Notes on the Dixie-Bashing Blogosphere...

---New Southern organization -- Wanna join?---

Dixie-basher Kevin Levin posted a blog entry about some new organization for the descendants of Southern planters. The organization has caused a minor stir among South-bashing bloggers. Since I don't have any planter ancestors, I posted at "Civil War (Obsessed With Slavery) Memory" a comment similar to this: "I'm thinking of starting an organization for Descendants of Southern Hardscrabble Farmers, Sharecroppers, Sawmillers, and Railroad Workers..."

Levin didn't post it, of course. No sensa-yuma.

---Do white southerners deserve to survive?---

Andy Hall's "civil war era" blog features quite a number of posts about contemporary subjects that hardly date from the civil war "era." Most recently, Andy has agitated, in his laid-back Texas manner, over Dr. Michael Hill's desire that white Southerners survive as a people. (I think Dixie-bashers like these bloggers don't see white Southerners as a people, anyway.) I have found over the years that people obsessed with race and slavery like these bloggers, always have a profoundly different understanding of the League of the South, its positions and the writings of its leaders than I do. What a surprise....

---It IS about us---

Corey Meyer keeps bugging me with Facebook's messaging utility. He's one of the self-appointed civil war history cops who thinks everyone should believe about the war exactly what he believes for exactly the same reasons. His obsession with Confederate heritage advocates dates back to at least 2000, when I first got online -- and very likely much longer than that.

He and Cousin Perfesser ("It's Not About You") Simpson and several of their myrmidons think that if someone living today identifies with the Confederates by saying "we" or "us," that person is claiming to have experienced what the people who lived through the war experienced.

You should've read the righteous indignation when a proSoutherner recently used "we" and "us" that way in a comment on Corey's blog -- "'We' did not fight in the Civil War," said one commenter. "'We' did not experience even one iota of the pain and suffering of the men of either side of that time. It strikes me as the absolute height of stupidity to place one’s selve (sic) with those men while sitting in a comfortable home in front of a computer screen, stoking up an imagined rage over what one can not even conceive of the horror of that time."

Well, of course when we say "we" or "us" in relation to the war, we're not claiming that we experienced the pain and suffering of the war. We are simply acknowledging that we're taking sides.

My town has a new baseball team, the Blue Wahoos. Recently my husband mentioned the team's next game and I said, "Oh, who are we playing?" Frankly, I don't much care for baseball. I've been to a couple of games but I don't know any of the players, and I'm not a fan... And yet, I referred to the Blue Wahoos as "we," meaning, in this case, that the team belongs to the town where I live -- i.e. my town. Only an idiot would think I was claiming to BE one of the team, understood baseball's rules, did the practice sessions, etc.

Now, I'm sure the Dixie-bashing bloggers and their commenters understand this, but they have to pretend to NOT understand so they can express their pleasurable outrage. They pretend to misunderstand a lot of what we say for that reason.

---Confederate Flag Prom Dress Brings Out the Hate---

...but not the way Dixie-bashers would have us believe. Cousin Perfesser recently posted a video about a high school student in Tennessee barred from attending her senior prom because of her Confederate Flag dress. He even acknowledged that it's a non-issue with the "Zzzzzzz" in his headline, leading one to wonder why he posted about it.

Well, it doesn't take long to see that it IS an issue -- and what kind of issue, and with whom. Confederate flag dresses and their wearers are better than sledge hammers for bashing Southerners. Consider these comments from Cousin Perfesser's lovely blog followers....

martin says: What about her Brother? Did they let him in without his date?

tonygunter says: What a shame! That’s the prettiest size 18 prom dress I have ever seen.

Waurene Roberson says: I’m surprised the dress got her thrown out. Did you see the flip flips she was wearing with that sequined dress? OH. MY. GAWD. To the prom in a sequined dress and flip flops….call the fasion police, y’all….

Al Mackey says: Nice to see another old friend commenting. I agree the flip flops were an egregious fashion faux pas, but the dress itself seemed to me to be of a cut that was not made for a prom, leaving aside the CBF motif. The whole reason for the dress appears to have been to make a controversy, and the principal obliged.

Waurene Roberson says: No doubt it was to make a controversy, but I’m not sure the principal should have obliged. Note the “zzzzz” in the subject head. We get into freedom of speech issues, too, as well as my old mainstay (which is: some things really need warning labels, and that girl wore a big one). As an African-American dress designer told me the other day, at least everything was covered. :-) She’s had girls ask her to design prom dresses that were, shall we say, less than they should have been.

This little kerfluffle is the sort of thing that merely makes you roll your eyes and go on about your business. The shoes were the icing on the crapcake.

Waurene Roberson says: By the way, professor, I congratulate you on achieving the impossible, something I never thought I’d live to see (someone shutting Connie up). Bravo!

Just a few observations about the above....

The "scum-sucking, inbred racist hick" stereotype of white Southerners, which is what lies behind martin's remark, is rooted in hatred, not truth.

---Incest---

In the United States, every state and the District of Columbia have some form of codified incest prohibition.[27] However, individual statutes vary widely. Rhode Island repealed its criminal incest statute in 1989,[27] Ohio only targets parental figures,[27] and New Jersey does not apply any penalties when both parties are 18 years of age or older.[27] Massachusetts issues a penalty of up to 20 years' imprisonment for those engaging in sexual activities with relatives closer than first cousins[27] and Hawaii up to 5 years in jail for "sexual penetration" with certain blood relatives and in-laws.[27]

In all states, close blood-relatives that fall under the incest statutes include father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, and in some states, first cousins, although Rhode Island allows uncles to marry their nieces if they are part of a community, such as orthodox Jews, for whom such marriages are permitted. Many states also apply incest laws to non-blood relations including stepparents, step-siblings, and in-laws.[28]

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has questioned the rationale behind laws prohibiting incest, at least as they apply to sex between adults.[29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_regarding_incest
_____

In 1980, anthropologist Robert Tincher published a study titled "Night Comes to the Chromosomes: Inbreeding and Population Genetics in Southern Appalachia," based on 140 years' worth of marriage records. He concluded that "inbreeding levels in Appalachia … [are neither] unique [n]or particularly common to the region, when compared with those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/06/west_virginia_incest_virginia.html

If tonygunter thinks the controversial flag dress is the "prettiest size 18 prom dress he's ever seen" (feeding the stereotype of fat, white Southerners), I guess he's never seen these dresses... Absolutely stunning!

http://cdn.nowaygirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/x2_5b89d89.jpg
http://www.jayzoo.com/earchive/data/July2/ghetto-prom3.jpg

Oh, and there's lot's more size 18+ prom dresses out there... Just google "ghetto prom" and see for yourself... If would be interesting to see how many of them Al Mackey considered to "of a cut that was made for a prom..."

And If the girl's footwear deserves Waurene Roberson's orgiastic ridicule, I have to wonder what Roberson thinks of this.

http://www2.youknowdamnright.org:81/ghetto-prom/pic18.jpg

And if she thinks clothing like Confederate flag dresses are some kind of "warning label," one has to wonder if she considers this to be a "warning label".

http://cbsdallas.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/86187711.jpg?w=420&h=315

And methinks these young ladies should have gone to the African American dress designer Roberson spoke with...

http://i.imgur.com/FJ9g7.jpg
http://www.jayzoo.com/earchive/data/July2/ghetto-prom3.jpg

As for Cousin Perfesser shutting me up -- he obviously has not. He has petulantly stopped posting my comments on his blog, that's all. LIke the other Dixie-bashing bloggers, he likes slandering folks without allowing them to respond -- a very, very American concept.

But I am far from silenced....

---

Speaking of which.... Marc Ferguson, were you the one who opined that Cousin Perfesser would let my comment through if it was in response to a direct question from another commenter?

Guess what. You're wrong.