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This Rachel Maddow report out of Louisiana comes to our attention today.
Couple of things to point out as you watch…
- See how familiar that display in front of the courthouse looks?
- See how easy it was to remove that flag? A public hearing, followed by an 11-1 vote to take it down.
Our Legislature could do the same. If it only wanted to.
Of course, now that I see that embed in place and see that headline, Rachel isn’t helping us much. Ixnay on the ictoryvay against the Onfederacykay, OK?
But ignore the headline, and ignore that it’s Rachel Maddow, and just pay attention to the good-sense story that is told… Look at it for what it is, not the attitudes of the messenger.
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Never going to happen, but you continue to bring this up every 3 months. Why don’t you write articles about current topics, instead we have to go to Fitsnews to get current SC political news.
Go where you like.
This is better than a current item. It’s about our future, one that’s better than the present, and far, far better than the past we continue to wallow in.
I do go where I please online, as do 99% of your readers, of which only 20% will admit it.
Continue digging up old topics to regurgitate to increase your comment and viewership count. Maybe you’ll crack 10% of Fitsnews someday. He used to post daily activity and you came in around 4th or 5th in local blogs.
Look, Confederate Venerators: You lost. Get over it. Move on!
Yeah, Steve, I saw those numbers one time on Will’s blog. I don’t recall where he got them, but they’re not the same as what I’m looking at.
Will gets a lot more traffic than I do — which I credit to the fact that he posts a lot more often, and breaks news (which I have little interest in doing, this being a commentary blog). But it’s not as much more than you think.
As I mentioned recently, I had occasion to chat with his partner, Nancy Mace. She said their blog had peaked at 1.3 million page views in August. I got a little over a quarter of a million that month. So it’s more like a five-to-one ratio. That month, anyway.
Of course, it could be the measures we’re looking at. I used to have two different pageview counters on my old blog — one out on the front page, another down in the guts. They never agreed, although they were in the same ballpark.
Maybe if Will used the software I’m using, he’d have twice as many apparent pageviews. I don’t know.
@Kathryn
Look, Anti-Confederate Flag supporters: You lost. Get over it. Move on!
@Brad – He also opens his articles up to anyone who wants to comment. If you did your numbers would probably increase as well. More comments, more views, more advertisers, more money.
Do you want more viewership, or do you want to keep the blog down somewhere around 1950’s Ladies Home Journal.
Leadership is taking on the difficult decisions and then holding firm until enough others are able to muster the courage to state their position publically.
Steven will likely never be one to look to the future. But most people will want to head that way. The flag will come down. It won’t be a decade. It could be January.
We need more discussion, committee meetings, public hearings and other conversations about this issue that is so critical to the health and welfare of the citizens of this fine state. We shouldn’t rush into a hasty desision the way Lexington County council did with the Blue Laws.
She went off track with the incarceration rate of blacks vs. their percentage of the population. Otherwise, it seemed pretty straightforward. I’m kind of surprised that no one mentions the Confederate icons inside some of the SC County courthouses. There is at least one I know of that has a picture of Lee and Jackson on the walls of the Courtroom. It kind of surprised me when I first walked in there.
“It’s about our future, one that’s better than the present, and far, far better than the past we continue to wallow in.”
States of the U.S. have been, and to assure the brightest future, must continue to be sovereign, economically competitive, entities.
The primary reason socialists wish to remove icons like the flag Brad despises (not the last emblem on the socialists’ list, which will eventually include our Palmetto state flag, but Old Glory) is to eradicate every symbol of autonomy in order to facilitate a one-world, virtually non-competitive, socialist government.
Their U.N. flag most symbolizes fraud, waste and ongoing genocide to me.
This issue is not going to be voted rationally until people like Glenn McConnell retire. He, apparently, just cannot see what that flag looks like to anyone who is not as ardent about the confederacy as he is.
Did someone forget to tell Boeing, Amazon, CertusBank, Nephron, Perceptis, etc. etc. that they are not supposed to be setting-up shop in South Carolina because a piece of cloth that no one (save a blogger or two) even talks about anymore still flies next to a statue on the Statehouse grounds?
Matt, you must move in limited circles, to think no one speaks of it.
Brian, I see no problem with portraits of Lee and Jackson — especially Lee — although it would make more sense to find them in Virginia.
If you want to object to a monument to a person, let’s talk about the one to the execrable Ben Tillman.
Juan, I happen to think the Confederate battle flag is one of the most beautiful flags ever, aesthetically speaking, up there with the S.C. flag, the U.S. flag, and the Union Jack (something about those St. Andrew’s crosses).
But it is grotesquely wrong to be flying it at our State House, for a host of reasons that, contrary to your belief, runs the entire political spectrum. At one end we have the fact that flying it is a gross dishonor to my ancestors who fought under that flag, yet honorably surrendered. They would never thought of doing such a thing. At the other end is fact that we all know good and well why it flies there, and grotesque impulses that motivate people to want it there at this late date. It’s deeply disturbing to see such a beautiful flag put to such ugly use.
FITS NEWS uses a lot of pics & posts related to sex. Think that may have an impact on his viewer count?
@Mark Stewart – “Steven will likely never be one to look to the future.”
Which is why I work in IT.
@Brad – “At one end we have the fact that flying it is a gross dishonor to my ancestors who fought under that flag, yet honorably surrendered. They would never thought of doing such a thing.”
How do you know that for sure. Just because you say so?
Brad – Who speaks of it besides the NAACP? And they do a lousy job of sticking to their own boycott of the state.
@Steven: If Brad ever opened up this blog to the kinds of commenters who post on Fits News, the rest of us would be gone. The commentary never rises above the level of junior high, which is why I never bother to read it.
@ There’s nothing wrong with Jackson and/or Lee, but I don’t see why they would be in a Courtroom in South Carolina. Neither were born here, neither were lawyers, judges, or had anything to do with the law. It just doesn’t make sense. We might as well put up a portrait of Davy Crockett.
I’d be all for that! Unfortunately, in SC, we’re more likely to get his nemesis, Andy Jackson.
As for Steven. As anyone who has followed this blog or anything else I’ve written knows, what the NAACP does on this issue beside the point. That organization has chosen a path that is more likely to keep the flag up forever than anything I can think of.
I refer to the regular, sensible folks I talk to all the time who want that flag gone and don’t know what to do about it, given that the Legislature has reserved that decision to itself and goes in fear of the vocal extremists who would punish them for doing the rational, sensible, moral, grownup thing and taking down the flag.
It’s like so many things in South Carolina: The vast number of people who want to do the right thing will not punish lawmakers for not doing it. But the people who want us chained to the worst mistakes in our history will go after them with every ounce of their beings if they do. This is something that comes up on other issues as well; it’s not confined to the flag.
For instance, we have a similar problem with comprehensive tax reform. Everywhere lawmakers go, people tell them they want it. But lawmakers know that when it comes time to get rid of tax exemption A, the people who benefit from that will scream bloody murder, and never forgive them. So it’s easier for lawmakers not to act.
The pro-flag people are a particularly vehement, emotional special interest, and while some lawmakers actually agree with them, others just go in fear of having to hear from them.
“the rational, sensible, moral, grownup thing”
That just answered that question. In a state that seems to have dipped its emotional photograph into the stop bath at about age 13, we don’t need to pursue “why” any further. Apologies to 13 year olds everywhere.
Speaking of great local blogs (a vastly more interesting and relevant topic than the old confederate flag), I really enjoy Ted’s columbiaclosings.com. Some of his posts bring back memories.
I’ve got to agree with you on the Tillman statue. What a disreputable human being, from start to finish.
I generally stay away from judging past generations by today’s values, but Tillman was an ogre by any era’s standards.
That he was as popular as he was doesn’t speak well of our past. That we put a statue of him on our Statehouse grounds speaks even less highly of us.
Since you aren’t a single issue voter, your wish will never come true. Too bad you couldn’t just once say “I will not vote for a candidate who will not work to take down the flag immediately”.
Why don’t you petition Vincent Sheheen to start the ball rolling? Might be interesting to see him prove he can lead on an issue. Or is he afraid to lose any future votes?
In the great scheme of things, tax reform is much more important, and there are frankly so many tiny special interest groups on the sales tax exemptions that surely some change could happen there.
On the other hand, the flag really doesn’t affect anyone’s pocket–sort of like the old saw about why academic department politics are so brutal: the stakes are so low.
Interesting, because I don’t think I’ve every talked to anyone at length since it’s been moved. But the people I talk to have more important issues to discuss than whine and pout about something they have little or no control over and/or it’s not a big deal to them.
There was discussion among lawmakers, there was a compromise, and there was action taken. End of story, move on.
I believe I only talk about it here, when you bring it up to boost your comment count but that’s about it.
—————
So are you calling those who don’t care or prefer the flag to stay where it is not “regular, sensible folk”?
“The pro-flag people are a particularly vehement, emotional special interest, and while some lawmakers actually agree with them, others just go in fear of having to hear from them.”
I’ll use your comment to make an equally truthful statement.
The anti-flag people are a particularly vehement, emotional special interest, and while some lawmakers actually agree with them, others just go in fear of having to hear from them.
————
“rational, sensible, moral, grownup thing”
Do you always talk down to people who don’t agree with you?
“But the people who want us chained to the worst mistakes in our history”
That’s quite the statement. Moving the flag from the dome to the grounds to you is one of worst things to happen in this state.
Puhleeze, Steven– you surely understand that in using the “worst mistake,” Brad is either referring to the Confederacy or the decision almost a hundred years after it fell to fly its flag in support of segregation?
It matters, both to the descendants of slaves and to ordinary decent people who do not want our beautiful state linked to its unfortunate past.
@Brad “in fear of the vocal extremists who would punish them”
Vocal extremist #1 is the extremely powerful Sen. Glenn McConnell, President pro tempore of our SC Senate and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4.
Oh, Glenn never has to be vocal. They just know better than to cross him…
“They just know better than to cross him…”
You want legislators without term limits, that’s what you get.
All the ills of South Carolina can be laid at the feet of the legislators who have been in office for two decades or more.
I don’t want the flag flying, but where it is now looks so dopey, I don’t see how it can inspire much in any re-enacters heart. I mean, its BEHIND a monument, and is a little flag with silly fringe on it. The worst thing about it now is the absolutely poor design of the whole thing, which demonstrates most of all, a complete lack of taste. If I loved the flag, I would do anything to get it moved someplace else.
@Tim – Was it supposed to compliment the Confederate monument or is it a separate monument? I understood it was a separate monument.
“silly fringe”, maybe you want to look at current military flags and come back and let us know how “silly” they look. Bringing it up on Friday, Veterans Day, might be a nice touch.
“The worst thing about it now is the absolutely poor design of the whole thing, which demonstrates most of all, a complete lack of taste.”
So you say all flag poles are in poor taste… because that’s what the monument is, a flag pole.
It’s a flagpole with a fence around it to keep guys like ol’ Rev. Slave in his Santa suit from trying to climb the pole with his Bic lighter.
@Tim “where it is now looks so dopey”
Just wait ’til Christmastime when they put the giant Christmas tree right in front of the soldier.
steven,
I meant the Confederate Soldier monument that it is incorporated into. If the designers didn’t intend to do that, then it failed miserably. Sorry if I was unclear. The fringe on that flag looks tawdry. Fringe on other flags is okay by me. This is just a comment on one thing in front of the statehouse.
Michael,
If anything says tacky, its that tree. It only needs some cheap automated ice-skating bears in front to complete the effect.
@Michael – Maybe they should put the tree in the back of the Statehouse this year.
Please explain what is “dopey” about a flagpole with a fence around it. If there was an American flag on that pole, would it still be “dopey”? Yes or No.
Maybe if they take some construction paper and glitter…
@Tim – The height of the pole wasn’t the original height. The people fighting the placement agreed to it if the pole was 10 feet lower than initially designed. So if you’re going to place blame, blame the people who were on the anti-flag side of the compromise. As originally planned, the flag would have been seen above the soldier when looking at the Confederate Monument head on.
Last spring break I took my kids to Savannah. One day we drove down to Fort Pulaski at the river’s mouth. Driving across the causeway to Tybee I did a double take; one expects to see the US flag flying over national monuments and instead I saw this huge first Confederate flag (the stars and bars) flying over the fort. It was majestic and memorial. A fitting honor of those who fought for their beliefs 150 years ago.
The attempt to keep the Confederate battle flag flying ion the State House grounds in honor of segregation is beyond “tawdry”. It is an afront to 80+% of this state’s population who understand the flags true meaning on the State House grounds.
Doug,
I don’t think term limits are the answer. However, what we have now is practically the opposite of term limits because the representatives choose their voters.
Sen. McConnell just drew his own senate district this year, following the 2010 census. He did it 10 years ago, too.
Fresh from his successful leadership on the Confederate flag placement issue in 2000 — he removed a Confederate flag from atop the dome and installed a Confederate flag in front of the State House (on a flagpole adjacently behind the Confederate Soldier Monument) — Sen. McConnell became President Pro Tempore of the Senate and, in that role, led the redistricting activities that followed the 2000 census.
The districts he has drawn for himself are strangely shaped and heavily gerrymandered. Here’s what his current district looks like. Here’s what his new district looks like.
His new district is not solely in Charleston county. He has chosen to represent some voters in Dorchester county also. Our state constitution says that he can’t spread his district out into another county, but federal law prevails. He gets the power to spread his district out into Dorchester — making his seat safe for himself and thereby remaining the most powerful person in our state — from the federal government. Fascinating.
Whoops, both links were the same: to the new district. Here’s the current district.
@Michael
If there were term limits, McConnell never would have attained the power necessary to influence the district lines.
Who was the last freshman legislator who had any meaningful impact on the state?
It’s not rocket science. The only complexity in the legislative process is self-inflicted. And it’s supposed to be a part-time job. So let’s set the limit at 10 years and see what happens.
@Michael – How is McConnell’s district shaped any differently than say… Jim Clyburn’s district?
Clyburn’s district is shaped the way it is so they can shoehorn as many blacks into it as possible–so that there will only be one black majority district in a state that is about 40% black, with blacks making a majority in several areas. It’s McConnell & Co.’s doing.