Tea Party Nation has it’s own list of hate groups. In the top five are the Department of Homeland Security and the NAACP.
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Who is to blame for Tea Party darling Michelle Bachman’s rightward turn? Gore Vidal.
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According to textbooks being used in Virginia classrooms, many blacks fought for the Confederacy, there were twelve Confederate states, and the US entered World War I in 1916. The woman who wrote one of the books says she is a “fairly respected writer.” She found some of the information on the Internet, provided by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Virginia got a good deal on the books, cheaper than other publishers’ offerings. You get what you pay for.
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“Ground Zero Mosque” opponents are boycotting Martin Bieber in response to a satirical article based upon a fictitious interview in which Bieber was satirically quoted as calling Muslims “super cool” and Christians “lame-o-rama.”
The media is reporting on the hoax, but expect to get one of those emails from your gullible conservative cousin.
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Fox News was in top form this year, and TPM has collected some of the more entertaining videos. Meagan Kelly figures very prominently.
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A little bit of good economic news for a weary world. A step in the direction of recovery, or just a Christmas bubble?
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Heraldo posted a Seven-O-Heaven commentary which probably applies to political campaigns everywhere. But it has particular meaning for this past local election.
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Just saw a clip on television in which the claim was made that the burrito as we know it today was invented by La Cumbre in the Mission District of San Francisco (one of my favorite taquerias to be sure). I don’t know if this is true, but from what I’ve been reading it definitely has its roots in the Mission District of California. Wikipedia has what appears to be a pretty good history.
I just had one of Nacho Mama’s surfing burritos today. It’s one of my favorite Garberville meals.
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Off to bed with the winter edition of Zyzzyva. Far better than Paris Review or the New Yorker. Give it a look sometime.
Good nite.
31 comments
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December 31, 2010 at 8:19 am
Fred Mangels
Nearly everything I’ve read says that blacks did, indeed, fight for the confederacy. Just one link I’ve found:
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/blackcs.htm
December 31, 2010 at 8:42 am
Erasmus
Gore Vidal is snotty — and that’s one reason to read him, assuming that you agree with most of his prejudices.
December 31, 2010 at 9:19 am
Plain Jane
I didn’t know that burritos weren’t Mexican until an attempt at ordering them in Mexico. However, “Quisiera refritos frijoles con queso y tortillas de harina, por favor” brought the ingredients for FOUR burritos for less than a buck.
As to blacks fighting for the Confederacy, there are always people who work against their own best interests and myriad reasons for doing so; although I doubt there were many who did so to preserve slavery.
On the issue of inaccuracies in textbooks, that isn’t new. How many patriotic myths have been taught as fact in public schools all across the country and for so long that they are “common knowledge?”
December 31, 2010 at 9:47 am
Eric Kirk
Fred – there were absolutely not 65,000 black soldiers Fred. There is no evidence to support numbers in the “thousands.” There was an attempt by freed blacks to form their own group very early in the war, but they were refused by the Confederacy.
December 31, 2010 at 9:50 am
Eric Kirk
This is from Wikianswers.
The blacks, almost overwhelmingly slaves, who were pressed into service by the Confederate Army as servants, teamsters, drovers and laborers were *not* soldiers. They were not trained, were not uniformed, were not paid and were not armed. Furthermore their service was not voluntary, they did what their owners required them to do. Although the nature of their duties was such that they did sometimes come under fire, even being killed and wounded, without weapons they could not fight. They were not in the army, they were all merely laborers used by the army for detail work to free white men, soldiers, for fighting. The only black militia unit of which I am aware was formed in New Orleans in 1861. New Orleans had a large free black population who were accepted as such by white society. The blacks formed a militia regiment and offered there services to the Confederacy but were refused. After the city fell to Union forces they accepted service in the Union army. The only blacks actually enlisted in the Confederate Army were those taken under an act of a desperate congress in 1865. A few regiments of slaves were formed in Richmond and they began drilling but the city fell before they could be put into line. They do not seem to have been with the army when it surrendered at Appomattox so presumeably the units just dissolved and the men went home. Now having said all that, I will acknowledge that, nationalism being a funny thing, there were Southern blacks with regional pride that was stronger than whatever resentment they may have had of slavery and who hoped for and did what they could for Southern victory but they were not enlisted in the Confederate Army nor were they soldiers. Michael Montagne
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_there_any_black_Confederates#ixzz19iFzMHcC
December 31, 2010 at 9:52 am
Fred Mangels
There might not have been 65,000, but likely more than you’d like to think. Maybe the history you were taught was written to be politically correct?
I remember reading a book years ago that was the Russian version of World War 2. It proved to be a lot more historically correct than the version I was taught.
December 31, 2010 at 10:27 am
Jim Buoy
Yup. I think Fred has nailed it. Uncountable numbers of slaves were climbing their slave shanty walls for the chance to fight for their homeland, The Confederate States of America, against those yankee terrorists who hated their idyllic Stephen Foster lifestyle.
However, this excerpt from his linked source presents a conundrum:
“General Lee directs me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th inst: and to say that he much regrets the unwillingness of owners to permit their slaves to enter the service. If the state authorities can do nothing to get those negroes who are willing to join the army, but whose masters refuse their consent, there is no authority to do it at all“.
[That was written less than a month, 3/27/1865, before Lee surrendered at Appomatox and appears to nullify the very argument it preports to support.]
Nah, the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and the supremacy of the rights of owners of slaves above all else, it must have been about something completely different since all dem darkies were just chaffing at their chains to defend their massas’ inalienable rights to own them to de defs. What that was hasn’t been clearly defined by the Sons of the Confederacy as yet other than the ubiquitous claim that it was really about “states rights”. Uhmm. The states’ rights to own slaves, perhaps?
Today we are aware of such human behavior oddities such as, Stockholm Syndrome. Is it possible that some negroes may have had similar dysfunctional behavior problems exerbated by an almost complete lack of education? Don’t have to look any further than the hordes of TeaBaggers who appear to act against their own best interests:e.g. “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!” for the answer.
December 31, 2010 at 11:00 am
anon
there is a great novel called The Known World which is about black slave-holders…
December 31, 2010 at 11:16 am
Ernie's Place
Although I agree that the Virginia history books are total crap, I don’t find it hard to believe that many blacks were willing to fight for the South. Our local Indian people scouted for the soldiers that were rounding up the Indian people and killing them. It is quite common to try to please and appease the group that holds the power of life and death over you.
Many slaves were teated well in the South, at least by the standards of the day. Some were even family of the plantation owners. It was a very tangled web.
We fight today for a nation that a lot of of people have last faith in. Many condemn our leadership and our direction. Many of the U.S. soldiers would do things differently if they were our leaders.
December 31, 2010 at 11:56 am
Ed Denson
Incredible as it seems by today’s view of history, there seem to have been black men in the confederate army. There were also a substantial number of free blacks in the Confederate states. (100,000+ I believe). It is comfortable to believe the war was a civil rights action on the part of the North, but human motivations are more complex than that. How can we explain the large number of non-slaveholding whites who fought for the south? Aspiring slave holders? I think we’d do well to examine historical facts (whatever they may be) and if we find some black support for the south, that should aid in racial reconciliation as the 150th anniversaries of the war’s events roll around.
Eric – is Wikianswers credible? Do you know who the writer was?
December 31, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Erasmus
Sorry, ED — The Washington Post had an op-ed on this subject in its October 30 edition, written by history professor Bruce Levine: The Myth of Black Confederates. Sure, there were a few dozen lodged in military prisons and carefully monitored, but NO black soldiers fought alongside their white comrades on an equal footing and with devotion to the Southern cause. You can find Jews who assisted the Nazis if you look hard enough — but what does that prove? The few dozen blacks who seemed to support the South are merely a distraction, and the true nature of the role they played is in dispute. —- Let’s talk about something serious now…..
December 31, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Eric Kirk
here might not have been 65,000, but likely more than you’d like to think. Maybe the history you were taught was written to be politically correct?
I don’t know how many I would “like” to have fought. Even one is too many. But what is at stake as we enter the 150th anniversary is what will undoubtedly be a relentless campaign by revisionist right wingers to deny racist heritage by arguing that slavery really wasn’t all that bad and that the Civil War was really about “states rights” and not slavery. I’m sure they’ll trot out the famous Lincoln comment about saving the union, and all else. Yes, some blacks served the Confederacy, and maybe even a few of them did so by choice. Slavery was as much a part of the political reality as the dominance of corporate money in politics is today, and many people black and white were probably convinced that slavery was a necessary if unfortunate institution. After all, up until that point no great civilization had existed without slavery, and sometimes you just have to be pragmatic and all. But to suggest in any way that Southern culture should be exonerated for its inherent cultural racism or its gory history in that regard is ridiculous, and luckily the Virginia education system was stupid enough to put the discussion into the limelight before Fox News and talk radio could establish a revisionist narrative.
December 31, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Eric Kirk
but NO black soldiers fought alongside their white comrades on an equal footing and with devotion to the Southern cause.
Also true of the Union forces at least on the first point, as was elaborated upon in a decent movie in the 1980s entitled Glory. The first American white soldiers to fight under a black commander did so in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
But yeah, expect this to be a major argument this coming year, with lots of “facts” not backed up with historical evidence. There’ll be some nice photos of black men in Confederate garb, some letters, some second hand anecdotes – and then like Fred’s source will enter a paragraph which says that “estimates as high as 65,000″ without attribution, or citing some website somewhere. And it’ll become gospel for some as emails are sent around.
December 31, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Jim Buoy
“Many slaves were teated well in the South, at least by the standards of the day.
What does that even mean, Ernie?
If that was even close to being true then they would have had to have been Liberal slave owners as opposed to Conservative slave owners, wouldn’t you think? Which isn’t what the current drive to white-wash the confederacy is all about now is it? As shown in Fred’s source there is ample evidence that white slave owners did not want their property, even in the midst of the death rattle of the CSA, to fight for the hallowed honor of the sacred south. Probably didn’t want their slaves to be armed. For good reason, I’m sure. Payback could have been a bitch.
Future reading on the topic of slave treatment should include Charles Dickens’, American Notes written after his 1848 tour of America. What he witnessed first hand of our southern Peculiar Institution appalled him and he wrote as much which did not endear him to many real Americans. Yes, we had them then and we got them now.
When I was coming home from boot camp in the early1960′s we had a delay in changing trains in Richmond, Va. A group of us decided to go to a bar and have a few beers. One of our uniformed group was a light skinned black. We all sat down at the bar and ordered a round. The white bartender informed us that he could serve “us” but not” him”. We didn’t even understand for a few moments wtf he was even talking about. Then it hit us. We got up and left. To this day I will never forget that small experience in ingrained southern racial prejudice. It was one of the most embarrassing events of my life. George, the black man, took it in stride and told us it was no big deal. I didn’t see it that way. So ____ you, Ernie and your standards of the day bullshit. Have you ever, ever, had your head out of the ass of Humboldt County in your life?
December 31, 2010 at 4:09 pm
pathetic actually
hey jim boy so go ahead and disagree with ernie if you will, but what’s the all the vitriol at the end of your post? lighten up, dude.
December 31, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Anonymous
One theory is that slavery was probably gonna die out anyway, since it was dawning on the industrial owners of the era that it is actually cheaper to PAY slaves a wage and let them try to keep themselves fed and housed and alive (but barely). I don’t know what that war was about, but it hardly seems like it unified the country or that slavery has ever ended…but hey, the victors write the history, always to keep themselves in power.
And since all history books are soon just gonna be electronic, it will be really easy to erase the past and create a new to keep everyone spinning. Remember Farenheit 451?
December 31, 2010 at 6:37 pm
mresquan
Apparently Ken Zanzi has been selected as the North Coast rep on the Coastal Commission.
December 31, 2010 at 6:42 pm
mresquan
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/12/schwarzenegger-hands-out-last-.html
December 31, 2010 at 6:57 pm
mresquan
The latest on California politics and government
December 31, 2010
Schwarzenegger hands out last-minute jobs
With just over two days left in office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday announced nearly 100 last-minute appointments to state boards and commissions, some going to members of his staff.
Last-minute appointments are somewhat of a Capitol tradition, with outgoing governors awarding jobs to staff members and other loyalists before leaving office. Schwarzenegger will make more appointments this weekend before turning the reins over to Democrat Jerry Brown at midnight Sunday. Most of the jobs handed out Friday were for minor posts that carry no salary. But a few are worth noting:
* — Will Fox Jr., Schwarzenegger’s deputy chief of staff, drew a $40,669-a-year job as a member of the State Personnel Board.
* — Aaron McLear, the governor’s press secretary, won appointment to the unpaid California Film Commission.
* — Kari Miner, a Sacramento small business consultant, was appointed to a $128,109-a-year job on the Public Employment Relations Board.
* — Wendy Mitchell of Los Angeles and Kenneth Zanzi of Fortuna landed unpaid jobs on the powerful California Coastal Commission. Mitchell is a Democrat and former staff member for former Democratic Sens. Richard Polanco and Denise Moreno Ducheny. Zanzi, a Republican and former longtime staff member at the Department of Fish and Game, is on the city council in Fortuna.
* — Patti Aguiar, wife of Schwarzenegger secretary of State and Consumer Services Fred Aguiar, was appointed to an unpaid job on the Veterinary Medical Board. Aguiar, 61, is retired hospital official and advertising consultant.
* — The governor appointed Victoria Bradshaw, his senior undersecretary for the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, to an unpaid job on the Little Hoover Commission.
Posted by Dan Smith
Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/12/schwarzenegger-hands-out-last-.html#ixzz19kTWPmhi
December 31, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Fred Mangels
Jim wrote, “So fuck you, Ernie and your standards of the day bullshit. Have you ever, ever, had your head out of the ass of Humboldt County in your life?
This exemplifies why I have a hard time with Eric and Jim’s suggestion that there’s no way blacks would ever fight for the confederacy. That’s just too hard to believe. Just not politically correct.
December 31, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Ernie's Place
Whoa, Jim Buoy, Calm down! What do you think that I mean Many slaves were treated well by the STANDARDS OF THE DAY? Any slave that was allowed comfortable housing, not beaten, and fed well, probably thought that they were pretty well off by the standards of the day.
There is no call for that kind of attack for offering a simple observation. Many documented facts bear me out. Most of the freemen in the south were slaves that were set free by the slave holders. You don’t have to be a black man born in the south to have the level of understanding to know a little about slavery.
I fully understand that most slaves were brutally abused.
“There were different kinds of slaveholders. Some treated their slaves well by giving them gifts and money for doing a good job… …Some who worked as servants were treated as a member of the owner’s family. In some cases slaves were released from their owners when the owner died leaving a will saying they were free because of their good work and loyalty.”
And, as I said, some slaves were the children of the slaveholders. Some were sent to school and educated. Any black person that was treated better than average probably thought that they were pretty well off. We of today have a higher level of understanding about the slave situation, and we know that slavery was wrong. But slavery was a fact during the Civil war.
Jim, get your head out of your obstinate ass!
December 31, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Ernie's Place
Sweet little Patty Hearst wouldn’t rob a bank, and the people on a bus in Stockholm wouldn’t defend the people holding them at gunpoint.
“Stockholm syndrome is a psychological shift that occurs in captives when they are threatened gravely but are shown acts of kindness by their captors. Captives who exhibit the syndrome tend to sympathize with and think highly of their captors. When subjected to prolonged captivity, these captives can develop a strong bond with their captors, in some cases including a sexual interest.
Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, widely credited with Stockholm Syndrome’s psychiatric definition, describes it as “a primitive gratitude for the gift of life,” not unlike that felt by an infant.”
December 31, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Ernie's Place
Jim,
If you don’t believe in “captive stress disorder” does that mean you think that “post traumatic stress disorder” is also bullshit?
December 31, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Eric Kirk
Apparently Ken Zanzi has been selected as the North Coast rep on the Coastal Commission.
You’ve got to be kidding!
I really hope Brown cleans that one up right away.
This exemplifies why I have a hard time with Eric and Jim’s suggestion that there’s no way blacks would ever fight for the confederacy. That’s just too hard to believe. Just not politically correct.
Of course, I didn’t say that. If you want to argue with your straw man of me, that’s fine. But if you want to discuss the matter with me, please address what I say rather than your rote assumptions about what I might say.
January 1, 2011 at 9:26 am
Jim Buoy
Ernie and Fred:
If you’ll look at my first post you will see that I mentioned Stockholm syndrome – the defence used by F Lee Bailey for Patty Hearst. Unsuccessfully. I further stated that it is not unusual for individuals and groups to act contrary to their own best interests. You interpreted that [possible explanation] as being because “many slaves were treated well in the south.” That is a quantification you couldn’t possibly know anything about and is precisely how this whole Confederate history rewrite is being sold by, of all people, members of the new Republican/Confederate party, the usual white bread in those southern secessionist states and their anti-federal and racist sympathizers. Without realizing it, perhaps, you are using their basic argumentation. That’s what pisses me off. If there was any significant number of slaves fighting for the CSA [greater than the few isolated anecdotal incidents and unsubstantiated numbers used by the many SCV and Southern Heritage sites you can google] that would have been borne out by historical evidence – paperwork, military records, ect. That’s precisely what they don’t have.
Don’t you think that with all the reb prisoners of war taken by the Union forces over 4 years if that” many blacks/ slaves” claim was even remotely true blacks would have stood out among those prisoners and there would be easy documentation? The best you get from those above mentioned sites and sources is that 5% of some Tennessee Cav Reg were black but when it surrendered they all switched sides. And that pretty well encapsulates the brain power that is coming up with this shit. See, you just can’t trust them ungrateful ni**ers can you.
Eric is completely right about this. The new “politically correct” is what Fred expresses and it is the framework of what we can expect a bombardment of beginning this year marking the 150 th anniversary of the CW and a Republican/Confederate majority House. And, of course, we’ll be getting plenty of the CSA wasn’t about slavery it was about states rights crap from every southern drawl and scowl in that House + Palin. Stay tuned and you’ll learn the new revisionist politically correct history. You’re already receptive to it with your proclivity for usage of the word “many”.
January 11, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Ed Denson
I’m sure this comment is too late for anyone to read it, but I just read an article (NY Times??) about the 5 great myths about the War Between the States. It includes the language from the South Carolina secession document, and something similar from Mississippi, which shows slavery was defintely at the forefront of their justifications for leaving the Union. But it also cites Lincoln saying he was not fighting about slavery, he was fighting to “preserve the Union” – i.e. he was fighting about states rights. He was denying the states their rights to secede. So do we end up with the South fighting for slavery and the North fighting to deny states rights? That’s weird, but possibly correct.
January 11, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Plain Jane
That’s the way I remember it from history classes, Ed. The north wasn’t trying to end slavery in the south, but to stop its spread to western states which would negatively impact the market for their reproducing property, slaves. Ending slavery was to punish the south, not the cause of the civil war.
January 11, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Eric Kirk
Yes, the south was fighting for slavery. Lincoln fought topreserve the union though he had always been an abolitionist. It wasn’t his priority.?
January 12, 2011 at 9:17 pm
ED Denson
Well, if the north was fighting against states rights, then it follows that the south was fighting for states rights; and of course by similar logic that the north was fighting about slavery. Maybe both interpretations are right.
Also, historical question. Just read that the last slave ship to come to the( US) (to the Americas?) came in 1860. SInce the US banned importation of slaves around the beginning of the 19th century, perhaps this ship went to Brazil – the last nation in the Americas to abolish slavery? I don’t think the south ever reversed the importation ban.
January 12, 2011 at 11:04 pm
Eric Kirk
Well, if it wasn’t for slavery, the South wouldn’t have been willing to fight a war for states’ rights.
January 13, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Plain Jane
The Last Chance for Compromise (on slavery to avert a civil war)
link