Salon.com is running a column by Sid Blumenthal where he makes a clever but also sensible link between Howard Dean's flag-in-mouth problem and CBS' decision to cave to Republican Party pressure over the Reagan TV-movie. He also talks about Mississippi politics in connection with both Dean and Reagan.
<< After the Republican Convention in 1980, Reagan traveled to the county fair in Neshoba, Miss., where, in 1964, three Freedom Riders had been slain by the Ku Klux Klan. His appearance there was urged and planned by a young congressman named Trent Lott, who had switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. Before an all-white crowd of tens of thousands, Reagan declared, "I believe in states' rights" -- the code words that were used in the Civil War to justify slavery and the secession of the Southern states from the Union. These words are at the center of the bloody conflict through American history over the essential idea of the United States. ...
<< Consider yet another scene: On the day before Dean's last apology, Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the third biggest lobbyist in Washington, was elected governor of Mississippi. He had campaigned at an event sponsored by the Council of Concerned Conservatives, an overtly racist group and successor organization to the White Citizens' Council that led opposition to civil rights in the 1960s. In his lapel Barbour wore a pin of the Mississippi state flag, a matter of controversy because of its incorporation of the Confederate flag. On election night, even before he was announced as the winner, Barbour received a congratulatory telephone call from George W. Bush. Look away, Dixieland.
<< As the great novelist William Faulkner, of Mississippi, wrote: "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." >>
It's a very good piece, although Blumenthal is also a little fuzzy on this states-rights and the Civil War business.
Also, "great novelist" is a bit too mild to describe Faulkner. "Incomparable novelist" would have been closer.
2 comments:
he's THE american novelist, as far as i'm concerned. but, i went to a southern school where he WAS the curriculum. i'm definitely prejudiced. it may be time for me to read a little faulkner, it's been a while. joan didion mentions a story he wrote about california in her new book, which i just finished last night. i didn't know he ventured that far afield.
Yes, he wrote one story about California called "Golden Land." It's really quite good (no surprise there). But he hated life in California, and some of his attitude shows up in Golden Land.
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