Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

It’s not hopeless, and we’re not helpless.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Motown is Joe-Town!

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / Alabama’s Got Me So Upset

Alabama’s Got Me So Upset

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My desire to document my cross-country trip has not gone as planned, but I wanted to write a bit about my visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute today.  For MLK’s birthday, admission was free, so I stood in line with hundreds of others waiting to see the exhibits there.  It’s a really well-done history of the civil rights movement in general, and Birmingham’s central role in that struggle in particular.  If you’re ever in Birmingham, it’s worth a visit.

The Institute is across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four young girls were killed by a bomb planted by KKK members.  I’ve always found that to be one of the most disturbing incidents in US history, and it was surreal to stand in line with kids the same age as those girls, as well as with elderly black men and women who were in their teens, 20’s and 30’s when the bombing happened.

(The picture is one of Bull Connor’s tanks.)

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  1. 1.

    Ben Cisco

    I’ve not been to the museum since I moved back home; hoping to rectify that in the near future. One of things that has amazed me since I’ve been back is how much things have changed here. While there is a long way to go and much to be done, this is definitively NOT the Alabama I knew from my childhood. And that’s a good thing.

  3. 3.

    Raoul

    Also, too, a couple years ago the BF and I visited Selma, including Brown Chapel, saw the spot outside an integrated diner where attackers inflicted deadly wounds on UU minister James Reeb, visited the interpretive centers in Selma and Lowndes, and the Rosa Parks museum in Montgomery (as well as other walking around Montgomery).
    We realized too late that there was about 3 or 5X what we had time to see/digest compared to our itinerary that trip. Must return!

  4. 4.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Raoul: Yeah, the Atlantic seems to have a *slew* of columns arguing that everybody who concluded the Covington thugs were just that — thugs — got it wrong. Can’t say I’m surprised, given their editor was ready to hire Kevin Williamson.

    Glad I never got around to subscribing to those idiots.

    Notwithstanding, James Fallows wrote a decent piece about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2019/01/mayor-covington-kentucky-explains-what-his-city-stands/580876/

    I don’t know who the young man in the MAGA hat in this photo is. And I don’t care to know.

    His name, which the internet will inevitably turn up, really doesn’t matter.
    [….]
    Today, on the National Mall in Washington, they apparently mocked, harassed, and menaced a Native American man who had fought for the United States in Vietnam and who today represented both the U.S. and his Omaha nation with poise, courage, and dignity.

    That man’s name matters. It is Nathan Phillips.

  5. 5.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Chetan Murthy: The incident is being turned into “those poor young men were the victims of Black Muslims” or sone such nonsense. Apparently, the smirker’s mother has hired a PR firm and is standing by her son.

    I wonder if the school will do a u-turn and stand by the students or if they will actually discipline any student for wrongdoing. That remains to be seen.

  6. 6.

    Aleta

    Instagram video posted by
    hunterhooligan Singer/Songwriter/Storyteller. Queer. Thicc. Indigenous.
    https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs0m92rHOkG/
    (Vid taken from inside the small group who were surrounded with Nathan Phillips trying to move through the large group of adolescent boys.)

    … After their own protest concluded, they surrounded the few of us left lingering from the Indigenous Peoples’ March and rally and pretty immediately began mocking the singing and drumming. As we tried to move through the crowd, they closed in tighter around us, and wouldn’t allow anyone to pass. It was obvious that they wanted any excuse for the day to turn violent. They repeatedly “bumped” into us, trying to agitate people into confrontation. But instead, the very few of us left stood quietly, trying to remain calm. I was seething with anger and rage and disappointment. I was so confused about why these boys would go out of their way to harass such a small, vulnerable group. Parents and chaperones stood on the sidelines, choosing not to intervene or reign back the group. Make no mistake, these boys were not there to experience a cultural exchange or to support the cause for which we gathered. Their mockery was an attempt to distract and demoralize the last remaining members of the rally. They chanted “build the wall,” “Gone in 2020.” The implications of these statements are chilling, to say the least.
    …
    People called the police on your boys because onlookers feared what the boys might do to the 10 of us remaining on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Thanks to @earthchores and @ka_ya11 for also documenting this episode. Feel free to tag your favorite media outlets (especially indigenous owned and operated), repost and share!

    ⠀
    ⠀⠀⠀

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    Years ago we were supposed to take a road trip from NoVA to Eufala, AL with a couple my wife knew for quite a long time. Then they got weird and went to work for Amway and pretty much distanced themselves from most everyone. Probably just as well.

  10. 10.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Raven:
    According to Wikipedia he was:

    Phillips joined the Marine Corps, serving in the Vietnam War as a Recon Ranger and Infantryman. He served in the U.S. military from 1972 to 1976.

    What sources have you seen that say he’s not?

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Raven:

    The dude is NOT a Vietnam vet

    I agree that for the purposes of this incident, it doesn’t matter. But I’ve seen nothing disputing that he’s a Vietnam vet, from anyplace I’d trust. Could you provide a pointer? I mean, sure Wash Times, Gateway Pundit. But by that standard I’d have to believe in UFOs.

  13. 13.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Raven’s comment caused me to look at wikipedia, too. If you look at the footnotes, none of them appear even remotely dispositive. They sure don’t go towards disproving raven’s thesis. It appears that aside from the Vogue article, all the others are post-incident reporting. Nobody seems to have actually checked his story, that I can find. That doesn’t mean it’s a false story. It just means that we can’t really tell, other than taking him at his word. Which I’m inclined to do, b/c shit, it’s immaterial to the incident and its import.

  14. 14.

    Raven

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I don’t have to see any “source”, that is so fucking full of holes it’s not even funny. There is no such thing and a Recon Ranger. Recon is Marine and Rangers are Army. In the CNN interview he says himself as a “Vietnam times vet,” and he says he’s 64. He would have been 18 in 1973 and the last Marine ground units left in 1971.

  17. 17.

    Raven

    @Chetan Murthy: You can count right? You know what Recon is? Rangers? I in no way support what those fucking punks did I just don’t like all the shit plastered all over using his status as a Nam Vet to somehow make it worse.

    I’ve got friends on FB calling him a “war hero”. Just stick to the shit that is real.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Claiming False Valour is a big deal, a crime and Nathan Phillips claims of his past first surfaced in the media at Standing Rock.

    If his claims were false or misleading the Oil Companies, the local Gestapo and the Oil Companies Mercenaries, would have been all over it.

  19. 19.

    marklar

    When you visit the institute, make sure to check out the park across the street…some of the most powerful sculptures illustrating police brutality that I’ve seen. Also, if you can make the drive down to Montgomery, the Rosa Parks museum (may be the best laid out museum in the country) walks you sequentially through life in Montgomery, the boycott, and the heroes in a remarkable immersive experience. Powerful stuff.

  20. 20.

    Jeffro

    Maybe this (the Phillips thing) is instructive as to why it’s important not to weigh in on every inflammatory media thing that pops up, I dunno…

    In other news (and I hope this gets front-paged tomorrow), Catherine Rampell points out the obvious, but with a few new twists due to the shutdown: The GOP Has Become The Pro-Russia Party:

    …not that they care…

    Once upon a time, Ayn Rand-reading, red-baiting Republicans denounced Soviet Russia as an evil superpower intent on destroying the American way of life.

    My, how things have changed.

    The Grand Old Party has quietly become the pro-Russia party — and not only because the party’s standard-bearer seems peculiarly enamored of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under Republican leadership, the United States is starting to look an awful lot like the failed Soviet system the party once stood unified against.

    Supposedly middle-class workers — people who have government jobs that are supposed to be stable and secure — are waiting in bread lines. Thanks to government dysfunction and mismanagement, those employed in the private sector may also be going hungry, since 2,500 vendors nationwide are unable to participate in the food stamp program while the government is shuttered and unable to renew licenses for the Electronic Benefit Transfer debit card program.

    Why? Because of the whims of a would-be autocrat who cares more about erecting an expensive monument to his own campaign rhetoric than about the pain and suffering of the little people he claims to champion.

    And for now, at least, most of those little people are too frightened of the government’s wrath to fight back overtly. Instead, desperate to keep jobs that might someday offer them a paycheck again, the proletariat protest in more passive ways: by calling in sick in higher numbers.

    The would-be autocrat surrounds himself with toadies who spend more time scheming against one another — sometimes to comic effect — than trying to offer their boss sound guidance or thoughtful policy solutions. In his presence, and perhaps especially when the cameras are on, they praise him relentlessly: his brains, his leadership, his “perfect genes.”

    Sometimes they appear afraid to stop clapping, echoing stories of forced standing ovations for Joseph Stalin recounted in video footage and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago.”

    Apparent corruption among these kowtowing aides — including improper use of public funds or private favors for fancy travel and other pampering — remains rampant. Unlike in true socialist states, it seems, our leaders haven’t run out of other people’s money.

    Meanwhile, federal law enforcement is publicly directed to pursue the would-be autocrat’s political enemies, as well as the family members of those enemies, such as former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s father-in-law. Purges of law enforcement or other members of the “deep state” are also demanded, and sometimes acted upon. Such actions, when taken by thugs abroad, were once denounced by Republicans.

    State-run media, or something closely approximating it, feeds the public a steady diet of pro-leader propaganda and shields viewers from news that might embarrass the head of state. Independent sources of information or accountability, or those who deviate from the party line, are branded “enemies of the people.”

    On the macroeconomic front, leadership may be touting “deregulation” but in many ways is moving toward a more centrally planned economy, which includes the shielding of pet industries from the whims of the market or technological change.

    What I like are the constant references to the “would-be autocrat”…hopefully one of the many Dem candidates for 2020 can pick that up and just put it in plain language like we use around here…”Needy Amin”…”banana Republican”…and so on

    But yeah, it’s been a LONG two years and it’s past time for everyone to hear more about how the GOP has sold out not just to a corrupt 2nd-tier reality TV star/money launderer, but has also betrayed its country by selling out to Russia. Over and over and over

  21. 21.

    Raven

    @Jay: Wrong, he can claim anything he wants and he’s very careful in that CNN interview

    In the United States, the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 makes it a federal offense to falsely claim to have received any of several major military awards with the intention of obtaining money, property, or other tangible benefits.[28] There are additional laws criminalizing the altering or forging of discharge documents,[29] and attempting to obtain veteran’s benefits from the government.

    Here’s what he said in 2000

    “”I’m a veteran,” says Phillips, “a Marine Corps infantryman in the ’70s, and I’m a patriot, and those soldiers need remembering.”

  22. 22.

    Ruckus

    @Raven:
    I tried to follow up and the best I found was a link showing what Nathen has been quoted as saying, which is a Vietnam time vet. So far no one has seemingly been able to find any quote by him that he’s a Vietnam combat vet. And seeing as how he joined in 72, it would be possible but improbable that he’s an in country vet. I find it easier when asked to say a Vietnam era vet who did not get sent to Vietnam.

  23. 23.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Which I’m inclined to do, b/c shit, it’s immaterial to the incident and its import.

    I agree, but it also makes it worse if he is a vet, because right-wingers love to go on and on about supporting the troops and vets.

    It’s the same thing as the American flag issue. Conservatives have altered the American flag by adding a blue line through the center and greying out the rest of the colors. Yet god forbid anybody burn one. To me it’s a textbook case of flag desecration. To them, it’s obviously not. It’s the hypocrisy that I hate.

  24. 24.

    Jay

    @Raven:

    It’s media reports,

    From your MSM stenographers,

    Who can’t even manage to properly stenograph the puke funnel of Needy Admin,

    Which is why y’all rely on a Canadian at the Toronto Star.

  25. 25.

    Ohio Mom

    I did not know Bull Connor had tanks. Thinking about it, I can’t be surprised.

    The one in the picture is so bright and clean. It looks like something put together for a sci fi movie, some sort of moon vehicle.

    My god we waste so much money on armaments. A tank to attack citizens, smh.

  26. 26.

    Raven

    @Ruckus: I never said he misrepresented anything I said he’s not a Nam vet and people are saying he is to garner sympathy for his situation.

  28. 28.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Raven:
    So, it might be possible he’s a Vietnam era veteran? As Ruckus says, he might have just been here stateside or somewhere else not named Vietnam.

    ETA: I think a lot of people saw the dates he served during and assumed he was in combat during Vietnam, myself included.

  29. 29.

    Raven

    @Jay: It’s all over my facebook. Tons of cute photos and descriptions touting his Vietnam Vet status and bellowing about him fighting for freedom and shit. I PM folks when I see them post it just to let them know.

  31. 31.

    SoupCatcher

    If you get down to Montgomery, I highly recommend The Legacy Museum first and then The National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

    https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/

    The museum itself is really well designed pedagogically and very modern technologically. A couple of displays that really resonated for me were the floor to ceiling bookshelf of jars containing dirt from lynching sites and a prison visiting kiosk where you picked up a phone and listened to a recording of the man you were looking at.

    And then the Memorial, with the hanging monuments of victims by county, needs to be experienced by every American.

    If you save yourself some time, you can zip over to the capital building to spit at the statues of Jefferson Davis and John Allan Wyeth (the surgeon, not the poet).

  32. 32.

    Raven

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I sat on a plane coming back from the 10th Anniversary of the Wall and this really young looking Navy Officer sat next to me. I was all grody wearing my jungle fatigues and we shot the shit. I saw his Vietnam Service Medal and he noticed. He said he was in his plebe year at the Academy and they did a training cruise that crossed into Dixie Station. He didn’t “get to” he had to wear it. Phillips most likely is an “era” vet and, from what I’ve read in the recent situation, is careful not to say anything different. The CNN transcript doesn’t even say “Vietnam Times” but it’s clear that’s what he said.

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @Raven:
    I know you didn’t say he was, if I wrote that wrong, I apologize, I read your first comment and was trying to find a source that might answer the question for others. Your comment that the Marines were pulled in 71 says a lot more than anything else, he couldn’t have been there, as you said he joined in 72.
    But the recordings of Nathen don’t show that he ever claimed to be an in combat vet like yourself, as the clip that you linked. The majority of the news business seems to care as much about the truth as the republican party, not one fucking bit.

  35. 35.

    Ohio Mom

    @Raven: @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    I don’t know what it is. Mister Mix labeled it a tank, so that’s what I called it.

    I don’t know what a APV is either.

    Whatever it is I’m pretty sure you can run a perfectly good and effective local law enforcement outfit without it.

  36. 36.

    Raoul

    My dad was a Korean war era veteran. He served in the Pacific and the Atlantic onboard Naval ships. He never claimed any combat status, but he was a veteran.
    I can understand being frustrated if folks are saying Philips is a Viet Nam vet as that suggests facing combat when (one has to suppose given the current murkiness) he didn’t.
    He still stepped up and served this country in uniform, and that in itself is more than most of those Covington kids will likely ever do.

  38. 38.

    Raoul

    FYI

    Bull Connor’s Tank Returns to Birmingham

    By: | NBC 13
    Published: October 07, 2008

    BIRMINGHAM: For the first time in decades, Bull Connor’s police tank was once again on the street of Birmingham. This time, its blue police paint faded, and exterior rusting, the vehicle wasn’t quite as intimidating.

    The City of Birmingham pulled the personnel carrier out of a “vehicle graveyard” in Georgia. It’s one of 2 vehicles that will go on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Crews will restore the tank, and include it in the BCRI’s “Expanding the Legacy” Campaign Renovation Project. Other items in exhibit will include shards of glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and a cross and shovel used in a Huntsville hate crime.

  39. 39.

    Chetan Murthy

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:

    it also makes it worse if he is a vet, because right-wingers love to go on and on about supporting the troops and vets.

    If he could weigh in from Heaven, I think Capt. Humayun Khan would disagree on this; certainly his parents do. Secretary John Kerry does, too. GrOPers only support the troops when it lines up with their priorities. Which is to say, they don’t give a damn about the troops. Now it’s true that if he claimed something falsely, that’s troubling, and will vitiate the moral power of the causes he supports. Why? B/c the GrOPers will use it as ammo, b/c that’s what they do.

    But really, I can’t be bothered by it: GrOPers can always find something to bang on about.

    ETA: Max Cleland would also dispute, I bet, that GrOPers care about troops and veterans.

  41. 41.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Raven:
    Really? On Wikipedia, it says they can be either wheeled or tracked.

    The OT-64 SKOT was a Polish/Czech APC produced in the 1960s until the early 70s that was 8×8 and amphibious.

  42. 42.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: I long for the day when a Dem will respond to a GrOPer’s professions of supporting the troops with something like

    Spare us the sanctimony, o^ whited sepulchre; we all know that you only support the troops when it’s convenient to your goals, and you’ll attack those same troops when there’s a nickel in it for you. [etc, etc, etc, naming names, of which there are many]

  43. 43.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Raven:
    I think I remember that story. Weird that they would make him wear such an award for nothing just because of where he physically was.

    So Phillips is probably just a vet from around that time. I would think he would have mentioned by now if he saw any combat during his service if he had.

  44. 44.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Chetan Murthy:
    I never said they were all sincere about it. I guarantee you many right-wingers would thank a service member for their service and condemn them in the same breath if they had political positions different from them.

  46. 46.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Chetan Murthy:
    I know Kerry was swiftboated. I meant it more in the sense of a Joe Schmoe. For R’s with high-level, high stakes elections, they go the “inspecting the counter tops” route.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @Patricia Kayden:

    wonder if the school will do a u-turn and stand by the students or if they will actually discipline any student for wrongdoing. That remains to be seen.

    I can see one circumstance where the students will be punished in a meaningful way: if the groundswell of where the hell were the chaperones? continues to build. If it does, the adults who were there and supposed to be keeping the kids under control will throw a few of the kids under the bus to protect themselves.

    And the kids will know full well that they’re being punished not for their bad behavior towards Mr. Phillips or for getting into arguments with random street preachers, but for letting themselves get caught on tape doing it.

  49. 49.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    The kids are going to be punished because for the next decade, any resume listing Covington Catholic High School, no matter the year of the Alumni, is going straight into the round file.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raven:

    They now call anyone who was in the armed services anytime between 1960 and 1975 a “Vietnam era veteran.” They called my dad one and he never left Fort Sheridan in Highland Park.

    (He was drafted in the late 1950s when we were between wars, did the absolute minimum, and got the hell out because he absolutely hated it.)

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Jay:

    You’d think so, but sadly, no. Any of those kids who wanted to go to Georgetown, Loyola, or any Jesuit university are shit out of luck, but they’ll do just fine as long as they stay in northern Kentucky/southern Ohio and keep throwing up their Nazi salutes.

  53. 53.

    Jay

    @Mnemosyne:

    Maybe, but a lot of employers search social media and are lawsuit adverse. The kids who’s parents can hire them will do okay, but for anybody else it’s not worth it.

    It costs Corp’s $130k on average in time and money per hire.

    Not worth the risk, and an easy out.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    It isn’t that the timing of his service is in or out of the range of what people are calling the Vietnam era. As raven pointed out he could not have gone to Vietnam as a Marine, they were all pulled out in or before 71. And it looks like all the evidence that I could find that Nathen actually said he was in Vietnam as a combatant were misquotes, people leaving out his use of the word time when most of us use era.

  56. 56.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Birmingham was my home town. In my teens in the middle of the bombing and Civil Rights Movement. The museum is a must visit. It does one of the best jobs I have ever seen of combining sound, film, and objects, to immerse visitors in the Black experience. I assume it still has the cab of the fire bombed bus from Anniston. A grim reminder of reality. But east of the museum, across the street, is Kelly Ingram Park, which was the staging area for the chidren’s protest marches. Today you can walk along the sidewalks crisscrossing the park, and walk between two statues on either side of one walk, with police dogs lunging out of the slabs of stone on either side, towards you as you walk through. Google it, there are pictures on the Web.

    If you are ever in Birmingham, do not fail to visit this museum. It is a must see.

  57. 57.

    rsginsf

    Well, now I’ve got ‘Mississippi Goddam’ stuck in my head all day. Which is a GOOD THING.

    ‘…and I mean every word of it!’

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