Extra anti-Lost Cause posts?

People following my Twitter or Google+ feeds may be wondering why blog posts from 2004 on Confederate "Heritage" Month keep popping up.

It's because I'm moving those posts from my original blog, which is still public on Blogger as AOL Journals 1st Old Hickory's Weblog to this one.

As the original title suggests, I started this blog in 2003 as an AOL blog. AOL later discontinued their blog function and we could select to move the old posts to Blogger. But since I had already created the Blogger version of Old Hickory's Weblog and started using it instead of the AOL version by then, I had to have the AOL conversion go to a different blog name.

I do have good memories of the AOL blog function. Blogging then was still a bit "techie," in that it required some more HTML and software skills than a lot of people like me were ready to take on to have a blog. AOL's service hired science-fiction author John Scalzi as their blog coach, who provided daily tips on how to blog, how to popularize your blog, blog etiquette, etc.

Scalzi has continued to build his impressive reputation as a science fiction writer. He also continues to blog at Whatever, his blog that he was already writing in the AOL days.

Back in those days, Scalzi also indulged in the occasional tirade against neo-Confederate nonsense, e.g., Another Confederate Smackdown 01/31/2005.

Neo-Confederates

Since John Scalzi was just kind enough to link to one of my posts from his AOL Journal, this may look like crass pandering. But I was really going to mention this anyway, because on his other blog Whatever, he's taken up one of my favorite topics, the strangeness of neo-Confederate nonsense.

He's posted a useful index to some of his earlier takes on the subject. His posts like "The Confederacy Is Evil" show that he has a pretty good grasp of the subject. For a Yankee, I mean. Yankees are always inclined to be overly generous about this kind of thing.

In a post from 2001 taking on the neo-Confederate groups (which he calls "Southern heritage" groups in this one), he gives a very good brief overview, including an appropriate reference to the greatest writer in the English language, who was also a native Mississippian:

Let us make no mistake, there is a Southern Heritage -- a fine tradition of music and literature and food. However, your typical dumbass bigot waving his Confederate Battle Flag couldn't identify Bill Faulkner in a line up, much less claim to have read, say, Absalom, Absalom! His Southern Heritage seems largely confined to the battle jack and a yearning for a time when you could whip the darkies when they got out of line.

Really not bad. Although Yankees should really refer to him as William Faulkner, but we'll let that slide. :) In the wrap-up, he takes off on the saying "American by birth, Southern by the grace of God." I have a t-shirt with that logo on it myself.

Let me be clear to all you good ol' boys out there: Celebrate your southernness. I mean, really, knock yourself out. Have a ball. But do it without fetishizing the Confederacy. It is possible to do one without the other. You are Southern by the grace of God, but being a dumbass bigot is something you do all on your own.

Maybe he has some Southern connections somehow. Because it's obvious that the whole topic really gets under his skin. Y'all check it out.

Tags: authoritarianism, john scalzi, neo-confederates

At other AOL political blogs

Progressive Musings has been looking at other liberal Web sites and playing with posting photographs. And he's doing a lot better at it than I am, I must say! I'm digitally challenged when it comes to photos. I'm going to work on it. I'm currently recovering from a Windows crash. PM is also shaking his head in amazement at Pat Robertson and Ghettopoly.

Cheese Louise is dissecting the California recall, a fertile topic.

Windmills of my mind tried to keep her mind off politics for a few days. But now she's back to musing about the Texasification of American politics. She also pointed out the other day that AOL Journalmeister John Scalzi has a non-AOL blog, Whatever, where he's been talking about spam, radio appearances, baseball and his general approach to commenting on political issues.

Charlie Eklund at The Other Shoe quotes from an article in which Ed Asner seems to be outing himself as an admirer of Joe Stalin. I think that may be reading too much into Asner's comment, in which actually says that he would like to play Stalin, and comments that he thinks Stalin is "misunderstood." The source article in a column from the conservative World Net Daily does imply that. But I'd take that with a grain of salt.

British historian Alan Bullock did a great biography called Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives that was one of the first post-Cold War histories I read. I can imagine that either of those characters would be a fascinating challenge for an actor.

Tags: aol journals, ed asner, john scalzi