BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Monique
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:40 AM

Madonna Tondo Pitti

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:30 AM

The wiki item on the Michelangelo Tondo Pitti doesn't show it in the best light. I'm talking about the white marble piece. The michelangelo-gallery.org website has a good depiction when you click on the image. I won't attempt to confuse myself by trying to do a link.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:01 AM

I haven't seen a single post here, or sentiment expressed to the effect, that all religion "should be abolished."

The religious symbolism I see all around can be annoying, though I have no right not to be annoyed. Much of it is of poor or no artistic quality. I've been to Italy, the (non-human) love of my life, twice this year. I am a Dawkinsite atheist but I spend most of my Italy culture-time actually seeking out religious symbolism, hoping always to find it expressed in the highest artistic form. I spent hours in the Uffizi until I nearly collapsed with exhaustion, revelling in the finest, mostly-religious art ever wrought. I spent half an hour staring at the little bas-relief Tondo Pitti by Michelangelo in the Bargello museum. I've never seen a more beautiful object created by any human being. Google it if you don't believe me. I dare the most fervent atheist on earth to tell me that it offends them. All this is my heritage as much as it's the heritage of the most fervent believer.

Diappointingly, in many Italian churches the statuary and other works of art are all too frequently of abysmal quality. I never want to see another painted saintly bearded type glowering over me with hand outstretched. And there appears to be the depiction of a skull, often with crossbones for good measure, somewhere in every church. Several times I've been unexpectedly confronted by the horror of a stash of saintly bones protruding from the top of an urn. Other churches contain some of the greatest art ever produced. My two favourites so far are the rear wall mosaic in the little cathedral on Torcello, one of the islands in the Venice lagoon, and the exterior especially of the Santa Croce basilica in Lecce.

Religious symbolism is not the same thing as those confounded confederate statues. The former is the visible manifestation of what billions of people see as being what is good in their lives and what will make humanity better. They may be largely wrong but those beliefs are generally held without malice. The latter is the attempt by racist bigots and white supremacists to perpetuate what should have been a dead and buried lost cause. The statues are demeaning to black people and they bear an implicit threat to them: "Don't think for one minute that this is all over..." The history happened in the Civil War and those statues are not part of it. They are partial, partisan, subjective and tendentious. History, well told, is none of those things. The statues themselves are the attempt to rewrite history, and that rewriting is not done by historians.

It's quite easy to spot the bigotry in these discussions. The best indicator of its presence is the complaining about the removal of the statues being a violation of free speech.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 05:30 AM

You're getting things confused, Ake. As I said before, government does not have "freedom of speech," because government is bound to represent and serve ALL the people. These statues are publicly owned and on public land.

If they were on private land, that would be a different matter. That's where "freedom of speech" might apply. Stone Mountain in Georgia, probably the best-known Confederate monument, is a separate matter on its own. The carving is on private property with roots in the Ku Klux Klan, but that private property is completely surrounded by a state park. How did that come to be?

But no, public land and public money cannot be used for the promotion of racism in the United States.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 05:03 AM

I'm no bigot Joe, I've stated several times that I am totally opposed to any colour prejudice, and the KKK.
You seem to be treating this issue in isolation, only involving statues and monuments erected in the "Jim Crow" period, but there is a whole wider issue here regarding freedom of speech itself.

Let's take it a stage further, there are people on this forum and in wider Society who seek the abolition of all religion...and many crimes have been committed in its name over the centuries, but how would you feel about the removal of religious monuments, religious statues, even chapels and churches? Prohibition of religious regalia, based on past misdeeds?

Don't say it can never happen, to the abolitionists Christianity and religion are a serious impediment to the implementation of their agenda

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 08:25 PM

Steve Shaw: 👍

It's not a matter of rewriting history. We need to acknowledge the misdeeds of our history and correct them instead of promoting and prolonging them. The March 6 2017 issue of the Jesuit America Magazine (page 6) quotes a man named Michael Lando of Brooklyn, answering the question, "Is America great" in response to the Trump slogan:

America is not great, but has the potential to be...We have never come to terms with our history: the genocide of native people, slavery, Jim Crow, the mistreatment of immigrants, the second-class status of women, and so on.

In response to the question "Is America Great?" America Magazine readers who responded to the poll said:

• Yes (46%)
• No (6%)
• It's Complicated (48%)

Readers said what makes America great are democratic institutions, freedom, immigrants & diversity, and equal opportunity.

I'd say that America is the preferred publication of U.S. Catholic intellectuals. Almost all readers (yes, no, and complicated) have a different idea of "making America great" from that of Donald Trump.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:58 PM

The statues are indeed the face of Jim Crow and the vast majority of them were erected in the Jim Crow years, many decades after the Civil War. The statues are not "history." They are attempts to glorify the cause of white supremacy, a cause that should have been lost at the end of the Civil War but which, to the shame of the United States, took another hundred years to discredit. Just to discredit, note. Not to abolish. That, as Charlottesville showed us, is still an ongoing task. The people who claim that those statues are a part of history that we are " trying to rewrite" are charlatans. Sadly, they have got so many people hoodwinked. This weekend, on the BBC radio programme Any Questions, we had a lengthy debate on whether the statues should be removed. Not one panellist pointed out that the statues were erected many decades after the defeat of the Confederates and were an effort to reinforce the sentiment of white supremacy that some southerners were trying to reinstate. History my arse. Stick your statues where the sun don't shine. In fusty museums in other words, where white supremacists can go and see them to their hearts' content and where the rest of us can avoid them.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:44 PM

Is that what you think of Jim Crow - "hurt feelings"? That's pure idiocy.

Idiocy indeed - unfortunately, Ake's not alone in this delusion- tRump's supporters are still supporting his racist, white supremecist, KKK, anti-semetic, screw consitutional rights agenda.

HEIL TRUMP!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:22 PM

Ake, if the matter were just "hurt feelings," you might have a point. I suppose you think the main impact was just "hurt feelings" for the requirement for separate bathrooms and schools and lunch counters, huh?
If the statues had been erected simply to honor the Confederate dead, then that would be a different matter. But that's not the point, and here's where I need you to think deep instead of trivializing this important matter: The statues were part of a package, meant to impose the domination of whites over blacks, to reimpose slavery in ways that were sometimes worse that slavery was itself. The package included denial of voting rights and the right to hold political office, separate and inadequate bathroom and recreation facilities and schools, separate seating in the back of buses and churches (even Catholic churches, I admit), unequal employment and housing opportunities, and a lengthy list of other offenses - sealed by the universal presence of statues of white gentry on horseback that were meant to remind blacks of their subservient place on society. And on top of all that, were the lynchings.

"Free speech" is a right of citizens, not a right of government. U.S. citizens have the right to express their thoughts freely. Government entitites do not have that same right - they are bound to represent and serve ALL the people, and not to provide symbols that speak loudly of the right of one race to dominate another.

The statues are the visible face of Jim Crow, and that is why they must be removed from public property.

Ake, I have repeated this over and over that the statues are part of the imposition of Jim Crow in the early 20th century, and you have repeatedly chosen to ignore this fact. If you continue this tack, then you must be the bigot people say you are. Is that what you think of Jim Crow - "hurt feelings"? That's pure idiocy.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 01:13 PM

YOU GO GIRL!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Janie
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 01:01 PM

This southern woman, after listening and reading to many voices, has come to the conclusion that these public monuments need to be moved from public places or need to be displayed within an historically accurate framework that tells the full story, including the story, when it is the case, as it is in most instances, that when the monument was installed, a good portion of the public support for the installation was to romanticize the Confederate cause and also to assert the dominance of white society over the descendants of slaves.

The Southern Poverty Law Center specifically excluded monuments to Confederate soldiers in cemeteries, such as the Chase Cemetery in Ohio where Confederate prisoners of war died due to squalid conditions and were buried, and at battlefield parks such as Gettysburg, that do tell the story of war rather than glorifying, in their listing of Confederate monuments.

I have skimmed but not carefully read the thread. My apologies if this link has already been posted.
https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 08:43 AM

From what I read, many African-Americans consider the Confederate statues to be hurtful and insulting.

They gotta helluva nerve! Who the hell do they think they are? Citizens or sumptin? Don't they realize its "Southern Heritage".

[Dunno about others, but THIS white boy thinks they're hurtful and insulting as well. In addition, they're perpetuating a lie.]

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:46 AM

"Legal" is a moveable feast. Laws can be changed. "Hurt feelings" are also a moveable feast. You can hurt my feelings by telling me that I'm crap at trimming my beard, or you can hurt my feelings by telling me that I'm inferior or untrustworthy or a disease-carrying being or a terrorist-sympathiser because I'm black or a Jew or gay or a Muslim. Yes you can hurt my feelings by saying something relatively harmless to me and I might need to just get over myself. Or you can hurt my feelings by using threatening talk or hate speech. Talking about having to hold back on untrammelled free speech just to avoid "hurting feelings" is thoroughly disingenuous. You have no moral right to say things that make me afraid or insecure or feel threatened. If you live in a country where you have a legal right to do that, then your laws are wrong and they need changing. If you can't use your freedom of speech mindful of your responsibility to others, then you don't deserve the privilege of having it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 06:40 AM

Well Joe, Ive been having a go at this "deep thinking" business, gosh its hard.....Have you been practicing for long? :0)

What I've finally thunk(clunk) is that this thread does not really concern freedom of speech at all, but rather hurt feelings amongst a particular section of society.

As you are no doubt aware these two factors do not sit well together, in fact it would be impossible to implement free speech if everyone's personal feeling were taken into account.

Now I think that freedom to express opinions which are legal far outweighs hurt feelings, regardless of whether I personally agree with the opinions, or am totally opposed to them (as in the case of the KKK or colour prejudice)

When the Rubicon has been crossed all options are open, political tastes change and we may find ourselves repressed and voiceless.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 PM

I'm not sure that removal of the statues will have a great effect on whites, whether or not they support the Confederacy. From what I read, many African-Americans consider the Confederate statues to be hurtful and insulting.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 06:51 PM

- the South will still have lost that war.

Unfortunately, that fact hasn't dawned on a good number of folks.

Hell, several states are still try to seceed from time to time...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 05:03 PM

I get that, Joe. I've had to post in haste today as my clan have just gone home after a delightful but long visit and I've been tackling my hugely overgrown garden on and off all day. Life's good!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 03:11 PM

I was sure we did not disagree, Steve. I just had to ask to clarify.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 02:46 PM

we no longer have hanging, drawing and quartering here.

Well, why the hell NOT??

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:12 PM

I also don't see how taking down the statues would "change the past" - the South will still have lost that war.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:04 PM

I can understand his viewpoint somewhat, but these more-than-a-century after-the-fact statues were basically a statement that expressed hatred for their country's government, and a message to Black people that "we still think you're less that we are, so forget about the laws of this country we hate. We'll remind you of your inferiority whenever we have the chance. This statue is one reminder."

I can't figure out if Ake thinks Wallace and the Confederacy are equivalent, but I doubt that opinion will change no matter how much he "learns". It's not convenient to get along with people you hate.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:01 PM

I was referring to akenaton's remark about rewriting history for one section of society only. Putting up statues decades after events to unpleasant people whose sentiments you happen to share is precisely that. It's an attempt to dignify misdeeds. Which is a way of rewriting, or reglossing, history. And statues generally enjoy an aura of permanence and added-value dignity, so are tendentious when used in a political context. I don't see that we are disagreeing about anything. The only thing I've ever agreed with akenaton about is that he lives in Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:51 AM

I dunno, Steve. I thought the statues WERE an attempt in the early 20th century to rewrite history and cast the Confederacy in a heroic light.
Ake refuses to acknowledge this. Not you, too?
Joe

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:29 AM

It's not that people want to write them out of history.
It's that people don't want to celebrate them.
Being that there are enough idiots down south who say "the south gonna rise again!", hate the United States and want to overthrow its government, go back in time and make sure the "rights" people have are limited to white people, straight, and mostly male, I figure it's a great idea to take those modern statues down and put them in a museum with plaques that explain why they were put up and why they were removed.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:29 AM

This is not about rewriting history. It's about confronting the past (as Liverpool has done apropos of the slave trade) and questioning the motives of those who would wish to misuse it to further their own despicable causes, such as those who try to dignify dark periods in history by erecting public statues many decades later to unpleasant people whose sentiments they happen to share. By the way, for those Americans reading akenaton's post (you poor things), we no longer have hanging, drawing and quartering here. Just in case you didn't know!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 10:17 AM

Willfully obtuse doesn't half cut it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 AM

I have no wish to support the Confederacy, colour prejudice, or the KKK, BUT, if we start drawing redlines regarding freedom of speech, we have to be fully aware of our history.
Historical figures were often "bad people" by today's standards, a lot of the UK was built on the slave trade half of Glasgow and Liverpool are named after slave traders.
We cannot re-write history for one part of society only.

As I said above Scotland's premier historical hero was regarded in his time as a traitor, a renegade, and a terrorist.....I suppose he was all of these things to many people, even some Scots and he was eventually taken to London and hung drawn and quartered.
Today anyone defacing his monuments would risk facing the same punishment.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 AM

I thought the film excellent & I should read the book & likely will.

Problem is that there's a significant segment of the population that doesn't WANT to understand, and whose minds will not be changed by facts.

The myth is easier on their consciences.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:33 AM

Ake is being willfully obtuse, there is no point in trying to explain anything in a way that will let him see or bring him around. That's not the position he is willing to take in his trolling.

I just finished reading the book Hidden Figures. I look forward to seeing the film soon, but understand full well that much of the history on the pages can't make it into the film. I defy anyone to read that book and not come away understanding completely what all of this Confederate statue discussion is really about.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:21 AM

Yup, Mrrzy - facts are indeed stubborn things.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:10 AM

Thanks for sharing that, Mrrzy. It must have been traumatic and depressing having those hate groups doing their dirt in your own town.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 08:52 AM

OK, here is my oversimplification, as a Charlottesville resident for decades:
It was the people who wanted the statues to remain marching through my town with torches in an attempt to terrorize us into not removing them that made me want to remove them.

And that was BEFORE the KKK came and reinforced my desire not to give them anything they want.

That was the month before the they came back and marched through my university with torches in another attempt to terrorize us into agreeing with them.

And after THAT, they committed murder, in an attempt to terrorize us into agreeing with them.

They want me and half my family, dead.
They want my African and black friends and family, dead.
They want my friends and family with accents in English, dead.
They want my friends' newborn baby, dead.

What more do they have to do for you not want them to get what they want?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 04:38 AM

OK, Ake, think deep now. Look above to comments about Washington and Jefferson. No person is perfect, and every person is a product of his/her age. But on the balance, Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln stood for what's right.

I'd also say that Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee were certainly remarkable, and certainly weren't all bad. Indeed, there are many stories that point to the integrity of Robert E. Lee. But they are symbols of a very racist Confederacy that sought to preserve slavery.

But you need to listen closely to the words of Landrieu, a thoroughly Southern mayor. Those statues weren't meant to honor and mourn Davis and Jackson and Lee. They were erected in the early 20th century and meant to celebrate the rebirth of white supremacy and to redefine the Confederacy as some sort of lost, heroic ideal. They were erected as symbols of the domination of whites over blacks. They were erected in the heyday of eugenics, when people tried to come up with "scientific proof" that whites were superior to blacks.

They are racist symbols. And they need to be destroyed.

Why are you so intent on supporting the cause of racism and bigotry?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 04:26 AM

I agree with much of that Joe, but it is an over simplification of the problem.
Lincoln also asserted that although slavery was wrong, the Black man was not "equal" to the White, that in itself is racism.
Should all statues of Lincoln be removed?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 03:45 AM

Here's New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Address on Removal of Four Confederate Statues. Some have speculated that Landrieu may be a Democratic candidate for President in 2020. I'd vote for him.
An excerpt:

The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This 'cult' had one goal - through monuments and through other means - to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city. Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous 'corner-stone speech' that the Confederacy's "cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

It's worth listening to the entire speech. It shows a lot of wisdom. I fell in love with the people of New Orleans when I was there last fall. Mitch Landrieu is an example of the best of New Orleans.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 05:55 PM

Fine. Keep digging.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 01:03 PM

Well apologies Steve, It should have been "Point taken Greg"

An easy mistake to make I suppose as there doesn't seem to be much difference, other than Greg being slightly more literate and a little more insightful?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 10:23 AM

Most of the statues were put up in the eras of Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement. They aren't "historical". They were "in your face" statements. Who puts up that many statues to people who tried to overthrow their government?

I don't have a problem with historical statues, as in if they were there before those times.
I have a problem with statues featuring prominently in towns in a way that pretty much says "fuck you and your civil rights/racial equality", which is why they're there. When they're in the center of a town, they're telling everybody that's what the town believes.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 09:16 AM

"Point taken Gilly"......Do you understand the point being made by Barnacle the opening poster?

No-one has said "Point taken Gilly."

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:39 AM

Folks here might be interested in the perspective of Southerner and Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Jon Meacham on the monuments issue:

New York Times

From the article:

'Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things — and, for Southerners, they are also often uncomfortable. If we don't face them forthrightly, we risk living in worlds of fantasy and fable, subject not to reason, the greatest of gifts, but susceptible to passion, the most dangerous of forces. In such alternative realities, the Civil War was not about slavery but about what neo-Confederates refer to as "heritage."'

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:23 AM

The footage of the statues being kicked and spat upon after their demolition is definitely reminiscent of scenes in Iraq, Libya, Syria.

Most thinking people now are appalled at the "summary justice" handed out to dictators like Hussein and Gaddafi, as we begin to realise the nature of the opposition in these countries.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:17 AM

"Point taken Gilly"......Do you understand the point being made by Barnacle the opening poster?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 06:15 AM

ESPN did not make an issue of it, EB, they showed some sensitivity in the wake of a tragedy and a time of acute social unrest in Charlottesville by reassigning an employee. That's the last I say on this non-issue.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 04:34 AM

Point taken, Greg, though Buller and his ilk are emblematic of Empire, every bit as obnoxious as those confederates. I wonder whether Redvers knew Hector The Hero...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 12:49 AM

Greg and Gilly, the question is not whether he will miss a paycheck. It is relevant because his name, Robert Lee, is similar to the General who led the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. His home state was Virginia.
In light of the Alt-Right riot in Virginia, ESPN believes it might be inflammatory to have him broadcasting commentary for a football game. Of course, he said it was all right with him to be moved from his regular assignment--he wants to keep his job. The subtext was probably that, if he did not accept the change he would be looking for other employment.
If ESPN had not made an issue of it, it is quite likely nothing would have happened. Now, he's become a victim of excessive political correctness.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:23 PM

That's as may be, Steve, but the general didn't try to overthrow the british government by force of arms.

Nor did he enslave the Zulus (which would have been a tough job, any road).

Taking down statues of simple eejits and/or fools is a whole other question.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 08:05 PM

There has stood for over a hundred years in Exeter, very close to where my father-in-law used to live on New North Road, a fine bronze statue of Redvers Buller on horseback, an old Etonian general who was involved in the very questionable Zulu wars and the two Boer Wars. It turns out that he was a man prone to making tactical blunders, ending up as something as a laughing stock. But Exeter and his home town of Crediton loved him, hence the statue. The man was a complete arse but I reckon you'd have an insurrection on your hands if you were to suggest pulling the statue down. Tough stuff, this!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:46 PM

Or better yet, put 'em in the dump [tip].

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:02 PM

Censorship is such a loaded word. It can be tossed around all too easily by scoundrels who want their hate speech or hate-iconography to remain immune from their adversaries' criticism (people who they'd quite likely characterise as "politically correct" or as "soft liberal lefties," etc.). Censorship is the authoritarian, arbitrary removal from public gaze of material that someone (probably no more qualified to do so than you or me) has decided may "deprave and corrupt" or, to be less kind, that might make them turn against their masters. There is nothing authoritarian about campaigning for the removal of statues offensive to a lot of people. In fact, there may well be an authoritarian angle to the attitude of the people who decided, divisively, to put up those statues in the first place and who argue on ideological grounds that they should remain in place. Democracy and common decency demand compromise. Put the damn things in theme parks or museums.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 06:44 PM

Robert Lee, an Asian, is being removed from a UVa broadcast.

And that incident concerns the removal of Confederate/Confederacy-worshippiong monuments.......... how, exactly?