodinger’s cat: In some part, yes, but that shouldn’t extend to making the untrue statement, as SD did, that the book is “not about slavery.” In fact, all the themes and subthemes of the book meander in and out of the political and emotional connections of the moneyed white south to the its former glory under a slave economy and white supremacy, and to the perceived hideous consequences of losing total control over freed slaves.

    It’s ironic, actually, that Mitchell spends so much time bewailing the inability of white southern women to express themselves, hold paying jobs, be given credit for brains, and so forth while she simultaneously argues against black people receiving the same opportunities. Within this story is one of the oldest stories in the world: people first understand and demand justice and equality when they’re not getting it themselves, and it usually takes longer to make the connection to other people.

    A little more about judging yesterday’s art by today’s sensibilities: Citizen Alan nails it above when he mentions that this was created for a 1930s audience and purposefully reinforces Jim Crow notions that were prevalent among whites at that time. Citizen X correctly reminds us that the book paints the KKK, which was quite active in the 1930s, as honorable and defensive (that white victim theme again). Our standards are different today, but the fact that this is an engaging story doesn’t negate the fact that it’s simultaneously a giant piece of propaganda even within its own era. That’s not an unfortunate side effect of the book. It’s one of its core purposes, and it’s hard to deny that given the amount of space and loving detail Mitchell devotes to defending the old lifestyle of southern whites and demonizing both blacks and the people who defend their increased opportunities. We may not judge literature wholly by our current social standards, but that doesn’t mean it can or should be viewed as existing completely outside of ethical judgment.

  124. 124.

    McJulie

    @schrodinger’s cat: I don’t know if by “strong female characters” you include Scarlet herself, but if you do… she’s an interesting character, no doubt, but she’s a narcissist, probably a sociopath, a “queen bee” type who is destructive of other women, and is the very epitome of using traditional sex roles in a dishonest way — “feminine wiles” — to get what she wants.

    She’s the villain of the piece, in other words. Except I don’t think the story recognizes that fact.

  125. 125.

    shortstop

    One more point: perceptions of the relative importance of the book’s various themes vary greatly depending on the demographics of the person reading it. Black women are not reading this book and saying, “That Scarlett! She might be a bitch but she’s a STRONG WOMAN!” They are looking on with horror at this character who manifestly believes in the institution of slavery and the innate inferiority of black people.

    The ability to brush off messages because their artistic vehicle was created in a different time is very much dependent on how personally those messages resonate, and even more on how much those messages are still a part of a person’s present-day life. Slavery is illegal in the U.S. now, but black people are still daily getting hit with the stereotypes I listed a couple of comments up. It’s quite a bit harder to dismiss a work as of another era when healthy portions of its messaging are happening all around us.

  126. 126.

    schrodinger's cat

    @shortstop: I don’t disagree with anything you said, but is an engaging yarn nevertheless.
    @McJulie: Well Scarlett is no Gloria Steinem, that’s for sure. She does what she has to do, save Tara, with the whatever arsenal she has at hand. In my book that qualifies as strong. She does not wait for a knight in shining armor to save her, she takes matters in her own hand and does not wilt under adversity like many of her peers.

  127. 127.

    schrodinger's cat

    @shortstop:

    The ability to brush off messages because their artistic vehicle was created in a different time is very much dependent on how personally those messages resonate, and even more on how much those messages are still a part of a person’s present-day life.

    Isn’t that true about any work of art though, we do see things from our own lens.

  128. 128.

    shortstop

    @schrodinger’s cat: Of course. GWTW isn’t unique in that respect. I’m just noting that some people can read it and believe that its gender themes are at least as important as its racial themes, while others definitely do not see it that way.

  130. 130.

    Kilkee

    @raven: In other important college football news, the Portland (Maine) Press Herald carried an ad yesterday placed by the University of Alabama, advertising an upcoming recruiting trip where prospective Tidesters (or whatever they’re called) could come and learn more about opportunitites at the Great U of A. “We look forward to seeing you there!” it said, which is unlikely, in that “there” turns out to be at the “Portland Marriott Waterfront,” in Portland, OREGON. Question is: will they show up in Oregon to find absolutely no one there?

  132. 132.

    McJulie

    @schrodinger’s cat: A divisive character with different ways she can be interpreted — definitely. Now that I think about it, it seems to me that I have heard friends who teach literature observe a generational difference in how Scarlett is perceived, with younger women more likely to see her negatively.

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