Confederacy of Dunces – You’re a Grand Old Rag (revisited)

“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten, 

Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land” – D.D. Emmett         

“The institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may actually have been a blessing in disguise... would an existence spent in slavery have been any crueler than a life spent in sub-Saharan Africa?” -  Rep. John Hubbard, Republican - Arkansas

"Its symbolism in history is directly linked to the enslavement, torture and murder of millions of Americans.” - Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Democrat - California

In light of the recent, very tragic events in South Carolina, the country has started reevaluating and reexamining the place and proliferation of the Confederate flag in the modern United States. Why it took these killings to enlighten people to the vile history, acts and opinions associated with this symbol of an enemy army and territory over 150 years after the end of the War Between the States is surely a quandary. And why so many in the South still insist on fighting that war and clinging to the bigotry, hatred and treason the rebels represented is concerning. 

Much has been written and published about these issues this passed week, but in a piece of surprising and unpredictable prescience "... and several butcher's aprons" opined on this unfurled foulness almost a full year ago.

We re-share this post due to its current relevancy, but it should be noted that while this new reaction to the flag is a progressive and positive step, this pennant is but a symbol of hatred and intolerance, incapable of committing harm, and it is the easy access to armaments, still largely ignored by our society, that must be addressed before any actual, effective and positive change can occur.

From July 2014

One would think that by the summer of 2014, any discussion of the baneful banner that is the Confederate flag would be neither timely nor relevant. Regrettably, such is not the case. The ascension of an African-American to the highest office in the land has reversed calendars south of the Mason/Dixon Line a century or so, exhumed graves, unsealed crypts, unearthed sarcophagus’s and filled the U.S. of A with the intolerant apparitions of long-dead traitorous and treasonous Johnny Rebs, while creating a new generation of modern-day, would-be Johnny Yumas.

You're an idiot

Twaddle, you proclaim? If only your audacious declaration of doubt and denial were true. But, the course of recent human events has illuminated actions and attitudes most ignoble.  A new poll taken among Mississippi Republicans (a group known for the inability to spell the name of their own state) reveals that over a third, 37%, would support the Confederacy, and its fight to preserve slavery, had they the opportunity today. 

Meanwhile, in the equally unenlightened state of South Carolina, the first to secede from the Union, home of the palmetto tree and Young Jeezy, the state attorney general has allowed for the continued and legal display of the Stars and Bars at the chapel entrance of the Citadel military college in Charleston despite abundant objections to its obvious offensiveness.  Said City Councilman Henry Darby in response, "It's just still as if they are trying to preserve the Confederacy” - indeed. 

You're an idiot

Then, there’s the legend that is Operation American Spring, the Tea Party event, held just this May, that promised to bring 30 million real Americans to Washington D.C. to finally and for all-time oust illegal alien, Muslim, anti-Christ, puppy-mill owner, child-candy stealer, original Star Trek series canceller, Garden of Eden snake, President Barack Obama from his comfy chair in the Oval Office. Although only missing its attendance goal by but a trifling 29,999,970 people, in this modern American era of 1865, as long as the stupid take a stand, there will be confederate flags flown. The few hearty and enthusiastic, anti-American haters that did appear were parading their rebel rags with more illicit ill will and perverse pride than John Holmes did his John Thomas. But I say, Gomer, keep it in your overalls.

You're an even bigger idiot

So, is the Deep South truly an un-enchanted land where teeth and diplomas are equally rare commodities, family values means marrying someone within your own family and “Deliverance” a dead-on documentary? All obviously exaggerated, false and distasteful stereotypes, but keep waving the Southern Cross rather than burning it, keep promoting the glorious and glamorous benefits enslavement held for our black population like so much Proactive Plus for Adam Levine, and the Hee Haw viewing, greased-pig chasing, Honey Boo Boo raising, insulting insinuations will remain. We cursed Yankees would like to believe that there might be some nuclear physicists named Zeke, great philosophers called Josephus, smart, selfless and sophisticated statesmen christened Gomer, but continue to harken back wistfully and nostalgically to a time when you had the right to own other human beings, and your region turned violent, treasonous traitor to our great nation in a war a century and a half passed but still felt like a fresh wound in some mindsets, and like George Michael in a public restroom, one can only judge by the evidence at hand.

Okay, you get a pass

This deliberate and odious icon is too often regarded as a meaningless piece of pop culture, be it as a gargantuan backdrop on the concert stage behind Lynyrd Skynrd or as a constant presence in every idiotic iteration of the Dukes of Hazzard. It’s not comedic, it’s not artistic. It should be treated here as the swastika, its moral equivalent, is in Germany, banned and illegal to sell or purchase.

This flag, this unfurled material of malevolence, doesn’t represent Southern Pride, state’s rights and a nostalgia for a genteel, better life gone by - it represents the ownership of people. It represents beatings and whippings and torture and lynchings. It represents ignorance, intolerance and inhumanity. It represents treason, disloyalty and sedition. It represents a presidential assassination. If you fly it, or proudly display it or tattoo it upon your flabby, fatty, southern-fried flesh, you’re a fool.  If you fly it in the nation’s capital, if you display it outside the current home of our first Black President, you’re saying Obama belongs not in the White House but in the cotton fields of your plantation.

Any comments, questions, criticisms, candid confessions, cash contributions? Contact me at butchersaprons@mail.com.

Strange Fruit  

“Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” - Abel Meeropol