This is offtopic. It does not concern WoW. Some people say they like to read me rant. So I’ll publish it. Usually I just delete these rants when they’re this ranty, but what the heck. You’ve been warned.

 

This rant is just me blowing off some steam, because if I don’t I’m gonna walk around cranky all damn day. 

I listen to talk radio sometimes, depending on my mood.

I consider myself, politically, to be neither American Democrat nor Republican, but Conservative first, and in some ways Libertarian. Or Anarchist, on a bad day. Or Revolutionist if it’s a really bad day.

And I don’t bring that in here. It’s got nothing to do with WoW. Nobody cares what the hell politics I believe in, and I would despise anyone that voted based solely on my recommendations, anyway.

Do your own research, make your own informed decisions, and vote your heart and your head. Think your own thoughts, and don’t just parrot someone else. This ain’t a political blog. Period. We talk about how to have fun in a video game. And I rant here to blow off steam so I don’t go around all cranky… well, no more so than normal.

But I wanted to explain that, yes, I listen to talk radio. KTLK in the Twin Cities is an FM talk radio channel that is mostly conservative. They have Rush Limbough, they get Sean Hannity. I find Rush, in particular, to be entertaining. Sean, not so much. In the same way I find anyone with a charismatic style entertaining… and I feel I am on top of issues well enough that I can enjoy his mastery of rhetoric without particularly drinking the kool-aid he’s sharing.

Let me put it a different way… I have read books by both Rush Limbough and Al Franken… and listened to them both read those books on audiobook form, because I enjoy their rhetoric. Both of them. They make me laugh, and at times they both make good points. And I see no reason why I can’t enjoy both. But an ardent Republican or Democrat would be outraged. But see, they don’t tell me what to think, or believe. They tell me what they think and believe… it’s not the same thing.

So, I am driving in this morning, listening to some talk radio. The morning guy is named Langdon Perry, and frankly, he’s a twit. Just, ignorant. Kinda like a know-it-all college kid given a mic and told how great he is. Just, a twit. You won’t learn anything by listening to him, but he covers recent events and fills time on the drive to work.

Which is fine, you don’t necessarily have to be personally informed on issues and well educated to pick a topic, spout out an opinion, and then have people call in to agree or disagree. In fact,well over half of the topics he picks to talk about, he just grabs off the local newspaper. And all of the facts he possesses on that topic, he got from the article in the paper he read.

As long as newspapers are always fair, unbiased, and 100% factual and thorough in their coverage of a story, no problem. So yeah, I take the discussions and his opinion with a  large grain of salt. Not to say that I question the journalistic standards of our local papers, *cough* *cough* morons *cough* *cough*.

The topic of the morning is a news story in the paper, where it is reported that two teens in a local high school came to school, parked in the parking lot, and were waving ‘rebel’ flags around in high spirits. The High School year is over, it is graduation time, and the Principal decided that the two students that had engaged in this inappropriate, potentially racially offensive behavior, would not be permitted to take part in the graduation ceremony.

The two of them are still graduating, getting their diplomas, etc. They are just being denied participation in the ceremony.

Okay, sounds good to me. Of course, those are 100% of the facts the story gives us. No indication whatsoever of what the circumstances may have been. No interviews with the boys. No actual quotes from anyone. No idea what in the hell prompted two seniors to be waving ‘rebel’ flags. Are they really racist little shits? Sounds like it, but wtf? There has to be some reason. No one just wakes up and decides to go to school and try to get expelled and ruin the rest of their lives and maybe have to repeat their senior year.

Anyway, they were in the paper. That is going to make them famous as local racists. I think that, frankly, that plus no graduation ceremony is punishment enough. They are always going to be known as ‘those two racist bastards’. Warranted or not, I think we can move on, right? I mean what more do you want on top of public humiliation, a public whipping?

But holyshit, did Langdon Perry go nuts over this. He took the immediate stance that all the parents are outraged over their precious liitle woozikins being banned from the ceremony, and immediately asked the listeners if they thought the punishment was too light, too severe, and if the parents are right in being upset that their kids are banned from the ceremony.

And during the entire monologue, he is referring to the ‘rebel’ flag as being the Confederate flag, a symbol of racism.

Now, this pisses me off.

Not because he’s wrong. The popular conception of the Confederate flag, which is what the combined Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia and the Second Navy Jack is known as, has long been associated in the minds of a lot of people with racism.  

But that’s not all it symbolizes. At least, not to some folks.

Now, I’m in Minnesota. Listening to a Northern born and bred white guy argue racism without the slightest idea of the history behind these powerful, emotionally charged topics is irritating enough. I mean, wince inducing. It;s painful, and a good producer should have shut his ignorant ass up. You want to talk about it, invite a guest speaker that may have some knowledge of the subject to discuss it.

But someone calls in. A lady who sounded intelligent, educated, and pretty strong willed. And she tried to correct him as to the symbology of the Confederate flag. Which clearly was a big mistake.

She tried to point out that to many Americans throughout the country, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Viriginia is a proud reminder of the men of the South that were willing to fight a war in the belief that we, as American citizens, have the right to be governed by laws of our own choosing, voted into power by a government administered by our chosen representatives, and that if the values of that government and it’s laws no longer are in keeping with the will of the majority, the majority has the right and the duty to stand up and oppose it.

I’m not going to argue the history. For many Americans, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, racism, and inequality, based on it’s use as an official flag of many Southern states that had written and enforced Jim Crow laws and racial segregation throughout the South, and it’s continued use by some radical white extremist organizations and the KKK.

I’m not going to ever argue that seeing it as a symbol of racism is a wrong point of view, if that is the opinion you personally hold.

My point is, BOTH viewpoints are equally valid. One is not superior to another, for to claim that only one of these views is true and proper and complete is to deny the courage and suffering of those that endured the tragedy of the American Civil War.

And I said tragedy. The Civil War was not at the time a cut and dried war based on slavery as it is taught today. Not to the men that fought in that war, and died in it.

For the men of the South that took part in that war, that fought and died for what they believed, the issue was as simple as wanting their own states, people they themselves had voted into office in thier local area, to have the power and authority to pass laws that were for the good of the local citizens, in an argrarian community, rather than have those laws come from a government far away, increasingly dominated by the higher populations of the northern industrialized states. They were fighting for their rights. No taxation without local representation. Yes, there is a ton more than that, and yes, for many of the men in power in the Southern states, it was about holding on to their slaves. But not to most of the men that actually fought that war.

The North winning the war was a great victory towards the cause of bringing about a large country united and unified under a single government.

But it was a tragedy that so many sons and daughters of the United States of America, both North and South, had to go to war, to fight and to die to settle this issue once and for all. And every one of them ultimately died for their beliefs, not just so they could buy a slave.

To dismiss the entire issue as racism, to state, clearly and bluntly, that the Confederate flag stands solely for racism is to, in my opinion, spit on the graves of all those fine young men and what they fought for. Yes, I feel that strongly about it.

Now, I am well aware that I am unusual in the depth of my feelings on this topic. I have long been interested in military history, and I have also been an admirer of the courage and strength it took for Americans to risk everything to fight for what they believed in, even against their own brothers and lifelong friends.

The stories of the men that had fought in that war on both sides, almost all of them men who had shortly before fought together as brothers in arms in the Mexican-American war, now facing each other across the field of battle, are amazing.

This was a war where the enemy was never evil and faceless, for you knew them as well as you knew yourself. It was a war fought for what each side believed was right, and the common man on the field in the South that had left his farm and family to fight had never owned a slave, and wasn’t fighting in favor of slavery, he thought he was fighting for the right to decide his own future.

I have stood on the fields of the battle of Gettysburg. I drug Cassie and my son out there, to stand at the many memorials, to see the land where at such a decisive moment the future of America was decided. I have climbed through the forest to stand on Little Round Top, where a small memorial to the men of the 20th Maine sits nestled in the dense trees, and looked down that hill, visualizing in my mind the bayonet charge that Joshua Chamberlain led his men in that day, holding the far left flank of the entire Army of the Potomac against the South.

And this lady attempted to explain to Langdon Perry that, while he was absolutely right that a couple kids waving a Confederate flag at school were very likely trying to get their racism on and be hateful little pricks,  not all Americans believe that the Confederate flag stands for racism, and only for racism.

Langdon castigated the woman, and called her wrong, and I believe the word stupid was thrown in there. And she made a terrible mistake. She attempted to use a simile to help explain her point. She compared the way two groups can have differing, equally valid feelings towards one symbol, that it can mean something different depending on the historical context it is viewed in, and for comparison she mentioned how the swastika is clearly seen as a symbol of evil and hatred when placed in connection with Nazi Germany during WWII, but as viewed by the Buddhists and Hindi who also use it, it is a positive symbol, and to impose your own viewpoint on the ultimate meaning of a symbol is to impose your own opinions on everyone else. Which, hello… is bigotry. 

Langdon then use a classic debate technique which I don’t know the name for, not being a college graduate myself, of taking what she said, which I thought was pretty clear, rephrasing it as her stating that Nazi Germany wasn’t evil and racist, and then proceeded to attack her using his rephrasing of her statement as his argument that she is stupid and ignorant and wrong.

I wish I knew what the hell doing that is called. Yet another reason I wish I’d gone to college sometimes, you don’t learn all the pretty labels for the shit people pull in the outside world.

Now, okay, I felt bad that someone tried to dump a little water on the racism fire that Langdon was trying to start and got taken down so viciously. You could tell that she was upset at how he tore into her and refused to even pretend to listen to what she was really saying, and you could also tell his emotion were fully engaged.

He was on a real tear, it wasn’t an act to get people worked up. I figured that everyone would clearly see what an ignorant little jackass he was being and someone would tell him off soon.

And oh yeah, they did.

But not how I expected.

From that point on, and I turned my radio on at work to follow this when I could, the topic remained on this issue. And even after the second host, Chris Baker, came on two or three hours after this started, it remained the center of discussion.

But not in a reasoned, rational way. Langdon Perry and Chris Baker both openly adopted the position that the Confederate flag was a symbol of racism, period, and if any caller tried to oppose this viewpoint in any way, they were called stupid, idiots, racists, and ignorant.

The two of them shared with the audience how sad they felt for each other, for all of these ignorant racists that called in that seemed to think they were Facists. They took to calling each other ‘Facist’ during the rest of the show, and any time one of them said something, the other would say something along the lines of “Well, I’m sure you must be wrong, since you’re nothing but a Facist.”

Okay, so it was a distasteful, shameful display. They were both childish, ignorant offensive little twits. But I always knew they were both twits. It’s not until Rush comes on at 11 that the KTLK is entertaining without, at some point, irritating me.

But my true horror was reserved for the callers.

As the morning went on, the number of people that called in to either agree with them or disagree with them, and HOW they debated the topic, became mind numbingly terrifying.

The arguments used… the utter lack of historical knowledge, the firmly held opinions without any facts or knowledge whatsoever, the true racists that came out of the woodwork, just….

See, the audience for talk radio is, supposedly, the group of folks that are politically aware and active in debating topics and discussing current events. At least, that’s what I thought. What I assumed. I thought the best. I knew there are kooks, sure. But mostly college educated, politically active members of the community, right? In general?

Right? Please?

These people are supposed to be better educated and better informed than the average American radio-listening citizen. Aren’t they?

But I seriously doubt, from what I heard, that any of them had the faintest clue about anything having to do with the history of this country.

Just, not a clue. No appreciation whatsoever or interest in how America was formed, how she grew, and the hard work men and women put in to build it into what so many either love or hate today.

It’s like that one lady represented the intelligent, level-headed listener, and after she got flamed, the rest of them shut the radio off and left the show to the nutjobs.

And this crew are the people that listen to talk radio? These idiots VOTE?!?!

I am so depressed that I could cry.

I don’t give a damn what your political opinions may be, but how can anyone close their minds and remain so willfully ignorant? It’s fine if you’ve never been exposed to history, or sought knowledge out, but if you are spouting offensive bullshit, and someone calls you on it, how can you sit there and shut them down, dismiss them as wackos, and then have a pity party about how the stupid people don’t get your lofty point of view?

I’d love to see that jackass fired.

I miss Dan Connery. He may have been a bit wierd on some of his views, but he was well educated, fair minded, and he actually had a sense of humor. He didn’t just fake it.

Just… GAH!

Yeah, I know, no one has the slightest idea how I could feel so emotional about this. It’s not like it’s important…

But to me it is important. It’s living proof of closed-minded people that are ignorant of the facts of a situation, that prefer to believe that anyone that finds something about the men of the South that fought in the Civil War to be admirable must be a racist.

It reveals what I have often seen in isolated incidents; the attitude so many here and throughout the North seem to privately hold, that Southerners are inherently racist. Bred in the bone racist.

Damn it, open your minds and stop believing in stereotypes! These racist Southerners you’re feeling so damn superior to watch MTV too! They get the exact same cable channels you do! You think your cultural stereotyping holds generation after generation agaisnt that kind of onslaught? Have you seen the figures for how many Northerners are huge NASCAR fans? Huh? It’s one country, you damn bigots, wake up and see it! Like it or not, the country is one big bowl of gumbo, with the different bits mixed in everywhere!

Take people as people first, and shove that condescending elitist attitude up your asses!

Okay, I feel slightly better now.

But right now, I know exactly how I think Henry B Gonzalez must have felt when he felt he was serving this country with integrity to the best of his ability, and he was approached by some guy out of the blue, and called a Communist… and after a moment, he proceeded to punch the guy right square in the mouth.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.