This is, more or less, DK's image, maybe slightly exaggerated, of the white Southerner, or so it seems from his site.
They, and only they, deserve that their monuments be torn down, the judgment the verdict of history, by irate racist negroes everywhere.
DK:
"...I do believe that Confederate monuments should come down. Some months ago I devoted a post to Mayor Landrieu's speech on the occasion of the removal of the monuments in New Orleans, which I thought marked a milestone in American history. A white southern politician not only endorsed, but embraced, the removal of the statues from a prominent outdoor location on the grounds that the Confederate leadership was on the wrong side of humanity and history. I believe other white southern politicians, as well as many black ones, will follow his lead. I have been shocked this week to discover that there were Confederate monuments in Baltimore and in Lexington, Kentucky, for the simple reason that neither Maryland nor Kentucky was ever part of the Confederacy. The Baltimore statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, it turns out, came from a bequest from a man named Ferguson and went up after his death in 1948. Their presence was endorsed, disgracefully, by Mayor Thomas d'Alessandro of of Baltimore, who happens to have been the father of Nancy Pelosi. Just today Pelosi has asked for the removal of Confederate statues (including one of Jefferson Davis) from the U.S.Capitol. Those statues were sent by the states, each of which was entitled to select two citizens to memorialize. I don't know exactly when they went in, and I would be curious as to whether there was any effort to keep men who had taken up arms against the government of the United States out, but I don't think Congress should insist on their removal. They came from various states (Davis from Mississippi), and the states should remove them. And I think there is a chance that they will...." Friday, August 18, 2017 More Charlottesvilles?
"...On May 23, Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans--the scion of one of Louisiana's leading political families--gave a speech explaining the decision to remove statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T Beauregard from their prominent outdoor place in the heart of New Orleans, with plans to move them indoors to a museum. The mayor was undoubtedly moved, as he made clear, by the strong feelings of his black constituents that men who fought a war to preserve secession and slavery should not be celebrated publicly. His speech, however, took full responsibility for the decision and argued for its necessity on very sound historical and political grounds. And for that reason, the speech represents, I think, a milestone in American political history. I cannot be sure of my facts here, but I suspect that Mitch Landrieu was the first white southern politician since the time of the Civil War itself to state publicly that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity, as he put it, and that it rightfully lost the war...." DK Friday, June 16, 2017 A civil rights milestone
My view, as I have mentioned before, is closer to this one, by Mr. Bartholomay:
Unknown comment:
Whitewashing History
The move recently to remove confederate soldier statues in New Orleans, Charlottesville and most recently Durham has resulted in some extremely troubling demonstrations and violence. Rallies by disgusting white supremacists and Neo-Nazis have served to cloud the fundamental issue. Are we in this country going to attempt to rewrite history and cleanse it for public consumption?
Are we to forget the more than 150 thousand Confederate Civil war casualties, and only remember and honor the Union casualties? Are we to forget the Confederate soldiers who fought valiantly for causes in which they firmly believed? The issues were not just slavery. There was the issue of States rights. There was the issue of self-determination. There was the issue of love of one’s State.
We remember the divisiveness that precipitated the Civil War, but we often forget the reconciliation (albeit painful at times) that ensued. The 47th Congress in 1882 during the administration of Chester A. Arthur was comprised of over 50 ex confederate officers and over 50 ex union officers, who fought bravely during the Civil War. Even the former Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, was a congressman from Georgia.
We cannot accept. We cannot tolerate the hatred and bigotry sown by these disgusting groups recently. They should be relegated to the fringes of society from whence they came.
Nor should we relegate decisions to the small minority who would remove every vestige of public sentiment for those who fought for the Confederacy. To do so would only serve to fuel the disease of divisiveness that currently infects our country.
US Army Fort A.P. Hill is located in Caroline County Virginia. A.P. Hill was a Confederate General in the Civil War. He was one of the most highly respected Generals on either side. He had extensive battle experience, and was killed on April 2, 1865 during the third battle of Petersburg just one week before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. The US Army has chosen to honor someone who fought valiantly against them by naming a fort in his honor.
In 1913 a reunion of Civil War Veterans took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with over 50,000 veterans (Union and Confederate) attending. We can all benefit from recalling (and honoring) the words of President Woodrow Wilson spoken on the occasion of this great reunion, “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten – except that we shall not forget the splendid valor.”
A. Eric Bartholomay
Coventry, RI
Terms search, DK site re: Black Lives Matter:
My view, as I have mentioned before, is closer to this one, by Mr. Bartholomay:
Unknown comment:
Whitewashing History
The move recently to remove confederate soldier statues in New Orleans, Charlottesville and most recently Durham has resulted in some extremely troubling demonstrations and violence. Rallies by disgusting white supremacists and Neo-Nazis have served to cloud the fundamental issue. Are we in this country going to attempt to rewrite history and cleanse it for public consumption?
Are we to forget the more than 150 thousand Confederate Civil war casualties, and only remember and honor the Union casualties? Are we to forget the Confederate soldiers who fought valiantly for causes in which they firmly believed? The issues were not just slavery. There was the issue of States rights. There was the issue of self-determination. There was the issue of love of one’s State.
We remember the divisiveness that precipitated the Civil War, but we often forget the reconciliation (albeit painful at times) that ensued. The 47th Congress in 1882 during the administration of Chester A. Arthur was comprised of over 50 ex confederate officers and over 50 ex union officers, who fought bravely during the Civil War. Even the former Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, was a congressman from Georgia.
We cannot accept. We cannot tolerate the hatred and bigotry sown by these disgusting groups recently. They should be relegated to the fringes of society from whence they came.
Nor should we relegate decisions to the small minority who would remove every vestige of public sentiment for those who fought for the Confederacy. To do so would only serve to fuel the disease of divisiveness that currently infects our country.
US Army Fort A.P. Hill is located in Caroline County Virginia. A.P. Hill was a Confederate General in the Civil War. He was one of the most highly respected Generals on either side. He had extensive battle experience, and was killed on April 2, 1865 during the third battle of Petersburg just one week before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. The US Army has chosen to honor someone who fought valiantly against them by naming a fort in his honor.
In 1913 a reunion of Civil War Veterans took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with over 50,000 veterans (Union and Confederate) attending. We can all benefit from recalling (and honoring) the words of President Woodrow Wilson spoken on the occasion of this great reunion, “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten – except that we shall not forget the splendid valor.”
A. Eric Bartholomay
Coventry, RI
Terms search, DK site re: Black Lives Matter:
Saturday, December 28, 2019 What the decade meant
Thursday, July 19, 2018 A Magnificent Speech
Thursday, May 17, 2018 How the left has gone wrong
Saturday, November 25, 2017 A forgotten leader from a different time
Friday, April 21, 2017 Trouble on the left
Friday, December 30, 2016 At last, the 1950s come to life
Thursday, September 15, 2016 Conversation or change?See also his post on The 1619 Project
Here is Al Capp, Wikipedia. Note that his actual model characters actually came, not from the deep south at all, although they well might have, but rather from the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia:
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, of East European Jewish heritage, Capp was the eldest child of Otto Philip Caplin (1885-1964)[2] and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin (1884-1948).[3] His brothers, Elliot and Jerome, were cartoonists, and his sister, Madeline, was a publicist. Capp's parents were both natives of Latvia whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. "My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants", wrote Capp in 1978. "Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true — it was no crime to be a Jew." The Caplins were dirt-poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.
In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp was run down by a trolley car and had to have his left leg amputated, well above the knee.[4] According to his father Otto's unpublished autobiography, young Capp was not prepared for the amputation beforehand; having been in a coma for days, he suddenly awoke to discover that his leg was removed.[5] He was eventually given a prosthetic leg, but only learned to use it by adopting a slow way of walking which became increasingly painful as he grew older.[6] The childhood tragedy of losing a leg likely helped shape Capp's cynical worldview, which was darker and more sardonic than that of the average newspaper cartoonist.[7] "I was indignant as hell about that leg", he revealed in a November 1950 interview in Time magazine.
"The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else", Capp philosophically wrote (in Life magazine on May 23, 1960), "was to be indifferent to that difference."[8] The prevailing opinion among his friends was that Capp's Swiftian satire was, to some degree, a creatively channeled, compensatory response to his disability.
Capp's father, a failed businessman and an amateur cartoonist, introduced him to drawing as a form of therapy. He became quite proficient, advancing mostly on his own. Among his earliest influences were Punch cartoonist–illustrator Phil May, and American comic strip cartoonists Tad Dorgan, Cliff Sterrett, Rube Goldberg, Rudolph Dirks, Fred Opper, Billy DeBeck, George McManus, and Milt Gross. At about this same time, Capp became a voracious reader. According to Capp's brother Elliot, Alfred had finished all of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw by the time he turned 13. Among his childhood favorites were Dickens, Smollett, Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, and later, Robert Benchley and S. J. Perelman.
Capp spent five years at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, without receiving a diploma. He liked to joke about how he failed geometry for nine straight terms.[9] His formal training came from a series of art schools in the New England area. Attending three of them in rapid succession, the impoverished Capp was thrown out of each for nonpayment of tuition—the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Designers Art School in Boston—the last before launching his career. Capp already had decided to become a cartoonist. "I heard that Bud Fisher (creator of Mutt and Jeff) got $3,000 a week and was constantly marrying French countesses", Capp said. "I decided that was for me."
In early 1932, Capp hitchhiked to New York City. He lived in "airless rat holes" in Greenwich Village and turned out advertising strips at $2 each while scouring the city hunting for jobs. He eventually found work at the Associated Press when he was 23 years old. By March 1932, Capp was drawing Colonel Gilfeather, a single-panel, AP-owned property created in 1930 by Dick Dorgan. Capp changed the focus and title to Mister Gilfeather, but soon grew to hate the feature. He left the Associated Press in September 1932. Before leaving, he met Milton Caniff and the two became lifelong friends. Capp moved to Boston and married Catherine Wingate Cameron, whom he had met earlier in art class. She died in 2006 at the age of 96.
Leaving his new wife with her parents in Amesbury, Massachusetts, he subsequently returned to New York in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. "I was 23, I carried a mass of drawings, and I had nearly five dollars in my pocket. People were sleeping in alleys then, willing to work at anything." There he met Ham Fisher, who hired him to ghost on Joe Palooka. During one of Fisher's extended vacations, Capp's Joe Palooka story arc introduced a stupid, coarse, oafish mountaineer named "Big Leviticus," a crude prototype. (Leviticus was much closer to Capp's later villains Lem and Luke Scragg, than to the much more appealing and innocent Li'l Abner.)
Also during this period, Capp was working at night on samples for the strip that eventually became Li'l Abner. He based his cast of characters on the authentic mountain-dwellers he met while hitchhiking through rural West Virginia and the Cumberland Valley as a teenager. (This was years before the Tennessee Valley Authority Act brought basic utilities such as electricity and running water to the region.) Leaving Joe Palooka, Capp sold Li'l Abner to United Feature Syndicate (later known as United Media). The feature was launched on Monday, August 13, 1934, in eight North American newspapers—including the New York Mirror—and was an immediate success. Alfred G. Caplin eventually became "Al Capp" because the syndicate felt the original would not fit in a cartoon frame.[10] Capp had his name changed legally in 1949.
His younger brother Elliot Caplin also became a comic strip writer, best known for co-creating the soap opera strip The Heart of Juliet Jones with artist Stan Drake and conceiving the comic strip character Broom-Hilda with cartoonist Russell Myers. Elliot also authored several off-Broadway plays, including A Nickel for Picasso (1981), which was based on and dedicated to his mother and his famous brother.[11]
No comments:
Post a Comment