LITTLE ROCK — IT'S THE best, or rather worst, of 21st Century gotcha! journalism. The template was set years ago:
(1)The actor/singer/politician/celebrity goes to golf club/night club/historical monument. (2) Golf club/night club/historical monument has an owner/past/policy that offends. (3) Media jump on actor/ singer/politician/celebrity for not knowing better. (4) Actor/singer/politician/celebrity is forced to attend sensitivity lessons and is the butt of jokes on Leno/Letterman for two weeks.
Prepare yourself. It's happened again. It seems the vice president of these United States went on a hunting trip recently-and nobody was shot. (Canned laughter.)That's the good news. The bad news is that he was in the same zip code with a Confederate flag. (Sigh.)
That's right, Gentle Reader, the vice president was waving the Confederate flag from atop his pickup truck-he stood on the tool box-while singing Dixie. Or, well, um . . . . The storydidn't exactly say Dick Cheney waved the flag or stood on the tool box, nor did it say if Dick Cheney even saw the flag, but you know how the media cover things up for the Bush administration.
According to an article in Newsday, a photog for New York's Daily News snapped a picture of the Confederate flag hanging inside a garage at the Clove Valley Rod and Gun Club, where the veep was shooting ducks and civil rights lawyers. (No, the article didn't actually come out and say he shot the lawyers, but media, cover up, etc.) Somebody showed the picture to-you guessed it!-the Reverend Al Sharpton, who promptly issued a statement demanding the vice president "denounce the club, and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people." What? Dick Cheney needn't resign from office?
The last we saw, the story had made it from the tabloids to CBS News.
Holy over-reaction, Batman! But then again, that's the national media's-and Al Sharpton's-shtick. Jesse Jackson must have been out of pocket earlier this week, or you could bet some national reporter would've shoved a photo of the old Battle Flag under his nose, too, and his statement would've been just as huffy and puffy, but maybe a little longer, than the Rev. Al's. These guys are adept at pneumatic rhetoric.
IT DOESN'T surprise to hear of a Confederate flag at a gun club. Come on, Reverend Al, it's a gun club. Would you be surprised to see somebody there with a mouth full of chaw?
It also doesn't surprise to see the national media fabricate an issue whensafely out of shotgun range. Nor does it surprise that Reverend Al would get all verklempt when shown a picture of the Confederate flag, either.
Any surprises?
Yeah. There's exactly one. The gun club in question, the Clove Valley Rod and Gun Club, is in New York state-an hour north of New York City.
An hour north of New York City.
What's next? Are they gonna start making picante sauce for your Tex-Mex tacos up there, too?
Didn't we just go through this the other day with Pennsylvania? Some jerks made some trouble at a Pennsylvania school, and they were described in thepapers as waving Confederate flags. In Pennsylvania. As in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Oy.
Once more, from the beginning:
Y'all up there in the Nawth fought for the side what didn't carry the Confederate battle flag during the late unpleasantness, okay? You are Union blue. You're Ol' Fuss and Feathers (Winfield Scott). You're Fightin' Joe Hooker. You're the Rock of Chickamauga (Thomas) and Old Brains (Halleck). You're Unconditional Surrender Grant. What you're not is Confederate gray.
Through no fault of its own, the Confederate flag offends. We still kind of get the old boy who joins the Sons of Confederate Veterans to re-enact battles on pretty weekends. Sometimes his pride just ups and gets the best of his consideration for others, and he'll slap a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his truck.
But New Yorkers?
What in heaven's name can New Yorkers be doing displaying a Confederate flag, even if it's in a garage and (mostly) out of view? What is this, a kind of Southern fifth column up in those frozen latitudes?
Or is it a kind of peripheral patriotism-Austrians' devotion to the German Reich? Frenchmen in Algeria determined to die for la gloire of the empire? Zionist irredentists on Long Island? Edward Said espousing Arabism from his key listening post at Columbia U.?
In the South, most of us have respectfully furled the Confederate banner except for ceremonial occasions. The polite among us do not use it as a beach towel, bumper sticker or provocation. But we live for the day when the old flag is no longer associated with-how did Mama say it?-less desirable types. Then all of us-black, white and Other-can honor it with a clear conscience.
But for now we're told folks in New York and Pennsylvania-and who knows where else?-are using the flag to offend.
How Yankee of them.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 10/31/2007