Well I watched “Is Mississippi Still Burning”
Joseph Goebbels would be happy with the production were he around to see it!
The producer had four shots of the Mississippi State flag that includes the Battle flag in its design.And a couple of shots of a Confederate monument. Both were mentioned in the segment.
But what wasn’t mentioned was neither had a damn thing to do with the crime! The man (PUNK), who is accused of the murder, and by all accounts it is a hate crime and should be dealt with as such, had no Confederate connections.
It was mentioned that he hung out at a gas station, I guess by the same logic used to tie in the Confederate part of the story you could have tied in the Company that owned the gas station.Was it Shell, or Texaco?
And what brand of beer did he drink? It would have made just as much sense to tie in the gas company or the beer brand as it did The “Confederate Connection” which is NONE!
It was just another inflammatory piece of Yankee journalism, designed to vilify Southern Heritage!
I hope the guilty person gets the death penalty!
And you can be sure my flag won’t be at half staff when they throw the switch!
David Tatum Jr.
Lack of comments on this post which prompts my response. It will probably be deleted but oh well.
ReplyDeleteGoebbells? I don't think so. More like ratings. It is just a constant stream of probing questions to get a provocative thought. While most of the video, it plays into a conception of racism, the flag, and the South. Why? Because it's easy and common to align those thoughts into one when history is taken into account. Slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, Little Rock etc. Though these events are isolated and although the North had similar events, it does not play into public schema.
As far as hate crime, it's sort of a fine line. Is Mississippi still burning? One could argue by officials seeking a hate crime that it is still burning. It is a human being and race should not matter. Then again, it is a targeted attack on someone because of differences. Kind of a bottomless argument.
Overall they prompt a good question. Do the elected state officials continue to say nothing? This is a perfect platform to signify change and yet they are mostly silent. Take into account the case of Leo Frank in Georgia. Officials were out to get the man, yet other officials were out to show his innocence. Georgia was on fire due to its infighting trying to solve issues of race and difference. That fire exploded into a Klan revival. Fast track into the future where a governor gave Frank a post humous pardon. I think the general question is; although you seem to show general outrage on your blog, where is the general outrage of Mississippi?
Goebbels or Goebbells ? No biggie, I have done it before. I used Gobbles!
ReplyDeleteI can't Anwser for Mississippi, I'm from VA, but the crime was a hate crime, and if the accused is found guilty, I would have no problem throwing the switch.
But I do object to the producers making the Confederate connection. Crimes of this nature are nation wide.
You were right, it is Goebbels. Mine was a typo and not to point out your typo. I was commenting on it being propaganda vs a competition of media ratings.
ReplyDeleteI can't answer for Mississippi either being from Georgia. But I can see the lack of outrage on the scale that it should be.
The only way I can justify a hate crime, is the intent of doing harm based on color. However, in that case I do not consider the crime to be worse that intent to do harm because of differences, hair color, political opinion so on and so forth. I see this as maliciously taking human life. I think society operates better when color is not an issue in law but that is my opinion. Like I said in the above, it's a bottomless argument.
Crimes like this are nation wide, but these crimes happening in the South carries with is the special attachment of history. This is not something that anyone from the South can actually avoid. A large portion of us have a Klan connection in the family somewhere. Not because our forefathers were racists intent in lynching people, but because being in the Klan in the 40's up was like having a town hall meeting. Perhaps some of them carried a connection to the post Civil War klan, and see this as an opportunity to carry on what in their minds was still a war. The point being, the South has that history. One of the things I like about the Georgia Historical Society is their ability to take events like Leo Frank, point it our as a dark mark on history. Exhibit is for what it was, and what it means today. It's a growing process. So although these crimes happen not just in the nation but world wide, we cannot escape our own connections in the public sphere. Think of it this way. A Jew gets killed by an anti-Semite. That's pretty awful stuff. Now imagine one gets killed by an anti-semite in Germany. There is now the added bonus of history.
No matter what, good or bad, the past can never be silenced by our current schema it exists.