Having somehow missed the cattle call when the rest of the conservative strawmen arguments were being set up on the issue of the Confederate flag, WaPo’s Marc Thiessen instead goes for sheer construct size instead.
Did you know that this newspaper is named for a slaveholder? It’s right there on our masthead, the name of a man who for 56 years held other human beings in bondage on his Virginia plantation — a man, according to the official Mount Vernon Web site, who “frequently utilized harsh punishment against the enslaved population, including whippings.” This dreaded symbol of oppression is delivered to the doorsteps and inboxes of hundreds of thousands of people each morning.
Sure, George Washington also emancipated his slaves in his will, won our independence and became the father of our country — but no matter. It is an outrage that this paper continues to bear the name of such a man.
It is time to rename The Washington Post!
Think that’s stupid? You’re right. But there’s a lot of stupid going around today. The latest example: The TV Land network has pulled the plug on reruns of one of America’s most beloved shows, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” because the car in the show, the General Lee, bears a Confederate flag. There is nothing racist about “The Dukes of Hazzard.” It is a show about moonshine, short shorts and fast cars. What is accomplished by banning “The Dukes of Hazzard”? Nothing.
Our country is in a miasma of political correctness. So where does it end? Are we going to rename our nation’s capital (and Washington state for that matter)? Should we close the Jefferson Memorial (named for a man who never freed his slaves)? How about renaming Arlington (which is named after Robert E. Lee’s estate) . . . or Washington and Lee University (names for not one, but two slave owners) . . . or Fort Hood (named for Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood) and Fort Bragg (named for Braxton Bragg, military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis).
This impulse to wipe away history is Stalinist. Just like Joseph Stalin once erased people from photographs, we’re now erasing people from our collective history.
I mean this is a hell of a lot of straw in one place, and it’s covered in manure to boot. Nobody’s demanding we rename anything currently named for George Washington, and nobody demanded the cancellation of the Dukes of Hazzard reruns on cable, either.
Most of all, nobody’s asking to “wipe away history” of white Southerners, either. What people actually wanted was the state government of South Carolina not to fly the fucking Confederate flag on state grounds, especially since the state only started doing that in the 60’s in order to insult and degrade the civil rights movement.
The only thing being wiped away here is the reality that this flag stands for slavery, racism, and hatred. We wiped that history away out of textbooks and social taboo quite some time ago and covered it up with idiotic platitudes like “heritage not hate”. We wiped out that history of why the South went to war in order to preserve the enslavement of human beings with moronic bleatings of “states’ rights” and “economic sabotage of the South”.
Maybe Thiessen knows. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Tony J
Thiessen is a gobshite.
That is all.
lowercase steve
If George Washington was only notable for being a slave holder and contributed nothing else to the nation then yeah I’d totally be calling for a renaming of the post.
What was the confederacy other than treason in defense of slavery? It’s not like there is some complicated moral darkness we all need to acknowledge at the same time we praise its accomplishments (Jefferson, the entire USA, whatever). There was nothing but slavery.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sweet Jeebus. That has to be the most pathetically stupid, desperately grasping thing published in the Washington Post since Richard Cohen offered his second grade teacher as evidence that he was funnier than Stephen Colbert.
opiejeanne
What a ridiculous article.
Belafon
Washington is a fitting representation of our country. A hero and a slave owner. White men of his age talked about freedom and denied it to a large number of people. They spoke of an ideal that they were nowhere near reaching.
Rename DC to some other person without sin, and it would be PC run amuck.
MattF
@Tony J: I’ll second that. He’s an apologist for torture. It’s redundant to say he has no redeeming qualities, but I’ll say it anyhow.
Unrelated (I guess), via jwz– “There’s an unnameable unimaginable thing in my basement.”
negative 1
Eh… I’m all for, and have been for, renaming any US Military installation currently named after people who fought the US Military in the name of treason in defense of slavery. So yes, bye bye to Forts Hood and Bragg. By the way there is a difference between ‘wiping away history’ and refusing to honor people whose only contributions to history is killing people so they could continue to whip and beat African Americans.
Edited to add: bye bye to any monuments to these people, either. Stonewall Jackson is no more a hero than any of the others.
Amir Khalid
The US Army having facilities named after Confederate military officers does sound like something that needs to be rectified. Other than that, I wouldn’t rename anything.
dmsilev
I’d certainly be OK with renaming the forts. Why exactly should the US Army be honoring people who fought against said US Army, and in many cases forswore their oaths to the US to do so?
Big ole hound
I’m with Zandar. I don’t give a damn what SC does anymore. If you don’t like their attitude then move away. I do not believe any argument for flying the confederate battle flag but if the idiots who live there think it is right to rant and rave about their heritage then have at it while the rest of us laugh at them.
Helmut Monotreme
As far as renaming military bases named after Confederate generals go, yes we goddamn well should rename them. Pick anyone whose claim to fame isn’t slaughtering American soldiers. Or if you must name them after someone who killed American soldiers, pick Crazy Horse, or Geronimo, Sitting Bull or Mangas Coloradas. They had a far better claim to the homes they were defending than those treasonous confederate bastards ever did.
Corner Stone
Is it wrong of me to not give one damn what military bases/installations are named after? I say we sell the licensing rights to MNC’s like we do taxpayer sponsored new sports stadiums.
Woodrow/asim
I’m pushing back on this “move away” crap, as someone who’s back in SC.
Because yes, I did. I came back because my Mom couldn’t move, had roots here, and left me a house that she struggled to own and keep.
I’ve got family here, family who dealt with centuries of the kind of abuse that the Confederate Flag represents. They don’t have the money or frameworks to move, in part because of those very same issues. The option of move just isn’t there.
How about, instead of tossing all the African-Americans in the same trash can as the bastards here that put us there*, you help us in our fight to make changes here — and everywhere, because racism isn’t just an American Southern problem? Your voice can, and does, make a difference.
Yelling that “the South” is just to be thrown away, makes no difference.
* with props to the people of many races who have been allies in the fight.
rk
White Southerners are doing a pretty good job of wiping out their own ugly history and replacing it an alternate version. To listen to some of them talk one would have no idea that they actually lost the civil war, or that the war had anything to do with slavery. It was all about savages from the north wanting to ruin their genteel way of life.
MattF
@rk: And resisting that bloodthirsty tyrant, Abraham Lincoln.
Tractarian
In about six months, when the movement to rename all Confederate-styled military bases is in full swing, we are all going to look back at this article as a turning point.
After all, by any objective measure, having military bases named after Confederate generals is at least as ridiculous as flying the Stars and Bars over the State Capitol.
So, thank you, Mr. Thiessen, for giving this issue the attention it deserves.
Paul in KY
I’m sure that toady-to-power knows. Hell, they probably gave him the rough outline of what they’d like published.
Hawes
I went to school with Marc.
He doesn’t know shit.
catclub
@MattF: Ft Sumter jumped in the way of their innocent artillery fire.
BGinCHI
False equivalency is not an argument. It’s a symptom of either desperation or stupidity.
Or both.
Paul in KY
@Woodrow/asim: Excellent comment! Best wishes to you & your fellow citizens who are trying to make positive changes down in SC.
EconWatcher
Stalinist to take down the confederate flag? This guy couldn’t make a plausible historical analogy to save his life.
Pulling down monuments is most recently and memorably associated with anti-Stalinists. After the Soviet Union collapsed, everywhere statues of Lenin were removed, the red flag with the hammer and sickle was taken down, etc. etc.–because these were symbols of a gulag society.
Does Thiessen think this was “erasing history”? Political correctness run amok? What an idiot.
RSA
Thank God for privileged white men acting as the moral compass for this country. I think we need a higher proportion of them writing columns for our national newspapers.
chopper
if washington was only known for being a slaveowner then yeah, it would be stupid to name things after him.
i’m thinking of what, exactly, the confederate flag represents that doesn’t involve blatant racism and devotion to slavery.
the Conster
Ye shall know them by the flag they fly. Please proceed wingnuts.
J.D. Rhoades
Thiessen’s the one who took the Obama Administration to task for killing too many terrorists. He’s the classic “if liberls is fer it, I’m agin it” asshole.
RSA
@rk:
Yeah. Thiessen should read the paper he’s published in.
SatanicPanic
@rk: oh this is a great point. I agree, let’s remember Southern History. I did my part this year by reading Battle Cry of Freedom, I highly recommend everyone who hasn’t read that to do so. Honor their history by learning about what scumbags they were.
Brachiator
I’m surprised that this moron didn’t go for the obvious and insist that every African American with a last name of Washington or Jefferson choose a new name.
And yeah, the Nation of Islam went this route in their heyday, but I would bet that this frightened nimrods like Thiessen.
Chyron HR
@chopper:
HERITAGE! And daisy dukes.
gelfling545
What some call political correctness others call good manners.
Mike G
I wasn’t aware that TV Land management was an elected government.
This is a burning bucket of concentrated stupid.
Spoken by the political ideology that brought us “Freedom Fries”.
Belafon
@RSA: As a parent here in Texas, I’m debating whether to have my kid read “Battle Cry of Freedom” before or after he takes US history. Does he know the truth before going into class, and deal with the problem of “that’s not what actually happened” or just fix it afterwards.
Josie
@Woodrow/asim: Thank you for stating this, on behalf of all the people who can’t afford to move from a southern (or any other) state but who are working to make our corner of the world better for everyone. Instead of lumping us in with the bigots in our area, commentors would be better served by looking tor ways to help us bring about change.
Brachiator
@SatanicPanic:
Yep. Absolutely great book.
I would also recommend another by the same author, James M. McPherson, “Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War,’ a great collection of short essays.
Cacti
@Belafon:
I’d say do it before.
That way, he’ll have his bullshit filter in place from the outset.
japa21
I have to admit, when I first heard about Dukes being cancelled, I thought that was an overreaction. After giving it thought, I realized that Dukes was a perfect example of the minimizing of the real meaning behind the flag. After all, these were just fun loving guys, without a racist bone in their body. They would never flaunt a symbol that meant slavery and rebellion was good.
It sort of made the whole flag benign. Whether or not that was intended, it was the result.
Bill
@Woodrow/asim:
How about we just help you move, and then let the south go?
Belafon
@Cacti: The conundrum becomes this:
Belafon
@Bill: Because you couldn’t move all of us, even if some of the northerners wanted to swap places, which they won’t (why move from a place that pays more and still allows you to be racist).
Cacti
@Brachiator:
When Malcolm X went for interviews and refused to identify the surname that was handed to his family by slave owners, you could tell it bothered his white hosts something awful.
Linnaeus
@Josie:
I agree that the “just move” sentiment really isn’t helpful. It’s also perfectly okay to not want to move, whether you can afford to do so or not.
Brachiator
@Belafon:
I grew up in Texas and my family always emphasized knowing the real deal as early as possible. This helped later in high school and college when dealing with professors and other students who wanted to dish out BS.
My nephew, who is now attending college, apparently was also up to the challenge, even though my sister and her husband were less adamant about this. The nephew is having a great time in college holding his own against boneheads.
As an aside, when my family moved to California, a little before my high school years, I found a fair amount of ignorant dogma among some of my teachers here. But I also found that some great teachers who are willing to dig deeper are always eager to invite critically minded students into the club.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: He should know the truth ASAP. IMO, also, too.
Cacti
@Belafon:
That would create a fun opportunity for the following:
“The answer this test is looking for is…”
AxelFoley
@Woodrow/asim: This. All this.
Elie
I think things are shifting and changing in the culture world of “the South”. They know it, but don’t know how to adjust to it or what it means. Their entire lives, many white southern exceptionalists believed a reality that did not exist. They have been reminded of it on a scale and persistence that they can’t really deny, but I expect they feel angry and frightened about it.
You see, this southern identity fantasy helped them feel special and no one made them look at the details of what that “special” was about. For years and years, starting after the Civil War, through the years of Jim Crow, we let these people hold onto their mythology that poisoned, POISONED this country like a necrotic, gangrenous rotting limb. The symbols of traitors who wanted to own people and fought to maintain black second class status, had and has no utility except to continue to leak this rot into our society. Like the rotten limb, these symbols have no real function anymore except to poison.
I agree with Zandar that no one really cares about the bullshit but I DO care about the flag of traitors and slaveholders being flown over public institutions that are supposed to be for all the people — not just white people. I have great respect for the good people who are living in these states with this wound. I admire and pray for their success and support their efforts elsewhere, cause Lord knows, the taint aint just in the south. The poison is actually spreading world wide as I read that European racists are recruiting American white supremacists to inspire and recruit members for them in Europe. Let that sink in for a bit. Can you imagine?
Poopyman
@Belafon:
Ah yes, the conundrum that will follow him the rest of his life: Do I go along to get along? Get the good grade? Get the promotion? Or do I stand up and say “this is bullshit”?
I never would have thought of standing up and calling bullshit in school. Never had the self-confidence. OTOH, I would never write a wrong answer just to have it marked Correct.
I don’t have kids, but I like to think I’d arm them with the truth and then back them to the end – and beyond.
Mike J
@Belafon:
The reasons for secession run the gamut from slavery to African servitude to white supremacy to slavery.
Georgia
Mississippi
S Carolina
Texas
Central Planning
The Rude Pundit also had some comments on Marc’s column, and by column he means “stiff, overused wipe sock”
Belafon
@Cacti: I was thinking along those lines: “The answer, according to statements made by the Vice President in his Cornerstone Speech and in the Texas Declaration of Secession, was slavery. Since the end of the war, though, southernors and their sympathizers have attempted to rewrite history to claim it was about state’s rights.”
Joel
It’s amazing that Mark Thiessen has a platform anywhere, nevermind the Post.
Falling upwards, indeed.
rikyrah
Only4RM @Only4RM
Find @BernieSanders’s sudden REDEFINITION of the unemployment rate a despicable attempt to discredit Pres. Obama. #BerningBridges
Belafon
And I know we all like to know that and challenge those kinds of things, but there are a number of teachers that do not like to be challenged. My kid’s geometry teach was one of those, even stating “I’ve been through college and you guys haven’t.” A number of the kids knew she was wrong, but she would do things like mark a problem wrong for not doing it her way.
Joel
@Belafon: Considering for whom the “C” stands for in DC….
Mike J
@Mike J:
I particularly like this bit: “they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery”. I suppose if you wanted to get really snarky you could say that the south didn’t like Christianity and thought it a bad basis for government. We know they didn’t really believe that from the other things they wrote, but anything that contributes to cranial detonation is good.
trnc
That’s not true. It pissed off Marc Thiessen, and that’s worth a lot to me.
By the way, Marc, the TVLand’s decision to pull the show? Totally up to them.
Bobby Thomson
@Cacti: I did that a lot in high school.
rikyrah
So, the Black Brute just didn’t haul off and sock the poor wittle White Woman ‘just cause’.
This is not 1958.
You roll upon a Black person and call them Nigger…..you roll the dice. You roll up on the wrong one, and you’re getting your azz beat. You call them a Nigger AND put your hands on said Black person…accept the consequences of your actions.
Belafon
@rikyrah: if she put her hands on him, game over. He’s allowed to defend himself.
JPL
@Belafon: I watched a few times and it appeared that he was trying to push her out of the way. I don’t think he should be charged but he should be released from the team, if he violated team rules.
The Pale Scot
@Belafon:
Always better to know truth before hand so the BS detector dings and he has an idea of the duplicity involved
trnc
I see a number of people are in favor of renaming forts currently named for traitors to the US. When it finally happens, let’s be sure to write to Thiessen so we can thank him for starting that discussion.
cmorenc
@negative 1:
So…does this include that staple of southern county seats – the tall obelisk prominently located on the courthouse lawn dedicated to “our confederate dead”?…which often contain, on the base of the monument, an embossed granite outline of the confederate flag (battle flag of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia)? Or, the second nearby monument to the general CSA monument on the state capitol grounds in Raleigh (complete with bronze statue of soldier-bearing-rifle-going-into-battle) dedicated to Henry Lawson Wyatt, a private in the Confederate Army who was allegedly the first Confederate soldier to die in the Civil War (June 10th 1861)?
Good luck with that. Taking down the cloth confederate flag over South Carolina is a long-overdue measure, but taking down all monuments honoring people who served the confederacy during 1861-1865 would be a counter-productive hill too far. The monuments, despite their frequently-prominent location, actually languish mostly in obscurity, unlike a brightly-colored flag flapping high atop a flagpole.
trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
My favorite history book. It is time for a revisit. I also got the Burns “Civil War” series on disc to show my kid; she’s a good age now but I have to pry her from Minecraft and the Disney Channel, first. Wish me luck.
Paul in KY
@Mike J: Hmmm, after reading excerpts of secession docs, wonder what the reason was???
Cacti
@Belafon:
Right.
As long as the answer the test is looking for is in there somewhere, they can’t say it was wrong.
Additional suggestions: “The revisionist position that is assumed correct by this course curriculum, but that does not enjoy scholarly consensus is…”
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Sudden? How is it sudden?
gf120581
Does “The Dukes of Hazard” really qualify as “one of the most beloved TV shows of all time?” I’ve never heard it described as anything but a cheesy time capsule/guilty pleasure where 50% of the appeal at least is Catherine Bach in short shorts.
gvg
When you shrug and say just move or let them go, you are letting them win.
There are whites here in the south that have been resiting this shit for a long time. sometimes it’s easier than other times. Would you appreciate it if we shrugged and said your region doesn’t matter? There are things wrong with every area. I hated Palin especially for her bigotry of “real” America versus city, as if both aren’t American. You are indulging in the same pattern. Resist it, or the whole country will come apart. We are all stronger together.
I have grown up in the south, all but 1 year in florida. When I went to school in public schools, there was no nonsense about the war of Northern aggression. I was taught American History pretty well with no revisionist nonsense that I can tell after 51 years. I didn’t even hear about the war of northern aggression until Jr high when roots came out and GWTW was played close together in time, and then when I did hear about it, it was treated as a joke putting down the hick ancestors. My sister who is 11 years younger encountered a lot more of that but still not mainstreamed. It was just a few crank teachers….I went to school late 60’s thru 1981, she was 70’s thru 80’s…we seem to have regressed. Her son is 7 and just finished 1st grade. He has been taught some history, mostly Washington, Lincoln and Martin Luther King and Obama so they aren’t covering it up yet. He’ll be in private school next year because we think the common core is being taught so badly it’s hurting him but the area is mostly liberal.
Something to keep in mind though is that the KKK and white citizen councils attacked and intimidated whites who tried to stand up for black rights. Sometimes with killing but more often with economic and social costs. You could lose your job or business if you just treated blacks as ordinary people. So for selfish reasons I really really want those symbols to carry even more of a stigma and frankly I enjoy their defenders pain. It does not help any of us to give in to the haters even though the worst of them never seem to get tired and just keep on. I understand exasperation with them, but the loudmouths make the most noise but aren’t nessesarily a total huge number. It was ok to say get out of Vietnam or Iraq. Those weren’t our country. You can’t say that about the south, or the north, or California, or Texas or any part. We are all mixed together and all but the most recent immigrants have family all over plus the businesses that employ most of us have branches all over etc and over and over. We cannot seperate just cause some of us are tired today.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Not a lot of grey area in geometry. Amazing that she had wrong answer & could not admit it.
The Pale Scot
@Mike J: Do have a source that lists the other states declaration of a ‘slavery now, slavery forever”
As I understand it all but one of the states had slavery in their boilerplate.
Punchy
The overall take sucks, but I do agree with him that cancelling DoH over a car’s paint job is a bit much. The show was actually quite wholesome and endearing.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator: ooh I’ll add that to my list. I really like that how McPherson writes. I found myself laughing out loud at parts of Battle Cry, which is odd considering the subject matter. I need to read more Eric Foner too.
Paul in KY
@gvg: Another nice post!
Cacti
“Lies My Teacher Told Me” is another good reading selection for anyone with high school aged kids, as it actually picks apart items being taught in 18 different high school history textbooks from multiple academic publishers.
I’ll be sharing it with my kiddos when they get a little older.
Darkrose
@Punchy: I kind of wonder how wholesome and endearing it would have been considered if it had been about two black guys openly flouting the law in order to produce and distribute illegal substances.
trollhattan
@gf120581:
Yup. Pretty much “Hee-Haw” with 50% less banjo. I could never make it through a complete episode and don’t think I tried more than twice. “Beloved.”
raven
@Brachiator: He also wrote “The War That Forged a Nation, Why the CivilWar Still Matters”.
trollhattan
@gvg: I worked with a fellow boomer raised in Memphis who was taught “The wowah of northern aggression” at skewhl. Didn’t believe him at first, but he brought me around on the reality of it. I’m still shocked, truth be told, as I consider it along the same lines of what Japanese school kids are taught about WWII.
Boots Day
I’ll bet that two weeks ago, Thiessen had no idea “The Dukes of Hazzard” was still being run anywhere. It’s quite possible that he’d never even heard of the show.
Mike J
@The Pale Scot: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/csapage.asp is a good start.
Brachiator
@raven:
I will have to add this one to my Kindle reading list.
Bill
@gvg:
If my state continues on it’s current decline in to Walkerstan for say – 150 years – it would be perfectly reasonable for the rest of America to say “you don’t matter.” Or “get out.”
But it will take a hell of a lot shorter period before I just leave.
Poopyman
@gf120581: Having watched first run episodes, I’d say your Catherine Bach estimate is way low.
ruemara
At this point, I’m getting real sick of people on the left and the right who cannot comprehend racial matters.
gf120581
@Poopyman: I suspected I was lowballing it.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Was it a public school or was he in one of those private ‘academies’?
Brachiator
@The Pale Scot:
You might as well go for the mother lode. The Confederate Constitution made the slavery of black people practically an inalienable right. The key clause:
So, when apologists say that slavery would have just naturally faded away had the South been allowed to leave the union, they are blowing it out their butts.
http://www.jjmccullough.com/CSA.htm
boatboy_srq
Just gobsmacking.
But this takes the cake:
Perhaps not by forty-year-old broadcast television sitcom standards – but exactly how many POCs were in the cast, pray tell? Pitched today it’d get laughed out of any producer’s office for its sheer whiteness.
Thiessen is (probably very consciously) conflating slaveownership two hundred thirty years ago with treasonous mutiny in support of slaveownership one hundred fifty years ago with overt racism today. If there were such an effort to “wipe away” history for social misdeeds then there’d be movements to eliminate the Jamestown and Plymouth colony reconstructions, level all the Missions in the Southwest (including the Alamo) and ban Conestogas from every museum – that ain’t what’s happening here.
@Belafon: Wait. Teachers don’t like it when kids know more about the subject matter than the course normally covers, and that can affect their scores. Grades first, then truth.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: “Denying or impairing.” So not only couldn’t it be made illegal, it couldn’t even be made inconvenient. That’s telling.
SiubhanDuinne
@Joel:
Elizabelle
@Brachiator:
Need to read Battle Cry of Freedom. Thanks for the reminder.
Here’s a recent NYTimes article on James McPherson, discussing books he found influential (or stupefying):
James M. McPherson: By the Book Excerpts:
Tenar Darell
I think we should start by re-naming a really big Army base after George Henry Thomas, the Union General from Virginia, a man who did not break his oath.
Hoodie
@trollhattan: I went to HS in rural N. Georgia in the 70’s and never heard anything about
“the War of Northern Aggression”, except as a joke. Only a prep school dipshit from Connecticut would think The Dukes of Hazzard is anything but a caricature, a bunch of Californians pretending to be southerners.
Epicurus
Just in case you forgot, Thiessen worked for the Worst President Ever. Shouldn’t there be a law denying any public position for ANYONE who worked for President Cheney? I’m just asking here…in other words, don’t believe a word this man says/prints/publishes. He’s full of shit.
Kropadope
@boatboy_srq:
I suppose that it goes without saying that it must be different in college. Last time I took a history course, about a year back, the teacher started every new topic with “tell me what you already know about this.” I was surprised I was the only person who had heard of Martin Luther.
catclub
@Brachiator: and on the other hand, the confederacy, if it lasted any longer, was about to find out that states rights don’t work to run a government, and the national government would start overruling the random states..
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan:
Any idea what school he attended? I spent k-12 in Memphis and went to a college named after Robert E. Lee, but I never heard that phrase used until I was in law school.
Of course, Memphis is full of Christianist schools that mysteriously sprung up just after Brown v. Board of Education was decided (Evangelical Christian School, First Assembly of Christ, et al). My high school was a bit more sophisticated than that (go Owls!), and most of the public schools had enough (all mostly) black students to prevent that sort of revisionism.
Howlin Wolfe
@BGinCHI: It’s an informal fallacy, to boot. Just ask Aristotle.
Kropadope
@Epicurus:
Last I checked, “opinionated idiot on TV” isn’t a public office. Plus, we can’t be banning people from office due to their political affiliations, look what happened to Iraq. If we want to keep him from holding public office again, it needs to be done exclusively at the ballot box by extending the courtesy to all
his potential employerscontemporary Republicans.Linnaeus
@Steve in the ATL:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of truthiness to the implication that everyone who goes to school in the South is taught about “the War of Northern Aggression”.
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: The child doesn’t have to be piping up all the time correcting said teacher. I think it would be beneficial to know the real story & then he can see how mutable the ‘truth’ is.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Thiessen certainly knows this – the meeping quality of his butthurt cri de coeur is the tell – but I’ll just throw this out there. The reason everything with a traitor’s flag on it is getting yanked from the sphere of public discourse is that it is simply bad for business.
Business has spoken, change has occurred. Or as a wise man once put it, “money talks, bullshit walks”.
Everybody might want to take a moment and reflect on what that means vis-a-vis our democracy and rights.
Botsplainer
Never fear – Yellow Peril is the cause du jour…
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/china-isis-iran-threat/394799/
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI: Pretty much sums up fuckhead Thiessen’s entire article.
Paul in KY
@Tenar Darell: The town of Fort Thomas, up in N. KY is named after him. If you were raising a family in KY, you could do a lot, lot worse than living in Fort Thomas.
IMO, he should have more things/places named after him. Especially in Virginia.
opiejeanne
@the Conster: the GAR was an organization of and for Union veterans of the Civil War, and the membership was pretty solidly Republican.
Don’t tell me the parties haven’t changed places.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@catclub: The federal portion of the Confederacy was the most overkill police state that’s ever existed on the planet. Odd how that rarely gets mentioned. Well worth doing some investigating and reading.
Paul in KY
@Epicurus: I don’t think he believes it. He’s just doing his propaganda job (like a good German).
.
Mike J
@Steve in the ATL: Not even at Briarcrest did they use the phrase “war of northern aggression.”
Villago Delenda Est
@gf120581: It does not, and Thiessen is, like all deserting coward lackies, full of shit.
Brachiator
@Elie:
Of course, the South also allowed the rest of the country to use them as a scapegoat as they made discrimination, oppression and white supremacy the rule by law and custom for the rest of the country.
People could point to Jim Crow in the South and ignore race codes, restrictive covenants and other racist practices used to oppress black people and other groups.
The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), for example, was federal law, not Southern Jim Crow imposed on the North. And sadly, even the Canadians got in on the act here with a 1923 law aimed against Chinese immigrants.
You are very right that racism was a poison. But it was one that too many all over the country happily ingested.
And here I note that almost surprisingly people don’t know the degree to which racist practices shaped communities outside the South. I know folks in California, for example, who did not know of the racial covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to blacks, Latinos, and Asians. They think that various neighborhoods were just naturally segregated based on people’s preferences.
geg6
@Belafon:
I vote for before. Spoken as someone who read history voluminously (and apparently much more so than any of my history teachers) as a tween/teen and who had more than one argument with a teacher back in those days. Almost none of them knew what the hell they were talking about. Thankfully, my parents believed in reading, no matter what we were reading or how above our supposed reading/developmental level and always backed me up when I inevitably got into trouble over those classroom arguments. My dad once challenged the teacher and assistant principal to prove me wrong, told them he’d be fine with any disciplinary action they took but only if they could prove I was wrong. Otherwise, he was going to give them ten times more trouble than I ever had. They attempted to prove me wrong and lost. Dad told them to apologize to me. They, grudgingly, did. I loved my dad. Best dad ever.
jl
Thiessen touches on a difficult issue the country has to face: how to rectify falsified and biased history that has been used as a myth to continue undemocratic and discriminatory practices. But, really, it dives into the ridiculous so quickly and thoroughly that he probably wrote it as some flak from the side that wants to continue the lying and injustice.
So, Washington, a man who went to great lengths to free every slave he possibly could at his death is exactly the same as symbols that were intentionally introduced, and given a fake historical significance through manufactured historical myth, to fight racial justice 100 years after the Civil War. It is not really Washington;s fault that very few other rich slave owners followed his example.
I think it is bad to forget history and that history includes the Confederate side of the Civil War, but it has to be real history not a fake history that is manufactured for ulterior purposes. Confederate battle flag surely has a place in public, if its true history is told. One commenter a week or so ago mentioned practice of putting up monuments that told other side of the story in Germany, rather than tearing down monuments. I like that idea better than Communist or post-Communist tearing down statues.
Keep the Confederate Monuments up, but put up monuments to slaves and Reconstruction efforts to promote equality alongside. Tell the true story. And let Thiessen write a silly column to criticize that.
john fremont
@dmsilev: I agree with renaming military installations. Surely, the US Army had in it’s ranks plenty of Southerners who served the the Union very bravely during the Civil War.They could change the names of the bases and homor those Southerners instead.
geg6
@rikyrah:
So, regardless of the fact that he’s twice her size and strength, you’re fine with him hitting her? Seriously?
I respect you enormously as a commenter here, but that respect may have to be dampered a bit now.
jl
@Brachiator:
” I know folks in California, for example, who did not know of the racial covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to blacks, Latinos, and Asians. They think that various neighborhoods were just naturally segregated based on people’s preferences. ”
That has to be recognized too. Racism and economic exploitation based on race and class existed and produced evil consequences in every region of the country.
geg6
@gvg:
I wouldn’t care a bit if the South seceded again, but I’ve come to terms that I’m not going to get my wish. And besides, there are plenty of racist assholes right here in my own backyard. But I will never visit or spend a penny in the South ever again. Never ever. And I try to encourage everyone I know to do the same.
Mike J
@geg6: After she kneed him in the balls, punched him and called him nigger? I’m perfectly fine with him hitting her.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq:
Exactly. The Confederate Constitution also settled any questions about slavery and new territories or states.
By any reading, the purpose of the Confederate Constitution was to create a society in which slavery was permanent and perpetual.
Mike in NC
The Washington Post was once a decent enough newspaper, but it gradually turned to shit thanks to Fred Hiatt, who actually wanted it to be closer in tone to the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times. That’s why over the past 10-15 years it’s ended up being a sounding board for so many dishonest conservative hacks like Thiessen.
Matt McIrvin
“The Dukes of Hazzard” was a stupid, stupid show, and the “General Lee” bothered me even at the time, though my fellow white 11-year-old boys of the land of Dixie all loved it. The whole Confederate-kitsch aspect of it was just a symptom of that crap happening in the wider culture, but it wasn’t good.
Pulling it from TV Land was probably an overreaction, but it was TV Land’s call. It was silly for Apple to pull all those Civil War games from the iOS store too, but it’s their store, they can do it if they’re freaked out.
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
If we talked about what schools he attended I don’t recall at this point. I can at least attest he was no bible-thumper and was more than happy to decamp for California. Thing was, I’d never encountered the expression before I met him.
mai naem mobile
So the FBI went to the house of Jared of Subway fame, and are reportedly.investigating him for child porn. Bill Cosbys admission yesterday. What next? Is Flo of Progressive going to turn out to be one of those teachers who had a thing going on with several students?
Cacti
@Brachiator:
Rehabilitation of the “good character” of the confederacy had plenty of support from the non-southern white population too.
Gone With The Wind remains the highest grossing US film of all-time when adjusted for inflation. Yankee movie goers lapped that revisionist crap up.
jl
If people think there is a big fuss over removing the Confederate (battle) flag (of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia), from government property, imagine the fuss there would be over displaying that flag next to the actual and true history of why it came to be displayed on government property in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s.
It would start with Truman’s efforts to desegregate armed forces and federal government, and that particular flag became the symbol of the whole ‘Southern Heritage’ mainly in efforts to rally public support to continue segregation and racial discrimination.
Kropadope
@Botsplainer:
Fear of China will likely never factor too greatly into our political discussion. We have too much money invested in each other and, besides, America is a major partner in anything China is doing that is morally wrong (Hey, the Constitution doesn’t ban us from holding slaves in other countries!!!).
If U.S. politicians start agitating against China in any meaningful way, however, expect things to get real ugly real fast. The most plausible scenario for this is if China gets close to striking distance of our military capabilities and the US Government still owes mad money to Chinese investors.
opiejeanne
@Brachiator: there was a covenant like that on the block next to our first house in Riverside, CA. The house was built in the 20s and the covenant applied to all the houses built after it on that block. The realtor showed it to us when the house was for sale and held an open house; he noted that it was of historical interest only.
BGinCHI
When they came for my Daisy Dukes, I said nothing.
Because I was already practically naked.
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
I would not be fine with a man as strong as he hitting a woman, no matter the verbal provocation. I might understand it, but I would never be fine with it.
geg6
@boatboy_srq:
Read my comment at #114. They might not like it. They might get the kid called into the disciplinary office for being a smart ass. They might even call in the parents. But a good parent fights when their kids are being unfairly persecuted by asshole teachers. And I never once got less than an A in history, even when the teacher hated me. Because I knew my stuff and they knew my parents would be on the warpath over it.
Robert Sneddon
There’s a new book coming out in October, “The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry” which some of you might find of interest. The authors have been blogging their research efforts on LiveJournal for the past few years as they documented the mechanics of the Negro slavery system in the US, uncovering previously undiscovered details of what went on while digging through reference libraries, newspaper morgues and private journals.
Linnaeus
@Belafon:
As a historian and one who has taught some history courses, here are my thoughts on the issue, which, along with 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee, but here they are nonetheless:
I think it’s a great idea for students interested in history to read outside of what they are assigned in class – teachers can only assign so much and there will necessarily be gaps in their material. I don’t know what the schools and teachers are like in your community, but I can say that as a student, my history teachers were very welcoming of students learning on their own and bringing that perspective to their classroom learning. I’m sure there are some teachers who’d rather not deal with that, but I think it’s a mistake to assume a priori that they won’t.
If your son does read material like Battle Cry of Freedom outside of class, I hope he does so (or begins to learn to) with an eye of critically reading it as well as any material he gets in class. I think it’s a mistake to go into a book like that with the attitude that there is The Truth and that he will find this truth in any one book he reads. This is not to say that there is no such thing as historical truths, but that history is a discipline of interpretation and any secondary sources he reads will offer an interpretation of the evidence, which is not the same as stating “the truth”. This doesn’t mean that all interpretations are of equal merit, but that these interpretations are nuanced and contingent on a number of factors: sources available, sources used (and not used), the historian’s intellectual or theoretical framework she/he uses, etc.
If your son wants to discuss some material with his teacher with an eye of bringing an alternative perspective, there are more and less constructive ways to do it. Class discussion can certainly be useful, but I don’t think trying to be the “smart kid” who wants to one-up the teacher is a good way to do it. Bring in his perspective in class (which a good teacher will encourage), but I also think engaging with the teacher outside of class, especially if he wants to go deeper is a good idea as well.
jacy
@MattF:
Thank you. That was hilarious. It much improved my day.
Dee Loralei
@Steve in the ATL: MUS? Or was that Briarcrest?
geg6
@Mike J:
Remind me to never meet you IRL. Men who are okay with hitting people incapable of inflicting reciprocal damage, regardless of the provocation, are people to avoid. I’ve not been following this at all, but does the video show what provoked her to do what she did?
Regardless, you obviously think it would be fine to hit a child or disabled person who did a similar thing, too. Beating on those who can’t beat back is very manly and completely acceptable. /snark
raven
@geg6: And if it were a man half his strength and size?
eta, I get it, if there were some kind of test to see whether or not the could do “reciprocal damage” then it might be ok?
geg6
@raven:
Still a cowardly and disgusting thing to do. I was taught that you only pick fights when the odds are even and that there is nothing more cowardly than picking on those weaker than you. Real men (and women) walk away from those confrontations.
raven
@geg6: And if the fight picks you?
Keith P.
When I was in college, apparently, Dukes of Hazzard wasn’t in syndication at that time. Or maybe it was; I didn’t have cable to check. Anyway, I had several people tell me that Bill Cosby had bought the syndication rights to Dukes of Hazzard specifically so it could not be aired on TV due, as he didn’t like the flag. It was apparently a mixup of two different urban legends, and Them Duke Boys were on TNN no too long after.
Steve in the ATL
@Dee Loralei: MUS!
Kropadope
@Linnaeus:
So, your thoughts are worth 50 cents of real U.S. currency?!? That’s awesome, where do I get mine appraised?
geg6
@raven:
Yeah, if she was an MMA fighter or something, then I might be okay with it. She obviously is not. And he is a small, small man in big body. That anyone would defend him appalls me.
john fremont
@rk: …and that no Southerners joined the Union Army nor any areas of the South seceded from the the Confederacy! Wilson County Alabamba, West Virginia, the Free State of Jones Miss.
jl
@geg6:
” Real men (and women) walk away from those confrontations. ”
I agree. Physical assault only justified when needed for self-defense.
Seems like he could have walked away, and unless the woman followed him and kept kicking him in the balls, him walking away should have been the end of it. Unless he decided to call the cops and charge her with assault, if she did kick him in the nuts.
A guy
I have 4 daughters age 24-14. I’ve told them and I know they understand that if they hit another person, man or woman, large or small, they’d better expect to get hit back. And the damage they suffer may very well be disproportionate to the threat they pose. And it will be their fault.
geg6
@raven:
You walk away. I’ve walked away from more than one situation where I just wanted to whale away at the asshole in front of me but didn’t because I would have inflicted damage on someone more helpless than I am.
SatanicPanic
@jl: In fairness though, racism in California was (and is) worst where you had an influx of people from the South, like during WWII in the bay area.
I am OK with saying that yes, there was institutional racism outside of the south, but OTOH you also had places like the northeast where black people were allowed the vote long before they were at the national level. Too often “well there was racism everywhere” becomes an excuse for the south.
Linnaeus
@Kropadope:
It’s a self-appraisal. But I have yet to get any discounts on coffee for them.
Dee Loralei
@Steve in the ATL: G’Town here. Had friends at MUS though.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid:
If it were verbal provocation, I’m not ok with anybody hitting anybody. He was physically assaulted. Anyone stupid enough to hit somebody that much bigger than they are needs to be hit.
Cacti
@geg6:
Were you also taught that there are things in this world that some people will consider “fighting words” regardless of the speaker or the social setting?
While assault is not something I condone, we don’t get to choose how others will react to our words, and that’s especially true for racial and ethnic slurs.
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Not so VERY different – at least in US universities for underclass courses. More information is helpful; complete refutation of most of the course material isn’t, unless you can write a decent paper on where the course material is incorrect and why, and then only if the paper would be accepted as part of the coursework. Remember that this approach could also be used to introduce material from the likes of David Barton into the debate if someone were inclined to his worldview: teachers may exclude all outside material just to avoid having discussions of idiocy passing as knowledge. In terms of personal development, more knowledge is always better; but in terms of GPAs and advancement it’s often best to wait and see what the professor requires/expects/hopes from his/her students before adding to the material.
ETA: I see Linnaeus beat me to a more detailed view of the same thing. More knowledge is good, unless or until it eclipses the teacher’s own knowledge, and then it depends on how open the instructor is. Primary education doesn’t allow for much outside-the-lines learning, especially with standardized tests to accommodate; undergrad can be a gray area depending on the professor, the school and even the class size.
rikyrah
@geg6:
You open your mouth to call a Black person a Nigger…
you get what you get.
Some people will just curse you out…..and others will do more.
Like I said…it’s not 1958 anymore.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
I’m not so sure – I think more often than not, people who point out that there is racism all over the country are rightly saying that the problem is systemic. Certainly racism was institutionalized and expressed in different ways in different parts of the country and we can assess that accordingly. But I think there’s a greater tendency America to view racism as a particularly Southern problem, and that permits people to overlook what’s going on (and has gone on) in their own communities.
Mike J
@geg6:
He didn’t pick the fight. Everyone is entitled to defend themselves. No one should have to put up with abuse.
raven
Here’s the video
Cacti
@rikyrah:
It seems like the internets have also contributed to the youngs these days having trouble distinguishing between what you can say in an online forum, and what would get you a punch in the mouth in real time.
bemused
@jl:
If it was my spouse or son who slugged a woman aggressor even if she was that physical, I would be just as pissed off at either of them as her.
jl
@SatanicPanic:
I think all regions of the country need to be hones about their history, and that implies the South does too, so I am not worried about it becoming an excuse for anyone.
Yes, much of California was from the South, and that is why it was a close call that it sided with the North for awhile. And maybe most racism against blacks was due to CA population from the South. But that was not true for Chinese and Japanese, where they were victims of vicious and violent racism in places in CA that were mainly Northern population, in addition to Hispanic population, which got shafted in second CA constitutional convention in 1870s, after they got treated relatively fairly because they were needed in for CA independence then admission to Union.
Kropadope
@jl:
Spoken like someone who’s never been hit in the balls.
Restraining himself and pressing charges would have been the best approach, perhaps, but how do we know that she wouldn’t have persisted in her assault? Also, how can we say that someone can’t defend himself? Just because someone is smaller than you, doesn’t mean they can’t inflict serious physical harm.
Now, if he did more than he needed to do in order to protect himself, that is a different story.
ruemara
Not saying this is the situation here, but sometimes people will not let you walk away. If she’s shouting slurs and kneed a bigger, black man in the nuts, she may be one of those people who cannot let people walk away. Until I showed someone that I was prepared to get physical by picking them up and slamming them into a wall, I could not get them to stop haranguing me. And he was taller and stronger than me, but my reputation was one of being really mild. Some people take that to mean can be abused at will by small tormentors”.
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
As for physical provocation, I agree completely with geg6.
Tree With Water
“What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged”.
Lincoln
MCA1
@Punchy: Endearing, maybe, in a sort of sophomoric, wink-wink cheesy way. I’m not so sure about wholesome, though, given the underlying message of it’s alright to continually flout the law and drive like a fucking maniac at all times as long as the local sheriff’s a corrupt stooge.
What’s perhaps more disturbing about the show, in retrospect, is that it’s in some ways complicit in the general ignorance the populace has about that flag itself, without seeming to display any racist overtones. You see, them Duke boys was kind folk, who took care of the underdawg and were loyal to their family and never said a harsh word against minoritays. That all sounds harmless enough, but then they very prominently did all that in a car with a giant rebel flag on it, which feeds a positive connotation for it. That they engaged in all sorts of creative mischief to foil bad guys and city slickers and, notably, Northerners who didn’t understand local customs, all lends further credence to the false mythology we allowed the South to propagate while licking its wounds after the war was over. That show is part, wittingly or not, of whitewashing actual history, which is a part of why we find ourselves today with people like Thiessen actually asserting with a straight face that it’s a step too far to ask that an intentional symbol of defiance against racial unity be removed from display on the grounds of a state capitol.
Linnaeus
@boatboy_srq:
Yes, this is a good observation. Here’s an anecdote from my own experience: I was teaching a history of science course and one of the topic we covered was Darwin and his theory of evolution. We had students read most of Origin of Species, historians’s views on Darwin and “Darwinism”, etc. So we had a paper assignment in which the students were to offer an argument as to how Darwin came up with his theory and its historical significance. One student decided that the assignment was instead to argue that Darwin and evolution were all wrong, why it shouldn’t be taught, etc. I met with this student and kindly explained that the student didn’t actually do the assignment – the question that the student addressed wasn’t what was asked. I even offered a rewrite opportunity, which the student took and still didn’t quite get the question, but at least did better than the first time.
Joel
In related news..
By that definition, they should be flying the swastika and rising sun, since veterans fought for the Axis powers, as well.
Cacti
@bemused:
So, you expect the male members of your family to be punching bags for female assailants?
That’s a pretty warped view.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: There is a great deal of confusion about that, mostly due to the anonymous nature of the ‘tubes. People in online games, for example, behave in ways that I’m fairly certain they would not behave on a bus, or at a playground, in meatspace.
Paul in KY
@raven: I watched the video 4 or 5 times (with sound off). Looks like an open spot at very crowded bar appeared & blonde girl got there before QB. He tried to sidle in beside her & she objected (probably loudly & coarsely). I think he was elbowing her in back as he tried to make some room. She then turned around & verbally let him have it & made a fist with right arm & raised it. He then grabbed her right arm & sorta restrained her. She then raised up her knee & made contact somewhere down there & then swatted him with left fist. He then strikes her in forehead & leaves scene.
If she called him a nigger, that was not a very smart thing to do. I’m sure alcohol was involved.
SenyorDave
In case anyone doesn’t remember, once upon a time Thiessen worked for Helms. He also wrote this glowing obit for Helms that made its way onto the pages of the WaPost back in the day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/06/AR2008070601767.html
People who apologize for bigots are bigots themselves
John Revolta
I hated that show. They wrecked pretty much every ’69 Charger in the country in the course of filming it. Best looking car Detroit ever put out.
Having said that, it’s a stupid kneejerk move to pull it off the air now on account of the flag issue. Unless of course they were looking for an excuse to cancel it anyway. It’s their network after all………………….
@Joel: Yeah I noticed that too. “Confederate veterans are still veterans!” One of the stupidest things I’ve heard said in a long time, even by Iowa Republican standards.
opiejeanne
@Cacti:In 1968 a college boyfriend dragged me to see on Thanksgiving, in his convertible, when I had a miserable cold. It was his favorite movie and he couldn’t believe I had t seen it. I had read a big chunk of the novel in HS but couldn’t finish it for gagging.
He was sweet, bought me hot cocoa, thought my sniffling was due to emotion, as was his crying. Yep, he cried during that movie, and he’d already seen it six times.
I thought it was a very stupid movie about some very stupid people.
Mike G
So according to Thiessen our country is in a “miasma of political correctness” and “erasing people from our collective history” over slave owning, then goes on to name cities, military bases and colleges still named after slave owners. So which is it?
He creates a strawman world where renaming the city of Washington, DC is contemplated, so he can whine about how ridiculous it is. Lazy beyond belief.
john fremont
@Joel: I wonder how Mr. Golay would feel about flying the colors for Saint Patrick’s Battalion, the Irish Americans who fought for Mexico during the Mexican American War aka James Polk’s War? Not to mention some of the Hispanic and Native American descendants whose ancestors fought against the US during that war.Would he be onboard with raising an emblem or flag for them? I think I already know the answer.
Lurking Canadian
I am good with renaming the US Army forts named after Confederate generals, but I would make an exception for Fort Hood.
After Lincoln, Grant and Sherman, there are not many Civil War figures who did more to ensure Union victory than General Hood.
Paul in KY
@Lurking Canadian: As long as that was mentioned somewhere on the plaque that would have to be remade to include your quote, I’m all for leaving it Ft. Hood.
Kyle
@John Revolta:
So TV network executives, likely prompted by nervous advertisers, pulled a TV show off the air. If a show was removed for right-wing purposes, it would be all about “freedom of speech” and “free markets”.
There are no small number of veterans of the armed forces of communist-ruled nations now living in the US, yet I doubt they would receive a positive reaction carrying the flags under which they served in a Veterans Day parade in the South.
SatanicPanic
@Linnaeus: I think if we want to talk about systematic racism, most of that does spring from the the South. Even stuff like FHA lending regulations were on account of FDR not wanting to upset southern Democrats.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: Social Security suffered under that particular onus, too.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
But plenty of things like redlining, segregation, police brutality, etc. happened in places outside of the South and with no assists by southern racists.
SiubhanDuinne
Dinesh D’Stupid has been tweeting a doctored photo of Hillary with a Confederate Battle Flag in the background. Clearly Photoshopped, as any quick Google image search of the original Life Magazine photo spread will show.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dinesh-souza-fake-hillary-clinton-photo
According to TPM, it’s not clear whether Dinesh himself altered the picture or merely passed along one he found somewhere. Either way, he apparently has not taken it down or apologized for the fakery, despite numerous commenters pointing out the hoax.
A simple “D’Sorry” would suffice.
Matt McIrvin
@MCA1: But also: the show’s bad guy was named Jefferson Davis Hogg, and in one episode it was revealed that (in an comic inversion of the “evil twin” cliche) he had a good identical twin named Abraham Lincoln Hogg, who dressed in black. Hollywood’s relationship to this stuff seems to have been complex.
Still, what a dumb show.
LesGS
@Belafon: Have him read the book beforehand. Think of it as inoculating him against Southern Delusions.
rikyrah
k8 @rolling_2 6h6 hours ago
Bernie Sanders speech last night re “real” unemployment rate? – picked up by Daily Caller, Wash Times, HotAir, Newsmax and Twitchy. / GFOH
Elie
@Brachiator:
You are right. The poison was not just in the south. It follows therefore that the “cure” is not just in the south, but across the country. You are right that we have used the south as the whipping boy. I don’t see however, that insisting that the stars and bars be removed from state offices is using them as a whipping boy. These states, unlike the northern states, picked their flags precisely to be a finger in the eye of those who advocate for equality. So yeah, its a national, even international poison and there are many examples of racism in almost any country or region you want to look. That said, in this country, even though northerners had slaves and can be racists, only the southern states fought to keep the right to own people. They earned the special contempt we have for them, fair and square in my eyes.
SatanicPanic
@Linnaeus: But redlining came out of FHA regulations, which were written to please Southerners. Those are probably the worst legacy of that era, we’re still trying to figure out what to do about that.
I mean, absolutely, there were plenty of racist people and racist things than happened outside of the South. But without the South systematizing it in the way it did, I doubt we’d have nearly the problems we do today.
geg6
@Cacti:
Yes. I was taught that some people have so little impulse control that they consider some taunts “fighting words.” I was taught to have better impulse control. Sadly, apparently not everyone’s parents taught them the same.
MattF
@SiubhanDuinne: Telling lies about Hillary Clinton is not immoral. Because. Because, because, because.
geg6
@Mike J:
If you are being abused, you call in the law, whether the police (which I understand an African American, especially a male, would be reluctant to do) or a good civil attorney. If the video, which I have admittedly not watched, is so cut and dried as to prove that she did all this without any provocation on his part, he has every right and advantage to sue her for assault and, perhaps, racial intimidation. Or he could just be a man and walk away.
geg6
@rikyrah:
Having never used that word in my life, I have no idea what it would get me if I did. But I still have no respect for a man who did what he did to a woman her size, regardless of the provocation. None. And none for anyone who is defending it.
Cacti
@geg6:
Fighting words aren’t considered protected speech under the First Amendment. At least according to a 9-0 ruling of the uneducated brutes on the Supreme Court, that has never been overruled 73 years later.
Kropadope
@MattF:
BECAUSE of the terrible things she does … We’re of to see the wizard, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF CRUZ!!!!!!
Cacti
@geg6:
Sorry chief, gender does not lawfully privilege assault, nor does it negate self-defense.
gelfling545
@Belafon: Always better to prevent than to fix. Unlearning a wrong idea & replacing it with the facts can be quite difficult.
My granddaughter will be taking US History in HS next term. The 2 history buffs (that is to say, obsessives) in the family are preparing a summer reading list just in case she gets a dud for a teacher & also because, well, it’s better to know a thing than not to know it.
geg6
@Cacti:
I agree and know that “fighting words” are not protected speech. They shouldn’t be. A lot of wisdom in the old saying that sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. They only do if you let them. And then the assholes using the words win. I’m against letting the assholes win.
geg6
@Cacti:
Okay, I watched the video. I really see an ambiguous situation there. Looks to me like he could have made first contact. In which case and using your own argument, she had every right to knee him in the balls.
Tenar Darell
@Paul in KY: I do comprehend that Northern generals like Grant and Sherman and Sheridan might not get a lot of love in local Southern monuments and memorials when they were initially being built. But there were lots of men from the States which seceded who fought for the Union with great valor and distinction, yet they are for all practical purposes deliberately forgotten. Just like the USCT soldiers who were probably a majority from the South. Where are their bases, their statues, their memorials? (And I’m not talking of the very few, but the ones in every town square).
This is what Jelani Cobb meant, I think. All these brave men (and women) erased from public consciousness to make Southern history white, and Confederate. It’s fundamentally untrue and unjust.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
We’re getting into counterfactuals – had the South not reinstitutionalized racism in the way that it did, I agree that a lot of things would be different (although the North lost most of whatever enthusiasm it had for remaking the South after the Civil War), though I also think it’s easy to overstate how much different they’d be. You can’t really prove it either way.
Again, we can analyze particular manifestations of racism: cultural, institutional, etc. and make certain distinctions about those manifestations along the lines of region. I’m just cautioning against the inclination that I often see to let one’s own community, region, etc. off the hook. There were plenty of places outside of the South that were – and are – more than happy to tolerate and even foment racism. Let’s not lose sight of that.
ETA: We should also remember that racism is not just a black/white thing in America.
geg6
@Cacti:
What does my respect have to do with the law?
Capri
@trnc: Why is it that for so many of these folks, canceling the Dukes of Hazard is their bridge too far? It is brought up every time in these butt hurt articles.
SatanicPanic
@Linnaeus: well that’s true, other people have had to deal with a lot of crap. that being said, and I normally hate to do this, but blacks really do suffer under a particular brand of racism directed at them that is systematically worse.
And I’m not trying to let everyone else off the hook, I just think there’s something special about the South that needs recognizing.
ETA- good point about counterfactuals. It’s really kind of pointless to speculate
bemused
@Cacti:
Knowing my spouse and sons, it would take a lot more than getting punched in the groin to slug a woman such as if it was the only way to stop her from killing them or others.
Linnaeus
@SatanicPanic:
Regions, their cultures, and their histories are distinct to some degree or other – and it’s fine to recognize that. But it’s also good to put that in a larger context.
Re counterfactuals: I wouldn’t say that it’s pointless to speculate about them (I admit to doing it myself) and it even can be useful, just that we have to understand the limits in doing so.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: I’ve not been able to avoid the video as it’s on endless loop in my media market due to the FSU connection. They both look like hyper-aggressive assholes to me. My guess is they were both acting like drunk morons. He’ll probably avoid an assault conviction because she sure seems to participate in the escalation, but he’s the fool who threw away a spot at an elite program on a really stupid incident. So of the two of them, he ultimately comes out the worst.
Kropadope
@Capri:
Because having the Confederate flag taken away from public facilities can not be credibly argued as censorship. Losing syndication of a somewhat popular television show is compelling enough to get the people who let it slip past them that TV Land is free to air what it wants and, likewise, not air what it doesn’t.
Kropadope
@bemused:
I mean…I would never hit anyone, personally. If someone is being actively assaulted, though, I can’t rightly say that he or she can’t defend themselves in a commensurate way. I’ll leave it up to the parties involved and, if they choose to involve it, the justice system to determine whether that’s the case.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, my one viewing showed me that they are both idiots, that he probably was elbowing her to shove her out of his way at the bar and she over-reacted and called him what, I’m sure she’ll say, was just her way of calling him an asshole. *rolls eyes*
Still think he had no business doing what he did. Yes, he lashed out and I’m sure it made him feel soooooooo much better to do so. And yes, he has lost his spot. So I guess karma wins as they both should have learned something. But I’m betting neither of them have learned a damned thing and I am sure she’ll be back to using that word casually and he will go on hitting people who are incapable of physically injuring him. It’s who they are.
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: Speaking as somebody who actually got points taken off for knowing source material well enough to point out flaws in the school-board-approved-texts, that’s definitely YMMV territory. Knowing more about a subject is no doubt healthy, but it isn’t guaranteed to provide the transcript to prove it. I’m not saying “don’t read the book” – just wait to see what the class covers first, and include it as a supplemental text rather than read it first and risk losing points on assignments and exams.
Jack the Second
Arlington was seized from Lee’s family during the Civil War by the US government for use as a cemetery, as a big old “fuck you” to the leader of the Confederate armies. The first of the honored dead buried there were US soldiers killed by their traitorous brethren.
Is there really a more fitting tribute to Lee and the Confederacy?
Citizen Alan
@japa21:
They didn’t have to — The Dukes of Hazzard was implicitly a setting in which the Confederacy won. Somebody counted it up, and in seven seasons of a show set in rural Georgia, there were only ever 19 black actors to appear on the show (roughly one every 7 episodes). Racism is a meaningless term in a world where everyone is white.
Also too, I for one find the Beverly Hillbillies to be more racist than the Dukes of Hazzard. There were entire episodes explicitly based on the Clampett’s “comical” belief that the South won the Civil War and Grannie actually became violent when people suggested otherwise.
The Pale Scot
@Botsplainer:
I just started reading Ghost Ship, novel about a US-China war.
The Chinese find a huge gas field in international waters near Guam and pull a Yamamoto. the F-35 and the LCS get whacked so the US has to pull older, less sophisticated equipment out of mothballs. Just started it last night so I don’t have an opinion. The characters are Clancyesque, not surprising since the authors are retired Admirals.
The interesting thing so far is the generational divide concerning tech, all the JGs are using google-glass on steroids, the older chiefs and officers are unenthusiastic.
Edit: link
jl
@Kropadope:
” Spoken like someone who’s never been hit in the balls. ”
I have been very squarely and savagely hit in the balls a couple of times, but on sports field, not in anger.
So, OK, maybe he should have staggered away. Normal walking may not have been possible at normal speed.
Which is why it would have been possible for the woman to have very easily followed him and kept kicking him the balls, At which point, he would have had a right to fight back, since he could not flee the attack.
Kay
@Mike G:
That’s what I thought, too. It’s a mess. It’s like he took a set of words and phrases that resonate with a certain group of conservatives and just strung them together.
Brachiator
@Elie:
I have never written in any post here or anywhere else in the universe, that the Confederate flag should be kept up.
For most of its history, almost all of white America, has been dedicated to the idea of white supremacy and the oppression of black people, and other nonwhite peoples. For most of its history, almost all of white people delighted in discriminating against black people, in denying them the same opportunities they saw as basic for themselves, and have been complicit in justifying this with the myth of racial superiority.
Much of America is still not clear on the idea of equal rights. And obviously even when slavery ended, the struggle for civil rights continued.
Kropadope
@jl: Right, not that I think it went down like that or know enough about this situation to know if he was in the right. I even suspect he wasn’t. I just don’t think “never” is the right standard, never is a long time.
chopper
@jl:
so, generally, how many times do you have to be kicked in the balls before it’s okay to fight back? give me a number.
jl
@Kropadope: @chopper:
Sorry, I don;t have a formula. You’ll have to use your judgment.
Kropadope
@jl: Did I ask for one? I said judgment of the parties involved and, if necessary, the justice system.
boatboy_srq
@geg6: Missed this earlier. YMMV: see my comment at #211. Also an A student, majored in History and Theatre – and still got a handful of not-so-good grades for bringing up material that didn’t quite synch with the syllabus. A lot depends on the teacher, and a lot depends on the school.
MCA1
@Matt McIrvin: Ha! That’s more reminiscing than I was prepared for. Total agreement with your last sentence. Cringeworthy television, like much of what was on in the 1980’s.
hugely
@Belafon: thats one of the main things I liked about Independence Natl Monument in Philly. Right next to the Liberty Bell is an archeological and interpretive exhibit on GW’s presidential house and slaves and PA state law while he was President. They (GW’s family and slaves) had to go to New Jersey every 30 days or something like that to avoid automatic manumissions.
I told my kids that this was a more complete/nuanced view of US History and of our presidents – not sure they got it but I loved it. IIRC some of the interpretive content had correspondence between Martha, George and others describing how various slaves would fly the coop whenever they would take these “family vacations”
hugely
@Linnaeus:
I fucking love nuance
jilli
No one is asking to wipe away history…well, Texas is, and they didn’t even bother to ask. Five million kids will be using textbooks with blatantly inaccurate info. Slavery…never happened. Jim Crow? Jim who? 5 MILLION kids being taught the republi-washed version of American history. Scary.
Admiral_Komack
@Brachiator:
It sorta blows the “heritage not hate” bullshit out of the water, too.
Admiral_Komack
@Betty Cracker:
He should have dropkicked the racist bitch.
She just hasn’t come up to the wrong one…and when she does…it’s ON.
moderateindy
Going all Godwin…
Can you imagine Germany naming a fort after Rommell, or a bridge after Goebbels? And they weren’t even fighting against their country.
Also, does anyone else notice how similar the , “if you free the slaves it will crush the economy” argument that was spouted back before the civil war, is to today’s argument about why we can’t have a reasonable minimum wage? You gotta hand it to them, rich folks are nothing if not consistent when it comes to paying a fair wage. After all what were them black folks complainin’ about, they got room, and board, and all the free whippings they could handle.
Come to think about it, they had a slightly better retirement plan than most Americans do now. I suppose being a greeter at Walmart is the equivalent of getting old, and moving up to the main house to be a house ni-clang.
Bjacques
Probably a dead thread, but he could have complained to the bartender. If you walk away, she can’t knee you in the balls. The stronger party always has the most control over the situation. Outside of a schoolyard, face doesn’t really count.