Commentor EuralJ went to a rally in Columbia on Saturday, and sent along these photos:
The women holding signs in front of the flag are my wife and daughter. I included the Tillman protest picture because a lot of people want that one to go as well – they only difference between Tillman and Roof is one has a statue honoring him in our public civic space right next to the Confederate memorial (which is placed to dominate the downtown Columbia section of Main street).
Related, from the editor of the local Sumter Item, Graham Osteen:
Time to end Confederate flag discussion
If the South Carolina General Assembly doesn’t get the Confederate battle flag off the Statehouse grounds after what happened in Charleston this week, then we may as well replace the Palmetto Tree on the proper state flag – the beautiful blue one – with a swastika…My family has been here in the American South since the 1700s, and my great-great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier. He was a printer. He printed currency. After the South lost the war and the United States emerged intact – thank God – he became a newspaperman.
The family business he started continues today, and now six generations of my American family have been dedicated to supporting the communities we serve and protecting the First Amendment of the United States of America through publishing and communication. We have a track record, so here’s some free speech for those who want to keep the Confederate battle flag on the Statehouse grounds as some twisted symbol of Southern heritage: You’re misguided and morally blind. Snap out of it…
Here’s some more info about “terrorist Ben Tillman“ from Nancy LeTourneau at the Washington Monthly.
Cervantes
If it matters: “Rallies,” not “rallys.”
Face
Speaking of the South and its Culture of Guns and Jesus(TM)….well, the two just had a divorce. At least for Catholics it did (although Pope Franky dissed all Christians).
Somewhere Bill Donahue’s head just assploaded into a brazillian pieces.
raven
4 boxes at the Supremes
Patricia Kayden
Good on the people of South Carolina for rallying against the American swastika. Should have been taken down off public property long long ago. Perhaps it will take the murder of 9 Black churchgoers to shame South Carolinian politicians to do the right thing.
Cervantes
Heartening.
Thanks to EuralJ for being there and sending photos — and to Anne Laurie for posting.
Patricia Kayden
@Face: Wow. I’m kind of digging this Pope. He’s on the right side of several key issues, although he hasn’t budged on gay or reproductive rights as yet.
Conservatives must hate his guts.
Elizabelle
Betty Cracker had an interesting observation in the morning thread:
Bobby Thomson
My money’s on Moloch.
ETA: meant to be a response to Face.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Thanks! Also wanted to say one more time how glad I am to have been wrong about the possibility that Charleston massacre would reopen a debate about the Confederate flag in the mainstream (and not just lefty blogs). It’s heartening to see it become a national issue, and it looks like the momentum will at least get the flag off the state house grounds in SC, which, while symbolic, will have ripple effects. It’s not everything, but this is a GOOD thing.
Cluttered Mind
@Patricia Kayden: Change takes time. Especially for an institution like the Catholic Church. The Pope’s comments on LGBTQ rights and women’s rights are light years ahead of previous Popes even if he’s not where most liberals would want him to be yet. Pope Francis’s words and actions thus far have really shown him to be a force for good, and it’s important to remember that there is no great liberal icon in the history of the world who hasn’t had a monstrous side to them. FDR was amazing in most respects but I imagine the blacks and japanese-americans of the time probably had a different opinion of him than the rest of the country. LBJ’s civil rights legislation was an astounding improvement on the status quo, but the Vietnam War hangs as a particularly bleak shadow over his legacy. No one is going to be perfect. This Pope is so much better than I had ever expected to see from the Vatican in my lifetime. It’s certainly okay to criticize him for the things he’s not doing well, but try to keep it in context.
debbie
If SC has a statue to Tillman in a public space, it needs to be expelled from the Union.
raven
Zip from the Supremes.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
Betty:
I can’t agree with this. The flag was always a symbol of a way of life, and that way of life is impossible to untangle from slavery.
JPL
Scotusblog said these opinions are still not announced.
Texas Fair Housing Act, Arizona redistricting commission, King v. Burwell, Michigan v. EPA, Johnson v. US, Obergefell v. Hodges, Glossip v. Gross, I believe.
It’s going to be a long week.
Elizabelle
OT, but WTF, it’s Christopher Lee Day, people:
Today is tribute to Christopher Lee tribute on TCM’s daytime programming.
Schedule (times are Eastern) is:
Betty Cracker
@debbie: I agree with that; didn’t mean to imply that the Confederacy was ever about anything but maintaining slavery, which a cursory review of its founding documents makes clear. My point is that the perception among white people in the South about what the flag means (as a symbol) has evolved over time.
Germy Shoemangler
Georgia Adds Swastika, Middle Finger To State Flag
Cervantes
@Elizabelle, quoting Betty Cracker:
When?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: Actually, it was a pretty good day, given the make up of this Court. The results in Kingsley and Patel are good. The other two cases are too far from my wheel house for me to say.
Elizabelle
… and the coffin opens, as Mina arrives ….
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: TCM?
LAC
@Elizabelle: ok… Maybe you and ole Betty can whitesplain why this flag started wave in charleston in 1962 and what was the motivation? I’ll give you one guess. It pains her to agree with morning blow? It pains me to have to read more excuses at this point
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
I agree.
The decision in Horne (the price-support case) seems reasonable to me as well.
LAC
@Betty Cracker: “evolved” over time? How?
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup. And it’s a good flick.
Keeps me from turning to Fox News ….
JPL
@Germy Shoemangler: GA changed the confederate battle flag after threats of boycotts. The one we have now is similar to the first national flag of confederate states. It wouldn’t surprise me, if many residents did not realize that, the current flag is based on the original confederate flag.
JPL
@Cervantes: The court can do a lot of damage in the next week though.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: I provided a rough timeline with a reference to “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show, which prominently featured Confederate symbols and ran on a major network. I hesitate to provide a definitive timeline since I haven’t conducted or read a sociological study of white perceptions of Confederate symbols, but I have some lived experience with it.
It was a dumb TV show, but it was mainstream, and I’m pretty sure the symbols weren’t perceived by most white folks at the time as pro-white supremacy. That’s a function of privilege; white people (North and South) could afford to view it as a harmless regional eccentricity. That’s changing. Good!
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: Well, anything that keeps you from doing that… BTW, having you considered cutting? It probably would be better for you in the long run.
Elizabelle
I’m paying attention to Dracula, account of a Victorian era horror that destroyed lives and was put to its end in that century.
Now: re the flag of treason: yes, it has always been associated with the Confederate States of America. It’s what it stands for. But there was a lot of late 19th and up to mid-century 20th century historical revisionism going on.
I know some not-awful people, schooled in the south, who bought the “states’ rights” arguments. (Gullible there, smart in other ways.) And some of them might have picked up on the “the South is full of backwards wankers” sentiment and rebelled against that.
Yes, their sentiments are not borne out in fact. They do not, and never have, displayed the flag of treason.
But there’s still too much respect for the Confederate heritage, and pride in being from the South, without outright acknowledging that regime was built on human slavery.
So maybe this atrocity, this murder of 9 people, will open a discussion and some peoples’ minds.
Betty Cracker
@LAC: I’m not making any excuses for it, and I’m aware that politicians installed the flag in the 60s to protest desegregation. My point is that over time, more white people in the South (and probably the North too) have come to recognize that the Confederate flag IS inextricably linked with white supremacy and thus isn’t cool to casually display as a sign of regional pride. I’m saying this is a GOOD thing.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: No cutting. Yet.
This Dracula is very sexual. The actress who plays Mina has a lot of reaction shots that are unmistakable.
I did not know Christopher Lee was 6’5″ in real life. He looms, in that long black cape.
Steve From Antioch
So is “take down the flag” the consensus pick for the cause de jour hoping to capitalize in the Charleston shooting that will fizzle out in the next week or two?
Maybe throw in a complete ban on display of apartheid era South African/ Rhodesian flags, too?
Cervantes
@JPL:
Goes without saying, I agree.
Belafon
@LAC: If you watch the Dukes of Hazzard, there were very few blacks (I do remember an episode when the Duke family was helping a black man deal with Boss Hogg’s and the Sheriff’s racism). Kind of like Vermont. It’s what a lot of people like to refer to when they talk about “Conservative Heritage.” When they use the term, they’re definitely referring to those periods when they don’t have to think about black people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve From Antioch: Just wondering… Are you paid to to be douche or do you do it for fun?
West of the Cascades
@Cervantes: Ditto the opinion in Kimble (about whether the petitioner could collect royalties for a Spider Man-like web shooter after the patent expired where the royalties contract contained no expiration date), and Justice Kagan had a lot of fun writing that (“Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time”).
West of the Cascades
@West of the Cascades: also this conclusion:
What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “SpiderMan,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility”). Finding many reasons for staying the stare decisis course and no “special justification” for departing from it, we decline Kimble’s invitation to overrule Brulotte. For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
Cervantes
@Steve From Antioch:
The killer has been captured and is facing trial.
The focus on the flag seems trivial to you? I agree that it’s not a cure-all. What additional steps would you recommend (if any)?
(Not that you haven’t already had, and resisted, the chance to expound.)
Davebo
One need only look at the timing of the South Carolina’s legislative decision to erect the flag at the capital to realize EXACTLY why they chose to do it.
LAC
@Betty Cracker: white southerners have always recognize what this flag symbolizes. That some realized that it is wrong and not something to be proud of is the issue. Trying to separate the confederate flag from its history is as helpful as trying to separate the swastica from nazism. Or as VEEP do brilliantly sums it:
http://youtu.be/lUbg5fg9SdU
Steve From Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus: oh my god, s/he said something I don’t like!!!! How to handle? Let’s go with the top-shelf insults, like douche and troll… Engage!!!!!!
Cervantes
@West of the Cascades:
Thanks. (I did not comment on Kimble only because I have not read today’s decision.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve From Antioch: From that response, I am guessing that you retain your amateur status. Thanks.
mai naem mobile
I think.the Southern racists think that the South is like the former Soviet states like Azerbaijan.and Kazakhstan with the Feds.being the big bad Soviet.Union. But in reality lothey’re more like the Soviet dependent countries like Cuba and N.Korea who got financial assistance from the Soviets.
shell
Well, those people are obviously all outside agitators- Fox News
Steve From Antioch
@Cervantes: I wouldn’t say trivial, exactly. It’s just the inevitable intersection of whatever political hobby horse people ride and whatever can be associated with the shooter.
i just find opportunism tiring.
Belafon
@Steve From Antioch: Actually, I’m going to borrow from the SCOTUS decision on license plate designs: The state should not be forced to commit offensive speech.
The first amendment applies to government controlling what you say. The government should not be in any way saying those things.
As for making you throw away your Confederate flag. All I can do is declare that you have to choose between the US flag and the Confederate flag. If you choose the Confederate flag, I choose to not treat you like an American.
Steve From Antioch
@Omnes Omnibus:
Feel better?
AxelFoley
@Steve From Antioch: Hopefully, your tenure here will fizzle out in a day or two. In other words, fuck the fuck off, asswipe.
Betty Cracker
@LAC: I don’t think most white people in the South gave the meaning of the symbol a whole lot of thought back then, which is a function of privilege. Their notions of Southern heritage included slavery but were based on whitewashed portrayals such as “Gone with the Wind.” There are still many miles to go, but to the extent that this mythology has been eroded, we’ve made some progress.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve From Antioch: Surprising, isn’t it, that for a half-century prior to last Wednesday’s shooting nobody had ever commented on the SC legislature’s decision to fly that flag on state grounds.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure if you’re entirely correct about The Dukes of Hazard. The show was largely built around poking fun at ignorant Southern yokels, and having a car with the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof was a way of showing what a bunch of hayseeds the Dukes were.
MattF
I think a good number of Southerners have a ‘moment of truth’ about the Civil War– they learn the fables, and then… I remember, when I was a freshman in college, there was a Texas lad in the dorm who came back from history class one day with a stunned look. “The Civil War was a civil war” he said. “We always called it ‘the war between the states’, but it was a civil war.”
Unsympathetic
“there’s still too much respect for the Confederate heritage, and pride in being from the South”
NAME ONE THING that this is based on other than slavery. I understand that they have pride.. but is it based on something, or is it just the gratuitous self-righteousness of a rebellious teenager who grew up in a rich family and never needed to keep a job on his own?
For example: Texas is equally proud [“Don’t Mess With Texas”] of when it was just Texas.. how? 100% of the military engagements that Texas had with Mexican forces were complete routs – of the Texas militia. The fact-based purpose of Texas claiming independence from Mexico was… so that the US government would annex them, and then protect them from Mexico by sending in the US army upon annexation.
Belafon
@Roger Moore: Having grown up in the South, and grown up watching the show, most southerners didn’t take it that way. The reason it ran so long was because it did make southerners feel good, and made the law out to be stupid. And, like I said above, there were very few blacks in the town.
tam1MI
@Omnes Omnibus: Now, now, now… He’s not a douche. He’s an IGNORANT douche. There’s a difference.
Bobby B.
This flag kerfluffle is why we should have done a THOROUGH job in the Civil War. Too many rebels were allowed to live.
Davebo
@LAC:
Actually it began being displayed at the capital in 1961.
Fascinating story via Kevin Drum of how it came to happen is here.
shawn
@Elizabelle: the 2005 Dukes of Hazzard reboot HAD the confederate flag on the General Lee after Cooter restored the car and there is a great sequence about how the Duke boys, without having noticed it as they got in the car in a hurry and only later when they were in bumper to bumper traffic in Atlanta had people yelling at them and didn’t know why did they look at the top of the car and immediately know why – the film was pretty terrible but handled that aprt of the show really well i thought
Davebo
@Unsympathetic:
Well there was that minor skirmish at San Jacinto. Bad day for Santa Anna.
Gin & Tonic
I despise saying “good on Rand Paul”, but I’ve read that he is donating the campaign contributions he received from the CCC’s Earl Holt to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund. Which sounds like an intelligent way of dealing with the problem.
Betty Cracker
@shawn: Interesting. I never saw the movie, but in stills, I definitely noticed the absence of the flag. So they addressed it outright.
Belafon
@Bobby B.: Actually, the North did a good job during the Civil War and Reconstruction. But, you know what, whites outside of the South were racist as well, and they allowed the South to grow the “Lost Cause” narrative because it didn’t hurt them and they were tired of the whole thing and ready to move on.
Elizabelle
What could be wrong about going to Dracula’s castle, after you’ve been warned to stay away? And the door is …. open.
Waiting to see how they revive the fiend in this 1966 movie, when the 1958 one reduced the good Count to ashes. And they showed clips of that in the opening scenes ….
gratuitous
Anent the flag and other symbols of oppression controversy: The side of the angels is winning when you hear the defenders of the racist flag or the Ben Tillman statue say their presence in Charleston is not that important. It’s called “denying the prize” and is a very old tactic to try to blunt the pain of a clear loss.
Will removal of these symbols solve the problem of racism? I don’t think anyone believes that for a second, but it will be the fallback position for the fans of oppression: “See? We took down that flag, but racism still exists! You didn’t do anything.” And to prove how little was accomplished, they’ll keep coming back and coming back to it because it meant so little to them.
shawn
@Belafon: wasn’t the no-nonsense sheriff from the next county black? if memory serves the Duke boys were careful to never cross that county line because they would go from bumbling Roscoe to the big, black sheriff that was eager to drop the hammer on them
NCSteve
Speaking as one (more or less), I wish to hell white southerners were capable of grasping this important lesson from Game of Thrones last season:
Great Great Grampa Kunnhel Confabulation G.D. Tallifero pronounced Tolliver, who left his plantation and eighty adoring slaves to fight the Damnyankees at the Battle of Bloody Balls is fucking dead, okay? Dead and rotted. His valor, like the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor dirt cracking farmer conscripts whose only connection to slavery was getting drunk and doing slave patrol duty two nights a month, was poured out like water in defense of an evil cause.
And that doesn’t have to have anything to do with you and who you are unless you insist on making it so. Because they’re dead, buried, rotted and beyond caring what the fuck you do or don’t do. They’re not your parents. They’re not your grand parents. They’re no one you knew and they thought about the world in ways you would find incomprehensible no matter how hard to you try to identify with them. They’re dead. So fuck ’em.
Elizabelle
@Belafon:
We have a winner. My sisters and I were amazed to find out what lurked in the hearts of some (mind you, just a few) family members (the older ones) from the Midwest. And Chicago.
We’d always heard the racial animosity was a North-South thing. And yet here they were, ample butts parked in the Midwest. Fleeing blacks and talking about Martin Luther Coon.
Davebo
@Gin & Tonic:
Rand actually seems to be getting better at this as time goes on (campaigning that is..).
I guess it helps that he knows he has little chance at the nomination, is young, and realizes attitudes are changing fast.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
I agree that recently it has become more clear to whites that the Confederate (I don’t nitpick the name) Flag is a symbol for racism. One of the biggest cultural movements of the 80s was comfortable whites sticking our fingers in our ears and going LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU about racism. That left the more serious racists free to make life worse for blacks on every front, while being able to say things like ‘It’s our heritage’ or ‘Welfare is being gamed’ or ‘Crime in inner cities is out of control.’ In the 70s, it was understood that the Duke Boys ran the Confederate Flag because they resented the government telling them what to do, like alcohol distillation and sale laws, traffic laws, and taxes. That ‘not to oppress blacks’ was one of those things Southern rednecks hated the government telling them to do was a background assumption. We forgot. The blacks and the serious racists didn’t.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic:
And yet it seems not to have occurred to Ted Cruz.
shawn
@Elizabelle: yeah, plenty of racism in not the south (Boston comes to mind) – id honestly say it’s about equal if we are looking at a state to state comparison – it is also worth noting that white people are not the only racists out there – they are just the ones that have been in power in this country since they got here – still the flag institutionalizes it to some extent – taking it down won’t solve the problem but it is an easy thing to at lease start moving in the right direction
Belafon
@shawn: That I don’t remember.
Mandalay
@Gin & Tonic:
Why? If he is doing something good just say so. The notion that you have to despise yourself for doing it is infantile.
That said, you may be giving Paul more credit than he is due. Holt donated to a lot to campaigns of Republicans, and it beggars belief that NONE of the recipients below knew about his beliefs:
Rick Santorum
Ted Cruz
Rand Paul
Tom Cotton
Thom Tillis
Joni Ernst
Mia Love
Allen West
Mitt Romney
Richard Mourdock
Todd Akin
Jeff Flake
Michele Bachmann
Steve King
Louie Gohmert
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: Nice..
Unsympathetic
@NCSteve:
This.
AliceBlue
@Elizabelle:
In the 1920s the midwest (particularly Indiana) was a hotbed of Klan activity.
LAC
@Gin & Tonic:
“PAUL: I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners — I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant — but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.
INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworth’s?
PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part — and this is the hard part about believing in freedom — is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example — you have to, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things and uh, we’re here at the bastion of newspaperdom, I’m sure you believe in the First Amendment so you understand that people can say bad things.It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we’re civilized people, we publicly criticize that, and don’t belong to those groups, or don’t associate with those people.”
Wow, we really are really setting the bar low , aren’t we??
schrodinger's cat
Agitating for the removal of the Confederate flag from the Capitol in SC is all well and good. If it is removed, it will be an important symbolic victory. What is even more important is calling out is how much of Roof’s agenda and rhetoric in his so called manifesto has in common with the mainstream of the Republican party.
ETA: Let’s not forget, that the GOP and their media stooges soft-pedaling ofthe racist hate mongering for decades has gathered extra momentum during the Obama years.
JPL
@Davebo: Thank you for that link. Hollis sounds like he was a remarkable man.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: The Tillman statue should be smashed, also and send a few pieces to a museum.
Cervantes
@Roger Moore:
Leaving the flag aside for the moment, your thought re what the Dukes represented may also be reflected in the following (non-exhaustive) lists:
L’il Abner
Hee Haw
The Beverly Hillbillies
Gomer Pyle
Huckleberry Hound
And:
Roots
Billy Jack
Deliverance
Southern Comfort
Chainsaw Massacre
Walking Tall
Buster And Billie
Jackson County Jail
Macon County Line
In each of the above, who is looking at “the South” and what are they seeing?
Frankensteinbeck
@Mandalay:
Because praising him on one not-horribly-racist act provides cover for his many grotesquely racist stances. He is very thoroughly on record as being against the Civil Rights Act, for example.
Rand Paul says whatever he thinks his audience at that moment wants to hear. Don’t praise him for anything. If he says the sky is blue, assume he’s lying.
Elizabelle
Cue the dry ice ……. and he’s ba-ack.
Gvg
White privileges allowed us to not notice or think about it for a good long while. a lot of people get busy living lives and don’t have time to think about too many other people for the young adult and middle part of their lives especially if there aren’t too many news stories that think. I watched the Dukes as a kid and never thought about it. it was a fluff story with car chases and Daisy wasn’t a pushover…I was starting to notice I didn’t like old fashioned women characters. self centered views.
I have seen a lot more and lived a lot more since. One aspect of the flag symbol I want to point out is it was also used to intimidate whites who would treat blacks as equals too. watching the tea party gun nuts of the last few years peacock around has cemented my hatred for certain symbols. I want to burn those flags, not just take them down. NRA has also earned my hatred. I think they have become mafiaso like also. a lot of undecided whites need to have the history of the connection with murdering whites pointed out too. People were prevented from acting decently by willing to murder thugs.
Steve in the ATL
This sounds like a shot at the chief justice as well for his penchant for overturning well established precedents for nakedly political purposes.
Roger Moore
@shawn:
Yes, the sheriff of Chickasaw County was black and competent, but that wasn’t the main reason they were reluctant to go there. The Dukes were convicts still under supervision- I forget if it was parole or probation- and their terms included one forbidding them from leaving Hazard County. Presumably the goal of that was to prevent them from continuing to run moonshine. Getting caught across the county line meant a trip to prison.
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
The show ran from ’79 through ’85.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cervantes:
Your point being? It started before Reagan and ran well into the ‘See No Racism, Hear No Racism’ period. Everything I said applies.
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: There are racists everywhere. But I’ve never been a fan of this that there is some equivalence between the north and the south. I think that really diminishes what the South has done and continues to do.
As a side note, Oakland, CA had a terrible history of racist policy, and that shows in the way the city looks, even today. Now, I’m sure there were always racist people there, but it didn’t really get bad until WWII when thousands of people moved there from the south. And you had Southern Democrats writing discriminatory lending policies into the FHA bill, and in 2015 the city is still segregated.
Bill
It’s stunning that we are still having this debate in 2015.
Isn’t it self evident that a state government shouldn’t fly a symbol of racism, murder, rape etc… over its capital?
How is the notion of taking down the flag even controversial? I’d think even the most ardent racist would want to hide it better than that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I gotta bust you on the cutting joke. While I agree with the sentiment that Elizabelle is risking serious damage watching Fox so we don’t have to, I draw the line at lighthearted use of a behavior indicative of serious mental health issues to make the point.
kthxbai, says pedantic the mental health advocate
Cervantes
@Frankensteinbeck:
That it wasn’t really a show of the ’70s, that’s all.
I did not comment, apart from noting which decade is at issue.
raven
@Steve From Antioch: How about you are a shit eatin dog fucker of the lowest denomination?
Gin & Tonic
@LAC: I am aware of his history. My point was that *in this case*, presented with a particular issue, he chose what I thought was a very good solution. Maybe it’s the one rose among thorns, but maybe he’s learning something and adapting. I don’t know that. As someone pointed out, it was an easy solution that yet has somehow escaped other Republican candidates.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
I agree that it’s a good solution — to (what ought to be) a bad problem.
schrodinger's cat
@SatanicPanic: Word. The south institutionalized racism and codified it into laws, much worse than individuals with racist tendencies
@Betty Cracker: Their benign racism gets a pass because? They did not see what was in front of their eyes because they did not want to see it.
kc
@Elizabelle:
I missed that thread, but having grown up in SC, I think Betty’s right. Anyway, that flag should not be flying in front of the State House.
Nikki Haley, the governor of SC, has said the flag isn’t an issue because she talks to CEO’s and none of them has ever mentioned it. Maybe it’s time they start.
Germy Shoemangler
Charles Pierce had some things to say about the recent Meet The Press:
Elizabelle
@AliceBlue: Someone here a few months ago was telling us about the Sundown Towns — as in, don’t let the sun set on you here, black people.
Indiana and other states were riddled with them.
James Loewen, 2005 book, Sundown Towns.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@AliceBlue: There’s still some Klan activity along the mid to southern OH/IN border that’s fairly serious. Ohindibama is not just a play on words.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: I didn’t say it gets a pass. I said white perceptions of the Confederate flag have evolved over time. That’s all.
kc
@Betty Cracker:
It was kind of a cartoon-y thing when I was growing up.
Cervantes
@Steve From Antioch:
Fine — but again, no constructive suggestion?
Don’t we all?
rikyrah
@LAC:
yeah, that whole 1962 thing……..
uh huh
uh huh
LanceThruster
The only Confederate flag that mattered.
Davebo
@JPL:
I loved this quote!
kc
@Mandalay:
Yes. It’s not exactly news that the CCC is a grossly racist organization.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
@Betty Cracker:
One big problem with this way of talking about it: the group you’re referring to has not just been “perceiving” that flag passively lo these 150 years.
kc
@Elizabelle:
I wish TCM would show all those on a weekend so I could enjoy a whole day of young Christopher Lee. Sexiest Dracula ever.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
Don’t expect him to budge on gay rights or women’s rights.
The thing is, he hasn’t been reforming the Church message; he’s been (genuinely) restoring it to what it was before the “all that matters is abortion and gay marriage” consensus formed. That message was and is absolutely Neolithic on women and gays, but also generally anti war, anti laissez faire, pro environment, etc.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Parse away for your own amusement, but it was pretty clear whom I was referring to and what the timeframe in question was in the comment Elizabelle re-posted above.
KG
@Unsympathetic: not really confederate heritage, but apparently they’re pretty good at college football. I’d say just ask them, but they’ll tell you anyway…
I’ve been trying to think of just about anything that would represent a positive trait of that confederate heritage and I can’t think of anything. Most of the good cultural things to come from the south have come from the descendants of slaves (jazz and the blues for example). Maybe Twain? But he was a rather staunch abolitionist (despite spending two weeks in a confederate militia).
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Pope Francis reminds me of the many nuns who taught in my Jesuit school, pro-science, anti-war and service to those less fortunate than they were.
Elizabelle
@kc: He is! I’d suspect TCM will show the Christopher Lee movies frequently in the future.
I don’t follow LOTR, so had no idea he had a whole new set of fans.
The Horror of Dracula movie from 1958 was terrific (the half I saw). This one (Dracula, Prince of Darkness) is funnier (white English people doing stupid things — don’t go in that castle!) and Lee has not said a word yet. He’s loomed and glowered, though.
He’s doing so now, matter of fact.
kc
I think there’s a good chance that flag will come down, if the governor and legislature don’t get into a pissing match, which is what happened the last time the state officially addressed the issue.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
As an official flag of the state and other municipalities, the flag has pretty much been a symbol of racism and resistance to Northern interference with the Southern way of life. And the flag has been an affront and insult to black people in the South and elsewhere.
But you are absolutely correct that the flag has larger associations as well, but even these can be problematic. The rebel or outlaw is sometimes just a bad boy, as with the Dukes of Hazard, but other times something much worse.
The larger problem is that it is almost impossible to imagine an inclusive rehabilitation of the flag.
And yeah, stuff like this is not just a US problem. In Northern Ireland, it is impossible to separate the Orange Order flag, and its pride and heritage, from anti-Catholic bigotry.
kc
@Elizabelle:
Argh! Jealous. I wonder if there’s a compilation of those Hammer horror films available on DVD . . .
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
I haven’t seen the TV show, only the movie. There’s a funny moment when they’re driving in Atlanta and getting alternatively cheered on by right wingers and screamed at by left wingers and can’t understand why (the flag on the car). Implication being that it’s something they picked up by osmosis and don’t understand the meaning of.
On the other hand, it’s non trivial that they’re supposed to be uneducated, born and raised in a white rural bubble, and kind of a pair of hooligans.
JPL
@kc: She must have spoken with a few CEO’s today because she is having a news conference about the flag at four.
JPL
@JPL: I want to add that if Haley is serious about the flag, she needs to suggest they change the law so a simple majority can pass a law to remove the flag.
We’ll see what happens.
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well don’t praise him at all then – that’s fine if you feel that way. But praising him, and apologizing for praising him at the same time, is just childish.
I must have posted dozens of attacks on what a vile scumbag Mitt Romney is on BJ, but he is head and shoulders above any other politician on the issue of the Confederate flag in SC. It’s one of the few issues where he has never flip-flopped, but I don’t feel the need to qualify my praise for Romney on that single issue by pointing out what a total ass he is in many other respects. I kind of assume folks here already know that.
Belafon
@JPL: Let’s hope so. Maybe businesses can add this to their list of things they don’t want states to do.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Money talks, hmmm?
Germy Shoemangler
@kc: My favorite is “The Raven” from 1963 (I think?) Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.
Lorre was adlibbing all over the place, and he’s hilarious. At one point, he’s in a dusty old castle and says “Hard place to keep clean!”
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
No, as other questioners above indicate, not everything was “clear” in your original comment. For example, you wrote:
I asked when these scales fell from these eyes. More precisely, was it before the early ’60s or after? If “until fairly recently” takes us into the ’80s and beyond, that’s a big problem and it calls for self-examination — which is not exactly what I see here:
You forgot a key element of your arsenal: using the word “semantics” derisively. Don’t go easy on me, please. Give it all you’ve got!
Chris
@shawn:
Or what you said.
KG
@Mandalay:
this is one of those things that has infected our politics recently. if people work across the aisle, the immediate reaction seems to be that the person on your side either caved or the person on the other side tricked them and doesn’t really believe what they say. maybe that’s the same as it ever was; but the inability to say “we disagree much of the time, but we do agree on some issues, like this one” is not a good thing.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: As I said up-thread, of course the Confederacy itself was about continuing slavery. And common sense therefore might dictate that anytime anyone displays that flag, they must be consciously indicating that they are pro-white supremacy.
But I think those who are making that argument are forgetting something important about the nature of privilege: It allows you to be oblivious. That’s what makes it insidious.
the Conster
@Gin & Tonic:
There’s nothing good about Rand Paul. He got caught out, that’s all. What he needs to do is try to explain to us, like we’re all 5 years old, why Earl Holt III was mistaken if he thought Rand Paul and the other members of his GOP tribe would represent his interests. Pro tip: he can’t, so won’t.
kc
Woot! It’s coming down.
kc
@kc:
I know the article doesn’t say that, but it’s coming down.
Not only will it come down, SC politicians will vie to take credit for its removal. Unimaginable just a year ago.
shawn
@Betty Cracker: “something important about the nature of privilege: It allows you to be oblivious” This is really the bottom line. The hard part is that the privilage line is not just one line (something the left might try to remember) but rather dozens or even hundreds of lines. Still getting people to recognize the idea in the first place is a big step in the right direction.
kc
@Germy Shoemangler:
LOL, I don’t think I’ve even seen that one. And I love me some Vincent Price (and Peter Lorre).
Mandalay
Another Republican defects. Ben Carson refuses to play their silly game of denial:
Momentum is growing. That flag is so fucked.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
A very nice selection of Lee films. The Dracula movies made him a horror star (I think of him and Peter Cushing as the Horror Twins). And the Three and Four Musketeers is one of the best versions of Dumas’ adventure novels. And Lee is just great, as is Charlton Heston as Cardinal Richelieu.
A nice little break from more serious stuff.
Randy P
@Cervantes: I’m not sure what point you’re making. Are you trying to say that the fact that the characters in Beverly Hillbillies or Li’l Abner were southern was somehow a celebration of the confederacy or of white supremacy?
Yes, Granny in Hillbillies was an unrepentant confederate, perpetually defending against the Yankees and apparently unaware that the Civil War had ever ended. This was a running joke, the joke being the same one that entire series was based on, that these were lovable uneducated yokels who somehow managed to muddle through modern society.
And in Li’l Abner, the “yokels”, like those in Pogo were used to lampoon the supposedly-sophisticated Washington DC politicians. Rather like Jim from Huckleberry Finn, whom everybody in the book dismisses as ignorant but who is patently the most clear-thinking character in the book.
Then there are all those lovable ex-confederates throughout movies of the early 20th century, for instance in the Shirley Temple film “The Little Colonel”. Like it or not, the unrepentant but lovable Confederate was presented to us in entertainment pretty much throughout the 20th century as a beloved American type, and all mention of slavery was completely omitted from those same entertainments.
So no, the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of white supremacy has not been part of the national conversation until pretty recently. Possibly until the 21st century. And beginning somewhere during Reconstruction no doubt. It was part of a conscious propaganda effort to reconcile the South to being part of the Union, and there has been nary a dissenting message.
I once saw a book of Civil War photographs which was released on the 50th anniversary and included a forward by Woodrow Wilson, which was nothing but praise for the “proud heritage”, etc, etc.
Mandalay
@kc:
Unimaginable just a week ago really.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes:
And I answered you in my very first response to you in this thread. If you continue to labor in ignorance of the timeframe I had in mind, it’s not because I haven’t provided it repeatedly.
Germy Shoemangler
@kc: I love Lorre’s ad libs! He’s a sly old dog in that film. It’s fun to watch.
I just checked wikipedia to refresh my memory, and here’s one I’d forgotten:
Lorre says “Where else?” after Vincent Price says “my father was interred below.”
KG
@Mandalay: I wonder what makes Carson different from the other GOP candidates? Also, just wait, he’ll be deemed a race-baiting RINO in 3… 2… 1…
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: Have never seen the Musketeer films. Lee considered one of them to be his best work according to one obit …
Got to say, Count Dracula employs a good tailor. Warren Zevon would approve.
Last shot we had of him, last film, was of a corner of his cape with its beautifully heavy and rich red satin lining, disappearing after its wearer into …. no spoilers.
NotMax
@kc
Also has a very, very young Jack Nicholson. In tights, no less.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@KG: It’s been that way for a long time. Lots of people were flabbergasted when Jesse Jackson worked with Jerry Falwell at a rally in 1998 in Nelsonville, Ohio. I was there. Jerry got some boos from the crowd. Jesse tried to admonish the boo-ers.
It doesn’t hurt to acknowledge small victories while keeping one’s eye on the big picture.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
Did Hammer Studios use tomato puree for its blood? I keep thinking “Hunt’s” when blood is shed. Not necessarily catsup … kind of a Ragu consistency.
Also wondering, in years to come with water shortages, if the vegans of the future will think we were all Draculas, for enjoying our animal flesh meals…
JPL
@Elizabelle: Sometimes I miss having cable. lol
Archon
So much evil and malice has been committed with that flag as a standard that it basically makes a mockery of those that proudly say it represents “southern tradition”. Short of the Nazi Swastika which represents wholesale human slaughter and MAYBE the black flag of ISIS I genuinely can’t imagine a flag representing the worst instincts in humankind more then the stars and bars.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker: Your choice but you are engaging a troll who will nitpick, parse and wilfully misinterpret whatever you write.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Good flicks. The Three goes for the better laughs, IMHO. Both Faye Dunaway and Raquel Welch bring a lot to the party.
kc
LOL, Andrea Tantaros on Twitter saying the Confederate flag is historically the flag of DEMOCRATS.
It begins.
LAC
@Gin & Tonic: even easier- how about knowing who the fuck gives you money in the first place? If you really knew his history, doing some damn slow clap because he gave the money back that was in his coffers for while should not engender anything more than a “meh”.
kc
@Mandalay:
True.
Timurid
So nobody in that crowd remembered to bring the cordless Sawzall?
Elizabelle
@Mandalay: Cervantes is not a troll. C’s had a lot of good and insightful and even funny comments over time. But a little surprised at the case he/she is pushing …
kc
@Germy Shoemangler:
LOL, I need to get on Amazon and shop for some Hammer flicks.
JPL
@kc: If I had a twitter account, I’d say, I’m a democrat and take the g.d. flag down.
kc
@NotMax:
I may have seen a clip of that. Jack was kinda cute.
Elizabelle
@kc: Let her do so. From comment threads, we see too many RWNJ trolls acting like they have no idea how a lot of people who were Southern Democrats became today’s Southern Republicans, and why. They want to blame racism on Democrats, and leave it there. And they are hardly the party of Lincoln. Or Teddy Roosevelt.
That’s part of the discussion that needs to happen.
ETA: I hope there is not enough squid ink to disguise the root causes of Dylann Root’s aberrant behavior, and how it’s not that aberrant in more quarters than we would like to pretend.
NotMax
@Archon
Many other examples. The flag of the Khmer Rouge’s “Democratic Kampuchea” comes immediately to mind.
mr_gravity
@kc: “Nikki Haley, the governor of SC, has said the flag isn’t an issue because she talks to CEO’s and none of them has ever mentioned it. Maybe it’s time they start.”
The CEO’s? Are they calling the shots now?
/snark
Fair Economist
@LAC: No, white southerners spend a tremendous amount of time claiming the Civil War, and thus the the Stars and Bars, *wasn’t* about slavery. They yammer on with the Reconstruction-era-invented excuses about “states’ rights” (which at the time had actually been a *Northern* idea to resist fugitive slave laws) and tariffs and various cockamamie cotton trading conspiracies and never, ever, read or discuss the horrors of slavery. Trust me on that, I grew up there. To a fair extent, they do convince themselves into believing the lies.
Brachiator
@Germy Shoemangler:
And don’t forget a young Jack Nicholson as Rexford Bedlo.
Probably need an open thread for trivia and non-political stuff.
Roger Moore
@KG:
The one good thing I’d say has come from it is the Southern legacy of military service. The South started to get really serious about defense when their main worry was slave rebellions, and they’ve made up a disproportionate share of our military ever since. That sucked for the country during the Civil War, but it has served us well since then.
Germy Shoemangler
@mr_gravity:
Refreshing honesty on her part.
Policy? “Let me check with some CEOs and then get back to you on that.”
“OK thanks, I’ll wait.”
SatanicPanic
@kc: sooooooo the South is proud of being Democrats?
raven
@Germy Shoemangler: thank you
LAC
@Elizabelle: what is wrong with what Cervantes is saying? Cervantes is questioning Betty cracker’s comments about this flag. And several of us were questioning that too.
Kathleen
@AliceBlue: I affectionately refer to it as “Indiklanna”.
Mandalay
And now Chris Christie jumps on the Republicans-call-out-racism bandwagon:
That repulsive opportunist fucker very carefully avoided saying a word about racism last week, but now he has seen which way the wind is blowing. Christie is rotten to his core.
Elizabelle
Dracula speaks in this movie (Dracula Has Risen from the Dead). I don’t think he uttered a word in the last one, but a lot of expressive hissing.
Randy P
@LAC: What is the question exactly?
fuckwit
@Elizabelle: Whenever I get surprised like that, I’ve learned to step back and try to figure out where my privilege is and who I’ve offended and why. Being a straight white guy, it’s not usually too hard to figure out how I’ve inadvernently elbowed someone.
Archon
@NotMax:
The Khmer Rouge for sure, I could probably come up with a couple others but there aren’t many flags that represent malice towards other peoples like the Confederate flag.
LAC
@Fair Economist: well, if you do not think of black people as humans, that makes the whole myth go down smoother then a mint julep in July.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
The novels always had a darker tone to go with the adventure. This was deliberately downplayed in English translations to make the work more upbeat and acceptable for British sensibilities.
Director Richard Lester deliberately plays with and against these expectations by making Three more comical and then Four more serious.
LAC
@Randy P: if you scroll up the thread and look for Cervantes and Betty cracker’ s posts, you will see it. I would have Rufus do it for you but he is in the field and I has gots to get to polishing the massa’s table so they be shiny. (Cause I think you already know what Cervantes was saying, mkay)
Oh and for the record, the confederate flag use has been a part of “our” conversation for some time. Glad y’all woke up.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodinger’s cat: “What is even more important is calling out is how much of Roof’s agenda and rhetoric in his so called manifesto has in common with the mainstream of the Republican party.”
True. Unfortunately, few Democratic politicians are up to doing that. I guess it’s left up to lefty blogs like BJ.
Elizabelle
@LAC: Hi LAC. I saw your comment, and am scrolling back so I can answer it. Was picking up a vibe from the exchange.
(And do realize: I have had one eye on Dracula all morning.) But checking back, and will get back to you.
Patricia Kayden
@Bill: It’s also sad that it may take the murder of 9 people to get that flag taken down. It shouldn’t still be there. But alas, here we are.
Brachiator
@Archon:
Flags and other symbols are a problem wherever history is complicated and the people represented don’t have a single shared heritage.
Consider the South African springboks.
The problems with the Confederate flag are not new or special. What is relatively recent is the idea of reconciliation and inclusion, as opposed to simply pretending that there are no problems while allowing people who cling to the worst aspects of symbols to go about their business.
raven
@Roger Moore: Like when we established all these military facilities down here to keep an eye ont them?
Mandalay
@Patricia Kayden:
Here’s Lindsey Graham on that, making the weakest argument of all time:
So according to Graham we can focus on the gunman or the flag, but not both.
Geraham has really painted himself into a corner on the Charleston massacre, and he is going to come out of it with his reputation shredded. All the spineless see-no-evil shit he has been talking for the past few days is on the record, and it will come back to haunt him.
Betty Cracker
@fuckwit: If I’m missing something due to white privilege, I’d sincerely appreciate someone pointing it out to me — god knows it happens. I don’t think it has here, but maybe some point is just flying over my head.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Betty Cracker: But I think those who are making that argument are forgetting something important about the nature of privilege: It allows you to be oblivious.
This.
I was in college before I knew the Army of Northern Virginia’s flag had been used for anything between 1870 and 1970. The only KKK symbol I knew of was the KKK cross, which was on the flags as well as the robes the one or two times I saw them. It was just a few years ago that I heard the first stories of Klan activity in my father’s home town.
I, and most of my cohort, associated the flag with a rock band. Our younger siblings associated it with the Dukes.
The strongest association I had with the war itself was the individual stories of the soldiers. It was all part of the background of the mythmaking around Alvin York.
It’s hard to remember, now, what it was like when what you could learn was restricted by the books and people available. If no one wanted to talk about it, if the library didn’t have a book about it, you didn’t learn about it.
Patricia Kayden
@Mandalay: There goes his chances of winning the Republican nomination!
Patricia Kayden
@kc: So why not screw the Democrats and take it down? I assume Tantaros is Republican and is desperately trying to smear the Dems with this issue. Unfortunately for her, there are no Democratic politicians loudly pushing to keep the Confederate flag on public property.
Fair Economist
@LAC:
Yeah, they have to spend a lot of time convincing themselves of that too. Mostly, they try not to think about black people at all – those beliefs are a particularly difficult part of the whole skein of nonsense. The Civil War was 150 years ago, and it won’t try to argue with you. But when the whole society is caught up in and spinning the lies the members do generally and genuinely believe them. I was actually quite shocked when I read real histories of Reconstruction as a teen and realized the Radical Republicans were actually the *good* guys.
Patricia Kayden
@Mandalay: I’d agree with you except I have a feeling that the kind of people who support Graham are perfectly okay with his weasely dodges and the Confederate flag.
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: Just got a CNN alert that Lindsey Graham is going to come out in favor of removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds. I hope it’s true. He’s a neo-con shithead, but that would still be a fairly brave thing for a Republican in SC to advocate if he values his Senate job. ETA: Buzzfeed is reporting that Gov. Nikki Haley will also come out in favor of removing the flag. Good for her too. Better late than never.
Mandalay
@Mandalay: And Gov. Haley is pulling the same nonsense as Graham, making the bogus argument that politicians can only focus on one thing at a time so the issue of taking down the flag will have to wait:
She is seriously pushing the idea that “helping the victims’ families and the state recover” means addressing the flag issue (as though it is a separate matter!) has to wait? WTF?
Excluding President Obama, the Charleston massacre has really highlighted the awful mediocrity of our politicians. They are a pathetic bunch.
LAC
@Fair Economist: I know. It is almost embarrassing how shallow our knowledge of history if this country is, if based on textbooks back in the day.
dogwood
@KG:
I think your comment about not much cultural good coming from the white South, ignores the rich literary legacy of writers like Faulkner and Welty. I don’t think many Americans read Faulkner, but as far as I’m concerned he is as good as it gets. And I don’t think there had ever been a more eloquent Nobel Prize Acceptance speech than his.
Amir Khalid
@Archon:
It should actually be the Khmers Rouges; but among English-language publications, only The Economist ever bothers to get that right.
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
It would be a cowardly, opportunist thing for Graham to do. He is just jumping on the bandwagon, and he is doing a 180 turn from his position last week.
But no politician, even in SC, can support the Confederate flag now. It’s over, and it has all happened in just four days.
Unfortunately for poor Dylann, his cunning plan has completely backfired.
Chris
@Brachiator:
I reread the book for the first time since childhood a few years ago. Man. Darker than the movies, sure, but I’d forgotten how funny it was. Athos and Aramis especially.
LAC
@Mandalay: maybe Graham “evolved” from his position a couple of days ago. It is happening all over the place, doncha know?
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: Yes, good for Gov Haley and Sen Graham. This is probably the one good thing that will come out of the church shootings. I assume S.C. is the last state which allows this symbol of hatred on its state capitol. Good riddance.
Elizabelle
@Mandalay:
I was thinking that might happen. But watch out, because a lot of people will want to stop THERE, with removal of the flag from government grounds.
And there’s so much else that needs to be explored and changed.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: It would totally be hopping on the bandwagon, but removing the flag is still the right thing to do. And since Graham is always under threat of being primaried by a wingnut even further to his right, it’s not without political risk. He’s a shitbird, but if he’s doing the right thing for whatever reason, I’m glad to see it.
And yeah, I hope the domestic terrorist, whose plot backfired in stunning fashion, feels like the miserable failure and loser he is.
Eural Joiner
Watch the news – governor of SC press conference at 4. I’ve heard the flag will be down by tuesday.
Fair Economist
@Mandalay:
Yes, there’s some poetic justice there. And some deterrence, too, for the next racist considering a mass murder. And, like everybody else here, I hope it doesn’t stop there. In particular, I’m hoping for more discussion of what the Civil War was about. I suspect what appears to be abrupt capitulation by the other side is driven by the fear that might happen.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
The Stars and Bars is incorporated into Mississippi’s state flag.
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Need to talk about prevalence of guns, white supremacy, a society that — like the Civil War and the era of the Robber Barons — does not want to pay people for their work or provide opportunity for anyone not at the top of the hierarchy. Voting rights. The need to get out and vote. Maybe this will shock some out of apathy.
Drag people into the 20th century, now that we are in the 21st.
chopper
@Mandalay:
and he’s alive to see it. i hope it tears the little shit apart.
Elizabelle
Shorthand: Don’t just talk about the symbol. Talk about what it represents.
It’s behind a lot of polarization. Which is driven by plutocrats, using race and economics to divide people.
Gene had a great comment on the morning thread about how the NRA is no doubt aware that a lot of its supporters are racists.
kc
@Betty Cracker:
As someone on Twitter said, it’s called leading from behind. Suddenly prominent South Carolinians are knocking each other down in a rush to call for the removal of the flag.
I’m glad it’s coming down, but bitter that it took a mass murder to get our “leaders” to do the right thing.
chopper
@Betty Cracker:
i think it’s great. the flag comes down, yet graham stays a cowardly opportunist who gets shit on by his own party for it. win-win.
SFAW
@kc:
Still not as bad as a (black) Fox imbecile calling Obama the “rapper-in-chief” for his use of the word “nigger” in the Maron podcast. Which shows, of course, that Obama is the REAL racist.
Tantaros is still a moron nutcase, however. (Apologies to moron nutcases everywhere.)
Mandalay
@kc:
You are being far too kind to our “leaders”; compare their comments today and yesterday with their non-commital positions last week. They are all hypocrites doing massive U-turns.
The mass murder did not get them to do the right thing at all. After the slaughter last week it was all about drugs, and attacks on Christians, and states’ rights, and nothing to do with race or the flag. It was only the revulsion of the public towards them that got those vile, gutless fuckers to change their positions.
Whoever ends up getting the Republican nomination accumulated some serious baggage last week.
BruceFromOhio
@Belafon:
Thank you. I’ve been trying to figure this out without using my fists, it is so Gaia-damned infuriating. This nails it very nicely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Just off hand, have you yet accepted that HRC has made statements about the shooting and is in favor of removing the flag? Or are you still playing ostrich?
Elizabelle
@Davebo: Thank you for highlighting the Bursey article about Mr. Hollis. I’d read the excerpt Kevin Drum used, but not the whole thing.
It would be encouraging reading for anyone who argues times have not changed. Jim Crow meets a national commemoration, 1961.
Linky: http://www.scpronet.com/point/9909/p04.html
marc_fields
@Elizabelle: @shawn: Even better, shortly thereafter they try to find a parking spot on the street and are accosted by several black guys, who ask them in so many words: “WTF is this shit, honkie?” And just when you’re wondering how them Duke boys are gonna get out of this one, a patrol car pulls up — and out steps a very pissed-off black cop! At which point Bo and Luke decide their best option is to get back in the General Lee and depart the city of Atlanta at a high rate of speed.
Even though it’s all played for laughs, the message is pretty clear — a) If you fly the Stars & Bars, people *will* assume you’re a racist; b) No one is going to believe you if you deny it; and c) You might just get your ass kicked.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I wonder if a lot of those recruits were there because of poverty. The military is one way out of a poverty ridden area that doesn’t cost money, it pays. Not all that well but far better than nothing. It may turn into a career with a pension even. Or an education. Not all that for a lot of people but someone without much else it is a way out. A kid at work is going in and these are some of the reasons he has.
Elizabelle
So: the day that the flag goes up, in commemoration of the Civil War,
And what did those segregated white guests get treated to?
Not to be outdone, Senator Strom Thurmond appears too.
Fair Economist
@Elizabelle: ooh, excellent link and quotes!
Elizabelle
Finishing up the long excerpts:
[So the interview was done in 1999? Yes.]
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Davebro put it up at #59. Kevin Drum linked to it over the weekend. The full essay is terrific reading.
Incidentally, a Democrat, Fritz Hollings was governor of South Carolina (1959-1963) while all this was going on. Became longtime Senator in 1966. He served as junior senator to senior senator Strom Thurmond for 38 years, surviving him in office by only 2 years.
Bill
@Mandalay:
This is exactly right. And yet, the public’s revulsion at our inadequate gun laws can’t get those same vile, gutless fuckers to budge an inch on that issue.
Guess the KKK doesn’t have the same war chest as the NRA.
bemused senior
I have been having this daydream that we should exercise our 2nd amendment right to carry a paint ball gun, and use it on all the Confederate flags we see displayed in public places. Non-violent civil disobedience.
Ruckus
@LAC:
Betty has a bit of history with Cervantes, as do some others here. Cervantes can make great and very valid comments and frequently does. Cervantes can also write in a way that shouts “This is a dig at you, you stupid fucker who I know so much more than.” And does this not all that infrequently as well. I’m not sure it is always intentional. It feels much more confrontational than mere discussion.
My opinion, worth what you paid for it.
gelfling545
@Elizabelle: Regardless of the fact that it may have been conceived of as harmless or mock-defiant by a white majority, I have my doubts that it has ever been perceived of as such by descendants of slaves. As long as only the opinion of the white, non-injured parties in the exchange is upheld, so long will we continue to live with a racist society. They didn’t mean anything by it is a poor excuse for constantly offering a signal to some groups that they are not welcome or not considered full participants in their own country. A young man of color who was one of my students & originally from SC told me some years back that he considered the confederate flag to be like a warning sign indicating “Racist a**hole here. Keep out”. And there it is in front of the SC state house.
Elizabelle
@gelfling545:
Totally agree with you.
Yup. That’s what I think when I see one on a vehicle. Def says “asshole within. And proud of it.”
Elizabelle
Nikki Haley up.
Chris
@marc_fields:
I’ve actually driven a car with a Confederate flag license plate though Northeast DC and left it parked at Howard University for half the morning.
Now that the stupidity of that has had a minute to sink in: the background information for this is that I was responsible for driving my fellow AU students to and from Howard for ROTC in the mornings back then, and since my car was unavailable that day, had to borrow someone else’s; the only one available was that one, which belonged to one of the Army cadets. Also, thankfully, it was the ACTUAL (and less well known) Stars and Bars flag, which a lot of people seem to assume is just some state flag or other, not the better known Confederate battle flag the Duke boys favored.
Nothing happened. Didn’t even get a dirty look. But man, was I not-happy just on general principle.
gian
NPR was reporting on the radio about how Governor Haley had the Capitol flags at half staff, but the stars and bars was still at full staff. I got back to work before they explained the reason
TriassicSands
@kc:
The NY Times says Haley has called for the flag to be removed. It’s up to the
racistsRepublicans in the General Assembly — we’ll see if they agree. It apparently will take a 2/3 majority to approve the flag removal issue as a topic for the upcoming special session. This should be interesting.TriassicSands
@gian:
That’s interesting. Flying the Confederate flag at half staff seems offensive (mocking), rather than respectful. But flying it at all is deeply offensive. Perhaps they should put a blag trash bag over it — that seems about right. I was going to say cover it with a sheet, but realized that would be the worst imaginable thing (it’s amazing what meaning something like a normally completely neutral thing like a sheet can have in a specific context).
Get rid of that grotesque rag!!!
Elizabelle
@TriassicSands:
That would be hilarious.
NotMax
@gian
It’s because that particular flag is permanently attached at the top. It is not on a halyard. thus physically cannot be lowered. Also too, the legislature has exclusive control over that particular display – even if it could be lowered to half-staff (again, which it cannot), the governor has not the legal authority to do so; lowering would require a 2/3 vote of the legislature..
Viva BrisVegas
@NotMax:
Or a towtruck and chain.
I wonder, if someone did pull it down, would the SC legislature have the balls to put it up again?
jonas
@Viva BrisVegas: Or some good neon paint balls.
jonas
Trying to explain away the Confederate flag as an innocuous symbol of “rebel attitude” is a bit like trying to explain away your swastika armband by claiming it’s just an ancient Vedic good-luck sign or something. Context and history matter. The Confederate battle flag may have been originally carried as — yes — a battle banner, but it quickly became a rallying symbol for the KKK and resistance to Reconstruction and equal rights for African Americans. States like South Carolina who fly it in public aren’t trying to honor the military units that first used it — they’re very intentionally holding up a big middle finger to the Civil Rights movement and the idea that blacks are full citizens of their polity. (As usual, The Onion nails it better than anyone)
brantl
@Elizabelle: I’m sure non-whites always viewed it the way sensible people of all hues today do, but it took longer for the scales to fall from the eyes of many non-actively-racist-asshole white folks in the South, some of whom until fairly recently viewed it as a harmless, mock-defiant cultural emblem. -From Betty Cracker
LanceThruster
How do I address this without being indelicate…?
The ‘Southern Heritage’ is based on the superiority of the white race that was evidenced in the ownership of other humans beings whose labor was forced in order to profit immensely from that plunder.
All the supposed ills of ‘coloreds’ in our society rest not with those who brought them here to unjustly profit from their labor (from their standpoint)…but those who would dare insist that they (blacks) were human beings deserving of (dare we say ‘endowed with’?) equal rights and status of American citizens rather than that of a common plow horse.
It seems to me that the most prominent southern beef is that without the ‘ownership’ part, the whole “keep the ‘inferior’ peoples in check” (and making them money) falls apart.
I am grateful to have the diverse society, imperfect as it is, here in the US. Many black friends and acquaintances have expressed to me that they’re glad that their reality is to be a US citizen as opposed to whatever that reality would be in the land of their ancestry.
So…which is it Southerners…should blacks and minorities not be here at all, or only if they can again be exploited as second class citizens (or ideally, in your mind, as ‘property’ to be utilized as you see fit)?
Cervantes
@Ruckus:
We’ve had this discussion before. It’s a matter of style and, more important, context — neither of which you address in your comment, nor do I expect you to.
Cervantes
@Randy P:
I like your analysis of those shows.
I posted two lists. As I said, the first list merely reflected the point Roger Moore had made.
The second list was a bit different, you’re right. We can still discuss it if you like.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Are you saying it wasn’t until the ’80s or so that you (or some people you have in mind) realized what Confederate regalia stood for?
If that’s what you’re saying — well, coming from you, I find it surprising.
You must have memories of what the early ’60s were like in, let’s say, Mississippi, yes? Any personal memory of what role Confederate “traditions” played at the time? The very flag we’re discussing was, just to take one example, the subject of a notorious protest at Ole Miss: an artist (not African-American) painted a number of often-heard racist slurs on a flag and displayed it. The artist’s meaning was crystal-clear, and from the response it was obvious that no one else had any illusions about what that flag symbolized, either — and this was in the early ’60s, long before the Dukes and their car.
You did provide it, yes, with a caveat about imprecision. Perhaps you see now why that imprecision seemed puzzling to me.