Andy's On A Roll

This entry was posted at Andy Hall's blog July 29th. At first glance, it seems remarkably forthright -- somebody at the Southern Heritage Preservation Group mis-identified the depicted monument as honoring Black Confederates when, in fact, it honors two black Union outfits, and Andy put forth a correct identification of the monument. 

Andy quotes the mistaken SHPG member:  

With the push to purge this country of Confederate Memorials, I must wonder if those politically correct thugs would dare tear this monument down? It commemorates the bravery and courage of the Black Confederate Regiments in Mississippi that dared to do their solemn duty to their country and defend Vicksburg from the foreign invaders from the North! My hat’s off to those who fought and gave their lives in defense of our Country!

He follows with this observation: 

This monument stands in Vicksburg National Military Park. It was dedicated in 2004 to two Union regiments, the 1st and 3rd Mississippi Infantry (African Descent), that were later reorganized as the 51st and 53rd U.S. Colored Infantry, respectively.

I have often wondered why, if they are only concerned about accurate history, floggers exhibit the overwhelming need to denigrate those who are mistaken about some aspect of  history... or to denigrate those they simply disagree with.  It's seems almost an obsession. So this straightforward post of Andy's was like a breath of fresh air ... except ... he couldn't resist the urge to denigrate, after all, beginning his post with the derisive comment, Can't make this up -- a phrase Andy apparently likes and uses quite often.

In this post, that phrase is a hyperlink, and if you follow it, you will go to the thread on the Southern Heritage Preservation Group at Facebook where the error about the monument is made.

The SHPG has 2,148 members. Eight of them commented on that thread. I'm sure Andy would consider it significant that 37 of them "liked" the post, although there is no indication whether the "like" means they don't know the monument is mis-identified, or whether they simply agree with sentiments expressed in the post about honoring the bravery of Mississippi's black Confederates.

In any case, Andy doesn't mention that two commenters in the thread corrected the mis-identification of the monument. You have to follow the link and read the thread to discover this; and somehow, I don't picture Andy's followers doing that. They're likely quite satisfied that what he's posted on  his blog is all that's necessary for them to know.

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For those who are interested, I have given my views on the Black Confederates issue  HERE and HERE.

What Has Andy Hall Got Against White Christians?

At the Southern Nationalist Network, Palmetto Patriot has posted information about anti-Southern comments at some civil war chat group/forum/whatever. Apparently, somebody came across the SNN in a discussion of the "controversy" surrounding the flying Confederate flags at civil war events. Sergeant Major Diana9 posted a link to SNN and asked, "Thoughts?"

Corporal UKMarkw replied, "What a terrible website and content. Didn't think such ridiculous, outdated views still existed. Who knows how the soldier himself felt about the flag, maybe he learned to love his joined up country and despise the confederacy. I don't know and I don't suppose anyone does either "

So if nobody knows how they felt, what's ridiculous and outdated about the SNN views?

But the most interesting comment (aside from 2nd Lieutenant JerseyBart's acknowledgment that SNN is a scary website) is one by none other than Flogger Andy Hall.

Andy tells Sergeant Major Diana9, '@Diana9, the Southern Nationalist Network is a modern-day secessionist group that seeks to break away from the "Empire" and "restore" the South as a protected enclave for the preservation and dominance of white, Christian culture. They are closely aligned with groups like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens. So consider the source.'

Although he attempts to hide behind a few weasel words and the protection of irony quotes -- or is it scare quotes, in this instance? -- Andy's flogger explanation is remarkably accurate, though I'm quite sure he meant for his description to put Southern nationalism in a very bad light.

If you're an enclave -- which means territory isolated or enclosed within a foreign or uncongenial enviroment --of course you want it protected. Andy says that which is to be protected is "the preservation and dominance of white, Christian culture." This is a bad thing?

It would be nice if Andy would come right out and say what he has against white folks and Christians. I can guess what his problem is -- he's bought into the PC notion that whites, especially white males, and most especially white Christian males, are responsible for all the world's ills and evils throughout history.

They're not, of course, and they are responsible for a great many of the world's advances and positives throughout history... But PC folks aren't allowed to say that, even when they know it's true.

But this is all speculation, and that's what it will remain until and unless Andy comes out and says what he's got against white Christian culture, and why he opposes protection for it, as his comment seems to indicate. I mean, would he have cheered for the lions in the Roman Colosseum?

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Image Credits: The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer by Jean-Léon Gérôme is in the Public Domain. Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

Double Standards Set In Granite

This is in response to a post by Andy Hall at Dead Confederates titled Set In Stone.

When my uncle's plane went down in WWII New Guinea, he was declared KIA, though his body was never recovered. It was assumed his plane went down in the Pacific. The feds gave my grandmother a memorial stone for him. Many years later, when she died and was buried in a country cemetery in North Georgia, along side my grandfather, who had died decades before, I saw the stone for my uncle because it was in the same cemetery plot next to the graves of his parents. It looked like a grave marker, but there was no grave because there was no body. But it was in a cemetery. It was a memorial, in a cemetery, that looked like a grave stone.

About two years ago, the family learned that his plane had been found, not in the ocean, but crashed into the side of a mountain.The remains and some personal affects of the crew were recovered and sent home. My uncle received an awesome homecoming honoring his service.  He was buried in a cemetery in another part of the state, chosen by his daughter.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/jan/31/remains-wwii-gunner-chastain-flown-home/

https://www.google.com/search?q=berthold+chastain&client=firefox-a&hs=6Lk&rls=Palemoon:en-US:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=EgnqUevfGIfY9QSijIGICA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1264&bih=631

Because I haven't been notified otherwise, my assumption is that the original stone still remains in the cemetery next to his parents' graves perhaps forty miles from where his remains were interred, with, presumably, a proper grave marker. But for 60 years, the original memorial stone marked a non-grave, and if he had never been found, it always would mark an empty grave...

Perhaps, now that he has been found and interred elsewhere, the original stone should be removed, lest my family be considered disrespectful for marking a non-grave.

Andy didn't post my comment, of course. I explained how he came to ban my comments here: Pusillanimous Poltroons. In fact, he is so incensed that I would challenge the motives, or agenda, or character of the critics of Confederate heritage, he won't reply to me even in comment threads on other people's blogs. Or maybe he's skeered. Of course, it's okay for him to question the motives, or agenda, or character of heritage folks, and he does it quite frequently at Dead Confederates. Call it the Flogger Double Standard, because they all exhibit it, in one form or another.

Andy ends the blog post with, "Both present-day taxpayers and long-dead Civil War veterans  deserve more respect from the 'heritage' crowd."  Somehow, I have difficulty believing that Andy's statement about deserving respect is sincere, as it applies to those "Civil War veterans" who were Confederates. From what I've seen, he scorns heritage folks specifically for their respect toward Confederates and he holds Confederate veterans in contempt.

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Image of granite rock: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

My Author Site Re-Design

Drop by my author site to see the changes I've made. Emphasis has all but been removed from the "romance" angle (the 1970s Southern wedding colors of pink, green and gold are gone, daddy, gone) because only one of my titles (Storm Surge) actually follows romance guidelines (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back, they live happily ever after).

While my other titles certainly include love stories, they are not romances. They're what the romance contest community and the RWA call "mainstream fiction with romantic elements."  Only Sweet Southern Boys has no romantic elements.

Working on the re-design has really kicked my bootay... and I'm not finished yet. I still need to make an image credits page. Gonna take a break first, as there are probably over 150 images on the eight web pages that comprise the site.

Believe it or not, I'm so sick of website updating, I'm looking forward to writing -- to getting back to Little Sister.  That's saying a lot, because (as I've noted before), I belong to the P.J. O'Rourke school of writing.

"Writing is agony. I hate it. ....When I'm writing, I spend a lot of time thinking, 'My, doesn't the top of the fridge look dirty'. It takes for ever.  I like thinking about writing. I like having written. But actually sitting down and doing it ..." 

-- P.J. O'Rourke, journalist, writer and
political satirist, to Christopher Bray
of the U.K.'s Telegraph, 2005

So, follow the link, have a look around, visit my author blog and leave a comment, I'd enjoy hearing from you.

 Connie Chastain, Author, Southern Fiction 

Answering Al ... Again

This is a continuation of my previous post. It is in reply to Al Mackey's comments to me at his blog.

Well, Al, yes you fit the description of a flogger. You use your blog to verbally flog white Southerners whose view of history is different from yours. You don't do it as much as some other floggers, but you do it.

I admit to a bit of curiosity why it is Prof. Robertson's business (whoever he is), or yours, what other people's proficiency in history or logic or any-freaking-thing else is. If it doesn't infringe on you in some way, why the interest? Is it just history, or does it stick in your craw for somebody to teach or learn English, or creative writing, or sociology, or astrophysics in a manner you disagree with?

I didn't read your stuff about Gettysburg. I'm particular about whose history I read. Reading about it from historians and/or teachers with a self-appointed thought-cop mentality and a biased agenda doesn't interest me. Sorry.

You said the subject of your post was not a discussion of race, it was bashing African-Americans because of their race? Really? Where/how are Michelle Obama and the New Black Panthers bashed because of their race? This appeared to be criticism of the public schools bending over backward to accommodate "black" curricula insisted upon by people who aren't qualified, such as the first lady and the panthers. You floggers certainly don't have a lot of patience with unqualified folks pushing a curricula you don't agree with. This is the same thing.

Perhaps the mention of Mrs. Obama was because she has a history of interference in the schools, i.e.,  her imposing nutritional standards on schools, despite having no education or qualifications in nutrition. As it turns out, one school district after another is opting out of her guidelines because the lack of fats in the meals leaves the children hungry. I guess she, not being a nutritionist, doesn't know that fatty acids are essential nutrients. Is saying that bashing her for her race, or for her unqualified authoritarian meddling?

What African-Americans are "bashed for their race" by the person citing Uncle Tom's Cabin, etc., and *how* are they bashed for their race in that passage you pasted?

The closet thing to bashing-for-their-race that appeared was the Dan Williams comment pasted by Andy, which includes a racial slur to describe MLK, and rejoices about King's murder, whether genuinely or facetiously is unclear. But the actual "bashing" that I see, if you can call it that, doesn't bash King for his race, but, presumably, for his deeds or actions, which Williams speculates are not saintlike, and are recorded in King's sealed FBI file. So the racial slurs themselves are the only bashing -- the rest of Williams's comment could be written about a white person in a similar circumstance, so it is race-neutral. 

And when you get down to it, how does one bash African-Americans for their race? So often, what liberals call "bashing them for their race" is actually criticism of actions or behaviors (like Mrs. Obama's school lunch meddling), which aren't determined by race, so far as I know. However, a lot of what's considered "racism" by liberals such as yourself appears to be people's lack of patience with the racial double standard, the accommodation, even the enabling and enforcing, of lower standards for blacks, that has prevailed since the civil rights movement and the great society -- AND the prohibition against speaking about, or even noticing, the lowered standards. (I should clarify that I believe the enabling, etc., is far more a function of white liberals than blacks).

Here are some things white people aren't supposed to notice, let alone comment on, under penalty of being labeled a racist who bashes blacks because of their race.

If you point out that the black illegitimacy rate has climbed to over 70 percent since the 1950s (when it was about 20%), are you bashing blacks because of their race?

If you point out that the Great Society and similar public policies have brought a dismaying decline and untold and misery to the black community, especially in inner cities, is that bashing blacks because of their race?

If you point out that any criticism of blacks by whites is prohibited by cultural forces (employers, the news media, the government, etc.), regardless of how true and deserved, is that bashing blacks because of their race?

If you point out that today, more blacks are murdered by blacks in a single year than were lynched in over 80 years, is that bashing blacks because of their race?

If you point out that the national mainstream news media focuses and magnifies, even obsesses over, white on black crime or victimization (James Byrd, Trayvon Martin), but ignores far more and far worse black on white depredation (the Knoxville horror, the Wichita horror, the Eve Carson murder, the Lauren Burk murder, the Bob and Nancy Strait murders, the Elizabeth Hutcheson murder, the Antonio Santiago murder and on and on and on) -- is that bashing blacks for their race?

If you point out the number of racial hate crimes that are not true but planned and staged, especially on college campuses, is that bashing blacks because of their race?

No. If it is bashing at all, it is bashing behavior, attitudes, outcomes, results, etc., not race.

Because of the draconian enforcement of silence (loss of jobs, expulsion from school, etc.) white people have had to keep silent for decades about the continued degeneracy of the black community under liberal "great society" policies for the last half century and more -- and its effect on whites and the country as a whole. They have noted but weren't allowed to comment on (or their comments were ignored) the journalistic double standard in the coverage of racial news and issues.

Whites have been doubly reluctant to criticize what clearly deserved criticism because, along with official and societal protection of blacks from that criticism has come the demonization of whites as "racists." It is a circumstance whites are not allowed to question, not allowed to dispute or disprove. The demonization of white Southerners has been particularly virulent.

But the situation has finally become so intolerable, and the justifiable outrage of whites has been building so much, that they have begun to break their silence little by little. It has come at at time when there is an avenue for expressing their views -- the Internet -- that still largely accommodates free expression and hasn't yet become a tool for the entrapment of evil racists... Thus, white people have begun to voice criticism.

Most of what you pasted here was not race bashing. It was understandable criticism.

It is a certainty that people like yourself and Andy and your PC-lapping fellow travelers will ignore the fact that the criticism is about behaviors and attitudes -- often of the enablers more than of blacks themselves --  and call it racism. Know what? More and more people don't care anymore. THEY can tell the difference between actual race hatred and their criticism of criminal behavior or encouraged and enabled incompetence, even if people like you can't. Or won't.

Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Fly...

...Floggers Gotta Flog

I'm responding to this:

Yet Another Example of Neoconfederate Racism and Lunacy

Al Mackey asks, "Gee, why would anyone think these folks had racist tendencies?"

Why would anyone think that?  Um, because they're bigots, maybe? 

Seriously, why does Al automatically assume that any discussion of race must flow from "racist tendencies"?  For that matter, what is a "racist tendency"?  Like so much else in the leftist lexicon, anything --  word or phrase -- connected to the root term "race" is not objectively defined anymore. It means whatever the user (i.e., the accuser) wishes. So a conversation about race is suddenly racism -- depending, of course, upon who is conversing....

When you consider that the whole country is currently in an uproar over what are commonly accepted as "racial issues" -- why is it surprising that some people in Southern heritage would address them? Everybody else is, ya know? I mean, it is accurate to describe the NAACP's objection to the Lee portrait as race-related, correct? So how can you address that without it being a racial issue?

As for Andy's questions regarding the comments by a poster named Dan Williams -- specifically, "But it is fair to ask why (1) that person thought such views as his would be welcomed there — and he’s not new to the group, having joined months ago — and (2) why the group continues to have him as a member. There doesn’t seem to be opprobrium for the man’s views, only that he posted them where it made the group look bad..." and Al's reply, "One thinks that a reasonable conclusion is they agree with him."
..
No, it is not a fair question to ask why that person thought such views would be welcome there -- unless you're asking only the person himself and you understand that his answers apply only to him. IOW, if  you're asking so that you can use that person's response as some sort of denunciation of the group, it is not only unfair to the group; it is dishonesty on the part of the one asking.

Andy may think he knows what goes on in other people's minds; he may think he can know their motives and beliefs just by reading a few lines of text on the Internet; he may whole-heartedly believe in his own clairvoyant ability, his own ESP -- but you know what? He doesn't know.  What he's doing is substituting his perception, his suspicions, his prejudices  for other people's thoughts, beliefs and intentions.

But, really, that's not what Andy's questioning is all about. Andy is attempting to portray the group and all its members as being responsible for attracting someone with such beliefs -- which is a particularly cockeyed, and all-too-common, leftist meme.

Al thinks it's reasonable to conclude that they agree with Williams. But it is not reasonable to conclude that. I've addressed this risible leftist belief here:  Unless You Say Yer Agin' It, You Must Be Fer It?

Do we know Williams joined the SHPG solely because he thought such views would be welcome there? Or could it possibly, just barely possibly be, that he joined to support Confederate heritage? Did that even occur to Andy? Probably not, and even if it did, Andy appears to be of the school that all the floggers belong to -- that supporting Confederate heritage is itself an act of racism.

Why does the group still have Williams as a member?  Well, most Southern heritage folks still think people have a right to their beliefs, even when they don't agree with them.

Andy Hall, P.I., after some hardboiled detective work, points out that Dan Williams is not a new member of the SHPG, but joined months ago. Great piece of research, just like The Batts research Andy's been back-patted and atta-boy'd for. But he didn't tell us whether Williams posted other objectionable stuff in the group before this. I suspect he, Williams, has not, because if he had, Andy would have linked to it -- maybe even pasted it at Mackey's blog, all nice and indented and italicized.

However, if Williams hasn't posted such in the SHPG before, this is his first infraction, iddinit?  And he was called on it and apologized for it, diddinhe?  Nevertheless, Andy presumably thinks Williams should be banned from the group.

Taking a cue from Andy, I did a little detective work of my own. I went to Dan Williams's timeline and scrolled back to the beginning.  He hasn't been on Facebook very long -- since August 2012. I saw a status in poor taste that referenced the "creepy a-- cracker" phrase that achieved noteriety recently during The Trial. I also saw statuses friendly to two black members of the heritage community....

I wonder why Andy didn't comment about that....

Some of the comments addressed by Al and Andy aren't even in the thread following the Quentin Fairchild editorial. I can't find the comment referencing Michelle Obama and the New Black Panthers finishing a history book for schools, but what's wrong with facetious criticism of unqualified people determining history curriculum? Floggers are comfortable enough with such criticism when THEY think the originator of the curriculum is unqualified.

The next facetious comment simply references the fact that these days, people are "taught" history by the popular culture (and accept it), including TV, movies and sensational celebrity trials.

I'm not certain why Mr. Mackey includes in his bellyaching about "racist tendencies" Bill Vallante's comment referencing the "Peace Monument" at Gettysburg, and his conclusion that the teaching of history in this country that has fallen victim to "historians" with an agenda, since it doesn't mention any racial issue at all. But because Mr. Mackey considers himself to be a historian, I suspect he included it because his widdle feewings are hurt over the criticism.

The response to Mr. Vallante by Karen Partridge Green also makes not a syllable of reference to race -- but it does urge parents to teach their children history that the public schools have either changed or left out. And we know how liberals feel about parents having any sort of influence over their kids at all, but especially over the "sacred" ground of politically correct history....

Al accuses Kent Green of having "heard the truth but has decided in his own mind that he’s not going to believe what the secessionists themselves have said about why they were seceding."  Of course, that is not what Mr. Green said at all. Nor is it "the truth." The truth is a lot bigger and more complex than that.  But Green's encapuslation of the war is the simplistic PC version Mackey, Hall and all the floggers promote and LABEL the truth.

The floggers certainly advocate that if you’re of Confederate heritage you should be ashamed (with Andy leading by example) because your ancestors were white supremacists who wanted to enslave an entire race of people -- when we know very well that most Confederates did not own slaves and fought mainly because a brutal army was bearing down on them and their homes and families.

I've seen it for years, and it still astounds me that educated people such as Mackey and his fellow floggers can see and read, over and over, in the very source documents, that other factors figured in secession and the war and yet they totally ignore them to focus with tunnel vision on slavery.

What do they think? That the secessionists were lying about all the other reasons? Yes, slavery was the primary one, no, it was not the only one. And one of the biggies these haters of white Confederates totally ignore -- and have suppressed in the past -- may be getting some notice. Finally. (Can't wait to see the gyrations from the floggers as they try to spin THIS.)

Thomas Fleming's "A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War" (Da Capo, 2013) is reviewed here by Winston Groom:

It's gratifying to me that Groom lays out some of the very same points I've been making for years. 

It also occurs to me to feel some grave concerns about poor Mr. Fleming. Boy, is he in for it from the PC crowd ... in for a verbal thrashing at the very least, but more likely a verbal drawing and quartering because, as we know, the Stalinista PC crowd -- particularly on matters of the civil war, and "racist tendencies" --  allows no differing opinions... indicating that political correctness is today's disease in the public mind, and it's just as as virulent as those of the past....  The floggers are living proof of that.

Pointing With Dirty Fingers

Andy Hall is still enjoying airing Paula Deen's genealogical dirty laundry in public. What kind of attitude does that take, I wonder.

One thing I can be fairly certain of.  Hell will likely freeze over before floggers like Andy and Brooks Simpson, Professor of History at Arizona State University, air their own ancestral dirty laundry on their blogs -- particularly if it involves scum-sucking racist Southern slave owners, as Andy's does. At least, not with the same level of pleasure they show in smearing others....

      Update   Update   Update   Update    

Rob Baker leaves a comment, "Andy admits to it on his blog" -- "it" being finding slave-owners in one's ancestry.  I asked him if Andy "admits" it in a flurry of pleasurable self-flagellation? Does he exhibit the same pleasure excoriating himself that he does excoriating others who have "evil" ancestors?

Rob hasn't answered yet, but Andy has, after a fashion, and no, he doesn't take pleasure in smearing himself the way he does in smearing others, despite the same "infraction." In fact, he so deftly sprinkles self-sanctification on his "confession" that he comes out smelling like the proverbial thorny bloom....

In a comment following the original Paula Deen smear job, he posts this:

The slaveholding business was never denied in my family, but by the time I came along it was just sort of avoided altogether. I didn’t think anything much about it until I was grown. Unlike Deen, though, my views on the subject didn’t suddenly change (“heinous act” —> “like family”) upon discovering slaveholders in the family tree.

Translation (though it's really not needed, as Andy's meaning comes through loud and clear): See how much better I am than Paula Deen?  See? See how morally superior I am to that scum-sucking racist white mama? See?  

Careful, Andy, don't crack your humerus or throw your shoulder out of joint patting yourself on your ever-so-morally-superior back....

Andy continues:

There was at least one Reconstruction-era klansman back there, too — that was definitely swept under the rug by the time I came along but, as in your case, his immediate family was quite proud of the fact, back in the day. Again, I’m not going to change my views of that group because I learned I’m kin to one.

I really am bad at the “heritage” thing, I’m afraid.

Is that what "heritage" people have done on a widespread basis, Andy? Started cozying up to the KKK because they discovered an ancestor in it way on back yonder? Interesting... I am IN the heritage community and I haven't run across that very much. In fact, I can't think of a single instance.

Andy, if that is how you define "heritage" no wonder you delight in smearing it. But that is your mistake. That is not heritage.  It's not even "heritage." It is you deliberately substituting  your deliberate mis-conception for other people's intentions, and then smearing them based on your deliberate mis-conceptions.

But, oh, the "attaboys" it gets you from the PC crowd feel irresistibly, addictively  good, don't they, Andy, so to heck with all the good, decent people you smear to get your fixes.

       Update   Update   Update   Update    

 
Well, Andy has posted about a collateral ancestor of his who was a KKK member. And I was right. He doesn't do it to smear himself with even close to the same level of pleasure he shows in smearing others....

If time allows (and right now, it doesn't look promising) I'll look over Andy's post about his KKK ancestor.  I've only skimmed it at this point, but there is SOOOOOO much that begs to be pointed out and commented on...   Soon, hopefully....

Doin' Other People's Genealogy

Isn't it amazing how interested floggers are in doing other people's genealogy? At least, as long as they can use it to cast aspersions on people they don't like? If the genealogy doesn't have smear-potential, apparently they're not interested.

Andy Hall seems to really be enjoying smearing Paula Deen... I mean, I doubt a deluxe banana pudding from scratch would put such pleasure on his cyber-face....

The White Lies of Paula Deen

This harkens back to the time when Brooks D. Simpson, Professor of History at Arizona State University, did my genealogy in an effort to smear and embarrass me (it didn't work).

Connie Chastain's Family Heritage: A House Divided

I wonder if Andy's genealogy diggin' and his presentation of it is more reliable than Simpson's. The professor's "efforts" left out a lot of information anybody who does history could have and should have easily found online -- the same place he found what he did report on. I mean, if I found them, he could have found them -- and likely did. Of course, if he had reported the whole story, its smear potential would have plummeted precipitously (pardon the alliterative redundancy -- but this subject deserves it).

I reported on the professor's (deliberate) omissions here:

How a Professor of History Does ... History? 

Shall I take a page from Andy's book and call Simpson's misreporting "white lies"? Na, it's not that important.

And neither is what Paula Deen says about her ancestors (it's really not all that important what "n" words she has used, either) -- nor is what her ancestors did all that important, unless you're a flogger looking for something you can use to smear somebody as a scum-sucking Southern racist slaver-monster -- using more polite and scholarly language, of course ... though that's exactly what you're wishing to put into people's heads.

I dunno, folks. I don't know anything about Paula Deen. But somehow, I can't imagine she'd make a worse employer than your average hate-motivated, smear-mongering flogger. Do they not realize how their drooling desire to denigrate comes across --  that if you have to smear somebody to create warm fuzzies of moral superiority in your views and positions, maybe those positions aren't so lofty to begin with?  Maybe they don't.

Or maybe they know, but they just don't care -- generating the warm fuzzies is just too important, it's like an addiction.  After all, if they don't smear creepy azz crackers with the racist tar-brush, they might be mistaken for a creepy azz cracker themselves...

(Interesting that Andy, who is such a stickler for proper attribution when his own work is cited, has none for the photo of Paula Deen on his blog -- or if he credited it, he's hidden it well.)

In the comment thread following the blog post, Andy makes some interesting observations to commenters.  He sez, "We are all imperfect, but most of us manage to avoid saying the ridiculous things Deen has said and apparently believes. Deen has made a fortune as a public figure, and inevitably gets more scrutiny than others. That’s just how that works. "  Well, no, that's not true. People say far, far worse things all the time -- but if they're liberals, left-leaners and progressives (and not white Southerners) they don't get reported on or held accountable. How many rappers not only say, but record, things that are far worse than ridiculous, but get no scrutiny at all, particularly from the likes of Andy Hall?

Andy also holds forth with, "Having had a slaveholding ancestor doesn’t reflect on us, as individuals living in 2013, one way or another. What we do with that information does, though, because that’s up to us."  And, of course, he thinks HE is one to properly judge what someone else does with that information, and if they don't do it the way he thinks they should, he might blog about them and, with more scholarly wording, imply that they're stupid, ignorant, scum-sucking racists....

To another commenter, he notes: "You’re willing to condemn chattel bondage in the abstract, but not in any specific case, nor apply any real moral onus to those most directly and intimately practicing it."

Of course, I can't speak for the person he directed the comment to, but I can certainly speak for myself on that subject, and the problem I have with floggers and their ilk is the tunnel vision they have used in focusing on "those most directly and intimately practicing it," who mostly happen to have been white Southerners, while almost totally ignoring the enablers of chattel bondage, such as northerners who bought slave-grown cotton to process in their mills, or ship to Europe, who financed the purchase of slaves and insured slaves -- without whom there could have been no slavery for Southern white people to directly and intimately practice. This is because focusing on northern slavery-enabling is of no use whatever in demonizing white Southerners.

When Andy and his fellow floggers show the same interest in condemning those in the north without whom Southern slavery could not have existed, when they show the same enthusiasm for smearing the descendants of those enablers if they aren't properly pretzeled up with level of guilt and shame the floggers think they should be (which is what they expect of Southerners), perhaps I can be persuaded to hold their blogs in something besides total contempt.

Perhaps someday they will credibly deny that they are motivated by the PC/Civil Rights era mission of making Southern white people humanity's and history's most heinously evil people.  But, frankly, I suspect hell will freeze over first.  So for now, my perception is that they choose to blog about the civil war "memory" and the civil war "era" (which, apparently, has no end) from the primary motive of using it to denigrate white Southerners.