Southern Fried Teabaggery

By the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept for thee, Zion…

Our best hope, really, is that it burns down quickly and completely. I’d even look forward to a French Revolution and Terror style collapse…but I’m a little afraid that as a member of the petite bourgeoisie I’d be one of the ones à la lanterne, as t’were. Still, once the 2% has it all and these fat fucktards can’t afford their double-wides and pork rinds, there’ll be a terrible bill come due. The kind of extremism we see today, coupled with a sense of entitlement, and informed by constant coded approval of insurrection, is going to spell the end of the great American experiment.

Dennis G. at Balloon Juice points out that these outfits are aggressively recruiting, so the problem is only going to get worse. This Southern Male exceptionalism thing is out of control.

@blogenfreude: The brave people at the Southern Poverty Law Center have a handy database tracking all of these whackadoodles.

@SanFranLefty: Yet one more group that needs our money.

And check this out … this sort of thing is only going to escalate.

A different flavor of whiner:

Frazzled Moms Push Back Against Volunteering

I love the parents whining about how early they have to get up and how overscheduled they are. Quick tip, rich bitches: that’s what big chunks of American moms have to do JUST TO KEEP FOOD ON THE TABLE, not so that their “little angel” can have “fairy snacks” every day at school.

I’d bet every one of the people profiled complains about taxes, too…

News outlets fall for satirical fake news story that a man ejaculated during a pat-down at SFO.

The stupidity of this argument is that all you have to do is read the declaration of secession by the various Southern States to see how, in their own words, it was all about slavery:

Georgia: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property”

Mississippi: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”

South Carolina: “…an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.”

Texas: “In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color– a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.”

I suppose if you can twist the Civil War into the pile of BS the CSV is spouting then forgetting about the American Revolution isn’t surprising.

@Serolf Divad: They are going to burn you at the stake for all your book-lernin’ if they catch you, you know.

And I think that claim that they seceded nonviolently is a bit strained.

@Serolf Divad: Nice bit of research. But do facts matter to these fuckwits?

And if the south had won:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S.A.:_The_Confederate_States_of_America

You guys have to check this movie out. It runs on IFC and Sundance occasionaly. The rebel flag wavers around here who have seen this movie can’t quite figure it out. They don’t know whether to laugh or cry over its meaning. Kinda like fox noise repeating Onion stories. I have a good friend (who kept an autographed charlton heston picture in his office) who is a son of a son of a son of even more begotten sons of the confederacy who goes to their annual dinner here in Rocky Top. They meet in a building that was the headquarters of the rebel army when they got their ass kicked trying to defend Knoxville from the Yankees who were not really the aggressors here in east tennessee but the liberators. East Tennessee did not want to secede (many still considered e. tenn. to be the independent state of franklin then) and immediately after secession rebel troops were sent to east tenn. to occupy and quell any opposition here. Our local newspaper editor, Parson Brownlow was a die hard abolitionist who went underground until the yankee liberation and then was elected governor after we unseceded. As governor, he campaigned and fought against the KKK in west tennessee led by N.B. Forrest whose hideuos statue adorns a Nashville imterstate. Forrest and the Klan talked mighty big about defeating and overthrowing Brownlow and the Tennessee Militia (natl guard back in the day) but when the battle was supposed to go down the Koward Klux Klan didn’t show up. Keep that in mind today. These guys are nothing but big talk. My friend (who won’t admit he is mighty confused about east tennessees unionist past) and his ilk will trash black people behind their backs but act very friendly in their presence. Again, these idle boasters and their guns they never fire are not a threat.They only talk big. Believe me, I’ve been around this shit all my life.

@jwmcsame:
The awfulness of anything like that becoming is one reason why I really dislike SF “What if the Such and Such won?” Speculative “histories.” It’s one thing to think about it, but to dwell on it? Bah.

If the CSA had “won”… I don’t know how well off they’d be. They’d rebel against industrialization, mass communications and mechanization. Probably the North would be closer to Canada City in terms of social policy and the South would be more like a twangier paler version of a 3rd world banana republic.

TJ/ Shit. Sandbox, please.

@Serolf Divad: funny how south carolina starts the shooting part of the civil war over states alleged rights, yet decries the rights of states up north to enforce their own laws regarding escaped slaves. hypocrisy ran rampant in the south then as it does now. the teabaggers carry that banner now. the majority of them are on some sort of government assistance from social security, medicare or caid, disability supplemental income and even more shocking many worked and retirement from state and local government jobs, yet they decry government assistance to those demographically (to put it nicely) different from them. The only way to have any credibility while advocating radical changes as the teabaggers wish is to demand that changes in policies and entitlements are enforced equally across the board, not just for the benefit of a few. what a waste of time it is discussing teabaggers. sorry for the buzzkill.

@ManchuCandidate: right on. the movie i mentioned is sarcastically very funny showing exactly what you say.

@jwmcsame: I saw that movie at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, where I was pretty much the only person laughing. The well-heeled liberals present were too shocked, and the conservatives too pissed.

@jwmcsame:

The biggest thing I find implausible about most “if the CSA had won” setups is the implicit assumption that there would have *been* a CSA much longer. By the end of the war, several states were already threatening to secede, for pretty much the reasons you’d expect (too much federal authority, didn’t like paying taxes, etc).

@al2o3cr: To say nothing of Great Britain reclaiming its territories. The Times of London was slobbering all over itself anticipating a call from the South and the government was all set to welcome its former colonies back into the fold. Since the Southron landowners saw themselves as carrying on the traditions of England’s landed gentry (on which topic Fanny Kemble was savage in her derision) they could hardly wait till they could enjoy house parties in the Home Counties. This movement was halted by the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which electrified the country (and me when I read it and realized the significance of the title) and started a torrent of outrage against the South.

I ran across my Great Great Grand Pappys’ “memorials” on findagrave.com the other day. They were put up by a guy from the Texas CSA. They were plastered with “virtual flowers” and “stars and bars” from god knows who with notes like “Your sacrifice is not forgottn .”

I spent the evening asking each person who put up a “memorial” to please “transfer management” to me of all my family members memorials so I could take that shit down.

My family got the hell out of Georgia and North Carolina after the war as quick as they could. In those days nothing and no one was lower than a white man who didn’t own land.

@SanFranLefty: speaking of splc, they’ve labeled a somewhat infamous “church” here as a hate group.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I LOLed at the preacher saying this:

“I don’t think I’m a hateful person — I’m a happy, positive person,” Anderson tells New Times.”I hate certain people.”

@SanFranLefty: @TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Sweet.

@Benedick: TJish/ Oh, holy hell! “Dauphin” is “doe-PHAN” and not “dolphin”? That’s how we pronounce the town in PA (ETA: The L is dropped). Damn my accent! In my mind, The Dauphin is Flipper.

Glad they’re done with the begets and begats leading to the Franch female who (maybe?) bore the doe-PHAN they’re planning to kill. And what? They’re fighting over a flood plain in Germany? I’m sure it will all become clear in due course.

/back to learning The Queen’s English and admiring the wardrobe (Kenneth’s trousers are a wee tight — I like!)/

@SanFranLefty:

Translation of the Rev: “I don’t hate anybody, but the voices in my head tell me the invisible man in the sky does, so I just pass the message along.”

If that dress shirt he’s wearing in the photo is cotton/poly, do we get to stone him?

@JNOV: To further confuse things, “dauphin” is French for dolphin, as well as Heir to the throne.
They’re fighting over land in Normandy, which Henry V claims because it went to the French via the female line–a no-no under Salic law.
I’ll stop geeking out now. Enjoy the film.

@SanFranLefty:
@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ:
Pastor Steve has been around for awhile. He has posted some wonderful sermons on the YouTubes.
Here you can see the aftermath of an asskicking he got from the border patrol.

And here is actual footage of the alleged asskicking.
See good things do happen to bad people.

@Mistress Cynica: Right! See? Now I think I’m in a flashback involving Plump Jack, a prostitute (is that Judi Dench?), and Prince Henry (Harry?). WTF?

Salic law — right. Thanks for the link. I’m tempted to pause and look stuff up as I go, but I’m going to try to watch it straight through and then maybe rewatch it later after I’ve Googled the crap out of it unless I find something that might make Benedick apoplectic (all done in love, of course).

Kenneth — eyeliner or lush lashes? They are all so young! Oh, and Normandy — don’t know why I thought it was Germany. They kinda rhyme? ;-)

@JNOV: Did you get to the Princess Katherine scenes yet?

ADD: Fantastic soundtrack, too. I owned it once (on cassette tape, don’t laugh).

@JNOV: Yep, Judi Dench. Robbie Coltrane as “Plump Jack” Falstaff–I think the flashback scenes are actually from Henry IV, part whatever, where Prince Hal was hell-raising with Falstaff–but I’ll defer to Benedick on that.

@JNOV: @Mistress Cynica: My first professional gig was playing Hal’s younger bro in Central Park in Part 1 and 2. Stacy Keach was Falstaff. Part one is all flash and thunder, Part 2 is a pretty terrific meditation on duty, fatherhood, and the wearing of tights. I love that play, which makes way for Henry V. Cyn is right. Hal casts off Falstaff in Henry IV. Judi Dench was Mistress Quickly. It’s all pure propaganda, of course.

He’s Hal as a boy, Henry as king and Harry to those who love him. Normandy was colonized by the Norwegians and Danes way back when most of northern England was Danish, capital was York. So they were quite closely linked. Oliviers version of the play was a big hit during the war when Agincourt became a stand-in for the Battle of Britain.

A very good actor I worked with told me that when he played Henry, in the marvelous scene after Agincourt when the names of the English dead are read, all the soldiers, covered in stage grime and blood stood in a huddle about him as the names were called out. After each one they all muttered under their breath “He’s a poof.” This continued after each name through the whole list till the last name “… and Davey Gam, esquire.” Whereupon they all cried out “Oh, not Davey Gam!” How anyone can act under such circumstances is beyond me. I start to weep from laughter and become incoherent. Which is the other great thing about His plays: they offer infinite scope for catastrophe.

Alais’s maid is Geraldine McKewen. (sp?) Totally fab actress of great wit. Fantastic as Millament in Way of the World.

We just watched A Place in the Sun. Magnificent movie.

Enjoy.

@Mistress Cynica: way to work. were they serving drinks? that movie is hilarious in the most twisted of ways. but like sam kinison, you gotta shake up some foundations that most prefer unshook to make a point. along the same lines closer to y’all is this flick:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_Without_a_Mexican

enlighten me on how this plays out west. i dig movies and such that shock folks dear held sensitivities and make us confront our differences and prejudices.

Any fan of Southern rock will tell you that this crap never went away.

@Benedick: go off. it took me 5 times watching w to know that stacey keach was rev earle hudd who saved the idiot and so very unfortunately future president. one of the top three westerns ever made is the long riders with stacey and james keach and other bro teams as the james and youngers. my mom took me to the barter theater (so named because folks like ernie borgnine would play for cooked chickens and such instead of cash way back in the day) in abingdon, va since for as long as i can remember
http://www.bartertheatre.com/index.php
it takes a boat load of self confidence to stand on that stage and do what y’all do. way to work.

@Mistress Cynica: Oh, I looooooove Branagh’s Henry V!

ADD: I can’t track down the title or author but back in 1990 or so I listened to a Recorded Book about Agincourt that was really wonderful. It was something like 8 or 10 hours, and the book was based on contemporaneous records. I would love to listen to/read it again.

History — nom nom nom!

@Benedick: Way of the World — breathtaking, I thought.

Slayer!
/martini glass falls to floor as recliner flips and bursts into flames

Angel of Death
http://www.metalinjection.net/tv/view/5276/slayer-angel-of-death-sonisphere-sofia-bulgaria

@blogenfreude: Did you see the photo of the snowman
after they made him tear it down? You can see up into his garage.
Sweet Home Idaho.
I note in the Raw Story article they mention Elijay, GA as a big KKK town. That’s the town my great great grands left after the war.

@karen marie wants to know — Fucking integrity, how does it work?: Wonderful play. And shows how very much the English theatre owes to Him. Without Beatrice and Benedick there could be no Millament and Mirabelle and so on through Wilde and Shaw and Coward and Orton etc.

@jwmcsame: He was going to be a major theatre star. I don’t know what happened. Drugs? I don’t know. He went to the RSC to play Antony with Glenda Jackson (the English have peculiar ideas about what’s sexy) but it was shut down in rehearsal. I thought he was terrific.

Actually, you don’t need self-confidence. The best actors don’t have self-confidence. You do need courage and a healthy disconnect from reality.

@SanFranLefty: Argh. I fell asleep right after Henry gave a rousing speech to his troops from a top a white horse. There was a breach in a stone wall, fires and such, and that’s all I remember. The speech was very, very good, but psychopharmacolgy deemed that it was my bedtime.

@Mistress Cynica: Ah. Okay. That makes sense. In the beginning, the clergy ran down his younger days (didn’t study much, debauchery, love of sport, etc.), and they were discussing whether they could manipulate him. I figured the scene at the inn had something to do with his past.

I’m not yet convinced he’s a pawn of the clergy or of his uncle. He seemed reluctant to wage war, but he’s got a bit of hubris going on. And, of course, Lord Chamberpot said the war would be a sin on his own head (love how folks curse themselves all the time), and then Flipper sent Henry some tennis balls. Dick move, Flipper.

Cut to France where Old King with a Migraine is seriously tired of all this war business and of Flipper. Uncle Ernie in Armor (? Or maybe The Irishman? Scott?) (no, it’s the uncle) comes to deliver a message of WAR, and the Franch king wishes he had the strength to box Flipper’s ears.

Meanwhile, Harry manages to have two three traitors unwittingly pronounce their punishment for treason. People! Stop cursing yourselves!

Back to Harry on a Horse and that amazing speech. And then I woke up. :-)

@Benedick: Started reading your comment, and I stopped when I realized I was getting to a part I haven’t seen yet. I will return to your comment shortly. Anticipation!

@SanFranLefty: Oh, and yes — I’m loving the soundtrack!

@SanFranLefty: Wait. Is that the “hahns, feighngres, cheen” English lesson? I forgot that I saw that last night, and it’s probably what lulled me to sleep. Gorgeous light. Gorgeous hair. So sweet.

Oh no! It’s night, morale is low and poor Henry is conflicted. More than conflicted. What did his father do? I hope Henry gives himself up and doesn’t lead those poor men to their deaths.

@JNOV: That’s one of the great scenes. He comes to understand the cost of his actions. Plus, wonderful writing for the soldiers, Williams, etc.

It’s stolen wholesale from The Illiad. Go, Shakes!

@Benedick: This is beyond awesome! The poor slaughtered boys and nameless dead peasants. Hanging his old friend as an example, and carrying the body of Plump Jack’s son(?), or is he Harry’s son(?), to the cart bearing the French Standard (the boy tried to save the English Standard before he was killed – nice touch).

Almost done. “You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate….[YIKES!] Here comes your father!”

Yes, Shakes is the river. So now I have to read The Illiad? Oy! ;-) et :-*

@Benedick:

A very good actor I worked with told me that when he played Henry, in the marvelous scene after Agincourt when the names of the English dead are read, all the soldiers, covered in stage grime and blood stood in a huddle about him as the names were called out. After each one they all muttered under their breath “He’s a poof.” This continued after each name through the whole list till the last name “… and Davey Gam, esquire.” Whereupon they all cried out “Oh, not Davey Gam!” How anyone can act under such circumstances is beyond me. I start to weep from laughter and become incoherent. Which is the other great thing about His plays: they offer infinite scope for catastrophe.

Oh, that’s almost as bad as “His name is Robert Paulson”!

I know it was the way Europe worked back then, but all these political marriages put me off. Still, I liked it. And yes, Geraldine McEwan is great — I’ve seen her before, but I’m not sure where. ETA: Ah. Miss Marple.

At the end of Henry V, the narrator says something (I think) about Henry VI screwing up the peace between England and France. Argh!

All in all, a very good war movie/play. The gory parts of the film put me off some, but I’m glad they were included. War has been sanitized.

@karen marie wants to know — Fucking integrity, how does it work?: History — nom nom nom

Heh. Yeah, I was done a disservice w/r/t Shakes and w/r/t history (date memorization, basically). I think I checked out after the War of the Roses. But when I later learned history in conjunction with politics and economics, it became much more interesting and easier to understand.

@JNOV: Shakes history plays were mostly an attempt to give substance to the Tudor claim to the throne and to flatter Elizabeth. No one needs to read Illiad. It’s just that he uses Achilles as his model for Harry and as I remember there’s a scene in which he wanders the camp before battle. I could be misremembering. Shakes was a great one for stealing wholesale.

Marriage was dynastic. They all had bits on the side.

@JNOV: Both the Harfleur speech ( on the horse) and the more famous St. Crispin’s Day speech (we happy few) are beyond fantastic.
To be fair, Henry VI didn’t personally screw up the situation–he was still very small (“In infant bands crowned king”) when Henry V died, and it was his regents who blew it. Supposedly, Queen Katherine married the Welshman Owen Tudor, grandfather of Henry VII, who became the first Tudor king (and father of Henry VIII and grandfather of Elizabeth I). That scene where the Welshman says something to Henry V about his being Welsh? Total crap, thrown in to flatter Elizabeth I and connect her to Henry V, though he was a Plantagenet, had no Welsh blood, and was no blood relation to the Tudors.

@Benedick: Good. I’ll scratch that off my list. I’ve also seen documentaries discussing Shakes’ shaky history. Did he exist? Someone of the same name did, but he may not have written the plays. Is the famous painting really of him? Probably not but can’t say for sure. Did he plagiarize? Well, there is nothing new under the sun…

@Mistress Cynica: Yeah. The Welsh business seemed a bit off, but I still liked it just because of my very distant Welsh connection. Those speeches were awesome, and I thought the narrator said that Henry VI was a child when his father died, but I wasn’t sure.

Love how certain phrases besides Et tu… have endured and been mangled. Band of brothers? Check. A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse! Check. Again, there’s nothing new under the sun…

Now I need to read these plays to get the full effect.

Oh, and I missed what became of Flipper. Did someone run him through?

ADD: Ah. Harfleur. I thought they were saying “half-fleur,” and I thought:

1. Who names a town “half flower”? That’s silly.
2. Why is it a English-French portmanteau? Shouldn’t it be Demifleur?

@Benedick: @JNOV: Should I read history plays or sonnets? Oh, and Ian McKellen’s Richard III included someone singing Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd cabaret-style — one of the few poems I know. Loved it! Richard III was also an interesting mix of LOTR, Hogwarts and Nazis.

In defence of one teacher: When I was a sophomore in HS, we had this one brilliant nun who read passages of Beowulf to us in Old English. She was amazing. She also did a great job of keeping my interest when we read The Canterbury Tales. I’m guessing we read abridged versions, and I’m pretty sure I skipped the Beowulf assignments (I was a very lazy student), but I liked Chaucer. I loved that nun, too.

@Benedick: Oh, and you’re right about the scene where Harry wanders about the camp wearing a cloak and informally polling those about to die. That was the scene that moved me most. Sometimes he seemed genuinely concerned about their thoughts and feelings, and sometimes he seemed defensive. He was definitely pensive and conflicted.

My wife and I watched the second “The Girl Who . . .” movie last night. Talk about contrived. The first was much better, even though the second did have more sex and car chases. Now I need to go and read the second book before the third movie comes out . . .