Why Don't the Floggers Find This Offensive?

You would think that the anti-Confederate, South-hating Civil War Bloggers would issue a clear statement condemning the segregation which these Gann Academy teens apparently enjoy at their prom. I particularly note the lack of African-American, Hispanic and Asian faces among the jovial crowd. The hugs and hand gestures add a nice touch to the exclusivity of the attendees.

Yep, the future of selective school segregation is in very capable hands.

Yes, gentle readers, the snippet above is a rip-off of Levin's Why Doesn't the SCV Find This Offensive? post at CW Memory.

I note that Levin hasn't (yet) joined in the flogger outrage at Simpson's and Mackey's flogs over a miniscule number of segregated proms and private prom parties in the South recently reported in the news. As of this writing, I also haven't seen any comments by Corey at either flog, but you'd think both he and Levin would have an interest in this, being has how they are both high school teachers, and proms are related to, well, high school.

Maybe a look at these photos will give us a clue...

Gann Academy Prom Photos, 2013
(Gann Academy is where Levin teaches)
____________

Putnam County High School Prom Pictures, 2011

(This is where Corey teaches. I couldn't find anything more recent, but who imagines the demographics of this school have changed much in three years?)

Just remember the anti-Confederate, south-hating mantra flogger, folks.  "It's okay when WE do it."

Or maybe it's that the truth hurts....

* * * * *
In other news, Al Mackey refuses to provide substantiation for this statement he made on his flog: "If I’m not mistaken, Mr. John C. Hall has a close affiliation with the Virginia Flaggers, having been credited with helping to found the organization."

No link showing who credited John Hall thusly, no substantiation of his "close association" with the Virginia Flaggers.

What really takes the cake is his running scared from my request for substantiation, claiming that it is MY responsibility to prove or disprove what HE has claimed.

Comment exchange between him and me at his flog:

Connie Chastain -- Document/substantiate this please: “Mr. John C. Hall has a close affiliation with the Virginia Flaggers, having been credited with helping to found the organization.”

Al Mackey --  So then are you denying he has close ties to the flaggers? I’d like to know if I was mistaken.

Connie Chastain -- How is it a denial to ask you to confirm something you said? So then are you going to substantiate it? Link to info confirming it?

Al Mackey --  So then you’re not denying it? In that case, my confirmation is your confirmation of it.

Connie Chastain -- I’m neither denying nor confirming. I’m asking YOU to substantiate something YOU claimed, which is neither a denial nor a confirmation of anything. Are you having difficulty processing that?

 Al Mackey -- I’ve asked for correction. Since you are not giving a correction, that seems to be good enough substantiation to me.

Connie Chastain --  Ridiculous. If I tried that kind of cockamamie logic on you, you’d have a hissy fit. You made a statement.The burden of proof is on you. It’s not up to me to provide correction, confirmation, denial or anything else. It is up to you to substantiate what you claimed. If you can’t link to some proof, just say so.
               
Al Mackey    -- So this is your fourth comment on this and you have yet to deny it. So I’d say that pretty much confirms it.

Connie Chastain --  It’s not my responsibility to deny it (or confirm it). Now, provide the substantiation FOR WHAT YOU CLAIMED or admit you don’t have it and stand before everyone as either dishonest or extremely careless.

Is that not an absolute scream, folks? Weasel, weasel, weasel.  What he's doing is commiting the logical fallacy of shifting the burden of proof: 

Shifting the burden of proof is a kind of logical fallacy in argumentation whereby the person who would ordinarily have the burden of proof in an argument attempts to switch that burden to the other person.
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Shifting_the_burden_of_proof

Also,

"The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever."https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

Austin is right. Al Mackey is a fraud and a liar. And not only that, a coward. He's not man enough to own up to posting a claim he cannot prove.

Proms

I can't get real excited about proms. They're not high on my list of interests. In fact, they're not on it at all.  That might be different if I had kids and grandkids, but I don't.

We didn't have proms at the Christian school I attended. We had an analogy, though -- the "Junior-Senior Banquet." But my being a Boomer, that happened a long time ago, and since then, a lot of time has passed wherein proms were low- or no-interest for me.

I'm so unschooled in proms, I had to do online research to write the prom segment in Sweet Southern Boys.  In that story, there is an official school prom, but there are also private prom parties. The one my characters attend was not created to accommodate racial segregation, but to provide an alcohol and drug free event, and to promote abstinence from alcohol and drugs after the event. While this is not stated in the story, it can certainly be inferred by the reader, as the negative effects of alcohol is a theme that recurs in the story.

One of the news reports I read interviewed a white kid who said they wanted their own prom so they could have the music they chose.  Thinking back now, I wonder how long it will be before the nanny state mandates that everyone like rap and hip-hop or be labeled and ostracized as wacists and white supweemacists.

In any case, my admittedly cursory research into proms in Georgia leads me to suspect that the number of segregated proms (which are actually private parties, not school sponsored events) is small. The Wikipedia entry on the subject cites no figures, using instead the imprecise terms "many" "some" "few" etc. 

Sooooo, the recent furor in the floggosphere about it is just much ado about little, or nothing.  They only showcased it to indulge in the misleading flogger practice of finding negative comments made by one, two or an handful of people and then attempting to smear the Virginia Flaggers, the SHPG, the SCV, the UDC, the Southern heritage community and the entire white South with it.

Ho hum.

(Read the prom scene from Sweet Southern Boys here.)

It Is MY Flippin' Computer

They are MY flippin' files. I do NOT want to have to get PERMISSION from the flippin' MASTER CONTROL PROGRAM to add, delete, move, rename, etc....

Would that Windows 7 lived up to this totally awesome hardware I brought home last Friday!

If I ever find myself in the vicinity of Redmond, Washington, I might just have to pay a visit to Microsoft, throw a good Southern tantrum and slap a few people around....

I understand there's a learning curve with nearly anything, and I knew it would take at least a couple of weeks to get everything set up the way I like it, and learn new stuff ... but I wasn't really prepared for Microsoft's nanny state mentality. I understand that some things have to be protected from the unknowing, the uncaring and the reckless -- they can basically destroy an OS... but workarounds need to be provided for people who know what they're doing....

I love my new machine but there are parts of Windows 7 that absolutely suck. I've found registry hacks online for getting "Libraries" and "Favorites" and "Homegroups" out of the navigation pane in Windows Explorer. But they still show up in open and save screens.

So I found registry hacks to remove "Documents Libraries" from those screens, and they STILL show up.  Turns out you have to hack different registry keys for opening and saving 32 bit software and 64 bit software. More registry hacking ahead.

At least I solved another, completely unrelated problem earlier today. Plugged in a microphone to test doing voiceovers for videos, and there was this horrendous hum. Hor-ren-dous. Googled all over the Internet to find a solution, but I don't know much about sound processing. (I have a freebie Open Source program called Audacity and I have no idea what most of it does.)

One video said if your equipment is not grounded, it will cause a hum. I know mine isn't because it's plugged into an ordinary two-prong outlet with an adapter plug. So I watched a video about making a two-prong outlet a grounded, three-prong one (grounding it to the metal box the outlet is in). I figured that was a project for hubs to do one weekend.

Then I noticed that every time I touched the desktop mic stand (a makeshift one made from a tripod with telescoping metal legs), the humming changed character.  So I took the mic off the stand and --voila! -- the humming ceased!

Slowly but surely, I'm getting it like I want it. I did have an unfortunate software crash, the first on my new machine  -- my little 1997 vintage photo editor that I dearly love.  It's vintage Windows 95/98 software and I have to jump through all kinds of hoops to make it run on Windows 7 (as I did XP)  but I finally got it working. I'm sure the crash had to do with having to run it in compatibility mode, and crashes are probably going to happen with it now and then.

Nevertheless, for the most part, it's swift and stable, and I'm so glad I can use it at  all!

Now back to hacking the registry....

From Simpson's Flog...

A comment in response to his post about events leading up to Appomattox (presumably this professor of history meant Appomattox Courthouse....)

Nancy Winkler on April 9, 2014 at 12:12 pm said:

I have the feeling they are totally flummoxed today, unless they take a lesson from Jubal Early. He was a master at twisting things around to his own advantage. The poor underdogs! It wasn’t a fair fight! Each team is supposed to have the same number of players! The other side started it! Mommy!!!

 And these self-important egotists with juvenile mentalities complain that WE have distorted or immature understandings of the war...

Motes and beams, folks. Motes and beams.

In Response to Kevin Levin's Post ...

... Son of a Confederate Veteran That We Should All Celebrate, I left a comment, which I predict will NOT make it through moderation.

The post is about a South Carolina judge, the son of a Confederate soldier, who wrote in a 1951 federal case, “segregation in education can never produce equality and it is an evil that must be eradicated .... Segregation is per se inequality.”

My comment:

Hmmm... Wonder what he'd say about segregation in education at Gann Academy.  Apparently, not ALL segregation is per se inequality. Or maybe it is, but in some cases, that's okay.

See? Doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hades of getting posted....

Hot Off the Presses!

First covers for Word Slinger Boutique, my author services biz, using my NEW COMPUTER.

Have I mentioned that I have a NEW COMPUTER?

Oh, I DO luuuuv my graphics editor NOT freezing up, crashing, etc,. etc., etc....

My new computer's ready...

...my new computer's ready, my new computer's ready, I'm picking it up today, I'm picking it up today, I'm picking it up today!!!!!

Now for the learning curve .... and the porting over all my software and data ...

  UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE   UPDATE   

I can't believe I forgot to tell my computer guy to put a wifi card in my new mo-chine. Now I'll have to buy one of those little USB stick wifi cards. Oh, well... meantime, the porting over will continue, and  I'll keep getting online with my decrepit laptop.

And after the wifi stick -- one of THESE!

   UPDATE 2   UPDATE  2   UPDATE  2   UPDATE 2   UPDATE 2   

Last night, I decided to see if I could network my old, decrepit XP laptop with my shiny, new, smoking hot, blazing fast Win 7 machine, and get online with it. I had to set up a home network but it worked. The only problem, when I try to set up file sharing, to see if I can bring my data over from the laptop, it knocks out the laptop's connection to the wireless router.  Oh, well.... Anyway, I'm online this way on my new machine until get a stick wifi card.

I Luv Dis

Eastside, by Four80East, a couple of guys from Toronto who are accompanied by various session musicians, per Wikipedia. If you can listen to this, or any of these tunes, without moving SOMEthing, you don't have a particle of groove....


The Zodiac, Down to the Bone, British acid jazz group.


And Tiburon, by Down to the Bone.


High Street, by Bona Fide

Segregation OK for Me But Not for Thee

When is school segregation okay? When Jewish folks are doing it.

From Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory blog, Lingering “Baggage” at Jackson’s Greyhound Bus Station:

Commenter (Commenting about Levin's recent "civil rights" tour down South):  "I am also shocked that you had no Americans of African American descent on your trip. Surely you could have invited a few. "

Levin: "I have addressed this point more than once. I teach at a Jewish Academy outside of Boston. Now I could be wrong, but the overwhelming number of Jews in the Boston area are white."

So that makes it okay, huh.

Throwback Thursday, Music Video Version

Two of my favorites from Isaac Hayes (August 20, 1942 - August 10, 2008. RIP)

Theme from The Men -- Loved this music from the early 1970s TV series, better than I liked the programs. In fact, I barely remember much about the series; it was an anthology, I think.


Nice, mellow tune, The 405

Y'all enjoy!